AI microdrama maker: animated episodes with the same cast, from your story

A microdrama is a series of one-to-two-minute episodes made for the phone, each ending on a hook. Nima's Long-form Video makes them as animation: paste the story, approve one cast and one voice per character, and every episode is made from that same cast, in widescreen with a vertical cut of each one for Shorts, Reels and TikTok. Our own microdramas from Pride and Prejudice, Sherlock Holmes, Little Women and The Three Musketeers have more than 700,000 views on Instagram. The first trailer is free.

Your first trailer is free.

Last updated 27 October 2026

What a microdrama is

A microdrama (also written micro-drama, and called a vertical drama, a short drama or a vertical series) is a story told in episodes of about a minute or two, shot or drawn for a phone held upright, with a hook in the first seconds and a cliffhanger at the end of every episode. The form came out of China, where it is called duanju, and now fills apps such as ReelShort and DramaBox and the short-video feeds. A season runs from a dozen episodes to eighty. The first episodes are free and the rest are paid for one at a time, which is why every episode has to end on a question.

Most microdramas are filmed with actors. An animated one is made the same way a long animated film is, only cut into short episodes, and it can be any story: a novel, a script, a world you wrote for it.

Ours, as the example

Four series, one cast each, every episode cut from a longer film made from the book. Pride and Prejudice in felted wool, Sherlock Holmes in claymation, Little Women in felted wool, The Three Musketeers in cut paper. The lines are the books' own words.

Together they have more than 700,000 views on Instagram, where the vertical cuts live, and the full episodes are on our YouTube channel in widescreen. The piece at the top of this page, Mrs Bennet's nerves, is the most watched: 54 seconds, one scene, one line everyone knows.

What Nima makes

• One cast, every episode. Each character is drawn once, as a sheet you approve, and each speaking character keeps one voice. Every episode made from the same upload uses that cast, so the face in episode twelve is the face from episode one.
• Episodes as separate films. One upload takes up to 10,000 words and can be made into many distinct films, each with its own link and download. A microdrama episode of one to two minutes is about 150 to 300 words of story.
• Widescreen and vertical. Each episode is made in widescreen, and a vertical cut of it is made for the phone: Nima picks the moments and follows the people in the frame. The widescreen file goes to YouTube, the vertical cut to Shorts, Reels and TikTok.
• Five looks. Detailed claymation, acid pencil, felted wool, comic book ink and paper love. One look for the whole series.
• Your words, spoken. Every line of dialogue in the text is spoken by its character, and a narrator reads the rest, or stays silent if you prefer.

How it compares

Several tools now sell an AI microdrama workflow: Picsart's Saga plans a season and makes 60 to 90 second vertical episodes; Runway, Dreamina, insMind, ImagineArt and Morphic offer a script-to-clip pipeline on video models such as Seedance, Kling and Veo; Charismatic.ai makes animated episodes from a prompt. They share one shape: each shot is a separate generation, and the character is kept the same by giving every generation the same reference picture. That works for a few shots and gets harder over a season.

Nima is built the other way round: the whole story is read first, the cast and the places are built once, and the episodes are made from them. It makes animation only, not photoreal video, and it makes the episodes in widescreen with a vertical cut rather than natively vertical. If you want live-action-looking people, use one of the others. If you want an animated series that holds its cast for a season, this is the one made for it.

How the tools keep a character the same, in detail.

How to start

1. Write or pick the story. Your own, or a public-domain book. For a microdrama, write it in episodes of 150 to 300 words, each ending on a turn.
2. Paste it. Open Long-form Video and paste the text. Nima maps the scenes, the cast and the places.
3. Pick a look, approve the cast, pick the voices. Five voice auditions per speaking character.
4. Watch the free trailer. 15 to 20 seconds, animated, with the voices: the check before the series.
5. Make the episodes. Each is reviewed as a storyboard with the voices, then animated. Each has its own link, a widescreen file and a vertical cut.
6. Post them. Vertical to Shorts, Reels and TikTok, one a day; widescreen to a YouTube playlist.

The step-by-step guide, with our episode as the walk-through.

What it costs

Films are made on a monthly plan metered in minutes of finished film: two, ten or a hundred minutes a month, with one, two or five rounds of notes on each film. Extra minutes are $10 each and never expire. That works out from as low as $10 per finished minute; the plans and their current prices are on the pricing page. Film length follows the text at about 150 words a minute with the narrator on.

A season of twenty 90-second episodes is half an hour of film.

You need the right to adapt the text. Your own book qualifies, and so does anything in the public domain. If a publisher holds your film or audio-visual rights, ask them before you post a trailer.