Lyrael

This is a character design study for an AI stop-motion project.

For the character, my beloved Lyrael, I drew inspiration from a well-known figure and further developed my concept by considering clothing, backstory, and personality. I first created sketches and watercolor paintings, which I used as reference images in MidJourney to bring Lyrael to life.

Using Midjourney’s editing tool, I designed the character’s outfits, taking inspiration from real garments. The same feature allowed me to generate multiple facial expressions, visually conveying Lyrael’s emotions.

The animations were primarily created using Kling AI 1.5, enhancing the stop-motion effect.

To refine the creative process, I developed a custom GPT designed to optimize and enhance prompts for both Midjourney and AI video creation. This GPT assistant is specifically trained to emphasize stop-motion aesthetics, ensuring that the generated content aligns with the handcrafted feel of traditional animation.

The GPT improves texture fidelity, enhancing the grain, imperfections, and handcrafted look typical of stop-motion figures. It also refines lighting and shadow depth, ensuring the scene maintains the classic miniature set atmosphere. Additionally, it optimizes camera angles and depth of field, reinforcing the visual characteristics of physical stop-motion setups.

By automating and refining these aspects, this custom GPT significantly contributes to maintaining the authenticity of stop-motion animation within AI-generated content.

This project is an ongoing exploration of AI-driven stop-motion animation, evolving alongside the rapid advancements in image-to-video AI technology. My goal is to use Lyrael’s journey as a testing ground to follow these developments closely, integrating new tools as they emerge and refining my creative process with each innovation.

The next step will be to bring Lyrael to life through speech, enhancing her expressiveness and making her a more immersive character. Additionally, I aim to create fully coherent environments that align with the stop-motion aesthetic, ensuring that the textures, lighting, and spatial depth remain consistent across different shots and sequences.