Animate my book: how to turn your book into an animated film

To animate your book, paste a chapter or a short story into Nima's Long-form Video, pick a look, approve the characters it draws from your descriptions and choose their voices. Nima then films the text scene by scene: a narrator reads your prose, your characters speak their own lines, and nothing is cut unless you agree. You get a free trailer first. Longer films are made on a monthly plan metered in minutes of film, from as low as $10 per finished minute, up to a hundred minutes a month.

Your first trailer is free.

Last updated 8 October 2026

What "animated" means here

Not a slideshow of illustrations with a voice on top, and not a new story loosely based on yours. It means your text, staged:

• Characters designed once from your descriptions and kept the same in every shot.
• Places built once as sets and seen from different camera angles.
• Dialogue spoken by the character who says it, each with their own voice and a moving mouth.
• Narration, if you want it, reading the prose between the speech.
• Your words. Spoken lines come only from your text. "He said" and "she replied" are left unspoken, because you can see who is talking.

The film above is the first half of a Sherlock Holmes story made this way: an hour of film from about 9,000 words, with the same faces from the first minute to the last.

How much of the book should you animate?

Film follows text at about 150 words a minute, so a whole novel is a whole series: an 80,000-word novel runs close to nine hours. You can make all of it, an episode at a time, or start with the size that fits what you want right now:

Everything past the free trailer is made on a monthly plan metered in minutes of finished film, two, ten or a hundred minutes a month, from as low as $10 per finished minute, with extra minutes at $10 each. One upload can be up to 10,000 words, which is about an hour of film. A longer book goes chapter by chapter, and each chapter is its own film.

How it works

1. Paste your pages. Open Long-form Video and paste the scene, chapter or short story you want filmed, between 150 and 10,000 words. Nima reads it, maps the scenes, the cast and the places, and asks before it cuts anything.
2. Pick a look. Detailed claymation, felted wool, comic book ink, acid pencil, which is coloured pencil, or paper love, which is cut paper. Nima can draw your lead character and your main location in all five so you compare them side by side.
3. Approve the cast and the places. Every character is drawn once, from the descriptions in your text, and every location is built once as a set. Leave a note on any picture and Nima redraws it.
4. Pick the voices. Each speaking character gets five voice auditions, each one reading a line from your book. Choose the one that sounds like the person you wrote.
5. Watch your free trailer. Nima cuts a trailer of 15 to 20 seconds from your text: several of its places and people, two or more of your lines spoken word for word, music under it, your title at the end. You see it first as a storyboard with the voices, give one round of notes, then start a free 7-day trial and it is fully animated. Nima emails you when it is ready.
6. Make the film, if you want more. Pick a plan, metered in minutes of finished film, and Nima films the text scene by scene. You review a full draft with the voices, leave notes in each round your plan includes, then approve the render. The finished film is yours to download and share with a link.

How faithful is it?

Completely, by default. Every word of the text you paste is in the film unless you agree to a cut, and when Nima thinks a cut would help, it asks you a yes or no question that says exactly what would go and why.

You choose how the prose is handled with one switch. Narrator on: the narrator reads everything between the speech, and the film is your text complete. Narrator off: only the dialogue is heard, and the rest plays as pictures.

What kinds of book work best

• Scenes with people talking. Long speech is what this does best. A character can talk on camera for half a minute.
• A small cast in a few places. Every new character and location is something to draw and for you to check. Four sisters in one room is ideal.
• Short stories. Short enough to film whole.
• Plays and screenplays. They are already dialogue.
• Picture book text. It is short, so it is quick to film. Characters are drawn in one of Nima's looks unless you ask us to work from your illustrator's artwork.

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.