How to animate a long story with consistent characters

To animate a long story with consistent characters, draw each character once, as a picture you approve, and make every shot from that picture instead of from a written description. Do the same for each place and each voice, then review the whole story as a storyboard before anything is animated. In Nima's Long-form Video you paste up to 10,000 words at a time, about an hour of film, and the cast is drawn once and reused in every shot of it. Your first trailer is free.

Your first trailer is free.

Last updated 23 October 2026

Why characters change from shot to shot

Most AI video tools make one clip at a time, from a prompt. Each clip is drawn fresh, so a face described as "a tall man with grey hair" comes out a little different every time: the jaw, the coat, the age. Over three clips you may not notice. Over three hundred, the hero of chapter one is a stranger by chapter ten.

A long story makes it harder in three ways:

• More shots. At 5 to 10 seconds a shot, a 30-minute story is 180 to 360 shots, and every one is a chance to drift.
• More characters. Someone who comes back after twenty minutes has to look the way they did the first time.
• More days. A long film is made over several sittings. What the tool knew on Monday has to still be there on Friday.

How to keep them the same for the whole story

Fix everything that has to stay the same once, at the start, as pictures:

• Each character, as a sheet. One drawing of the person, approved by you, given to the model as a picture with every shot they are in. A character in other clothes is a version of the same sheet, not a new person.
• Each place, as a set. Built once, empty, then seen from new camera angles, so the kitchen in scene two is the kitchen in scene forty.
• Each object that comes back. A letter, a lamp, a sword: drawn once, the first time it matters.
• Each voice. One voice per speaking character for the whole story.
• One look. Claymation, felted wool, comic book ink, acid pencil or cut paper, chosen once for the whole film.

Then check the story as a whole before any of it moves. A storyboard of every scene, with the voices, shows a face that drifted in minutes; a finished render shows it after the work is done.

How long a story can be

Length comes from the words. With a narrator reading the prose between the speech, film runs at about 150 words a minute.

One upload to Long-form Video takes up to 10,000 words, about an hour of film, and everything in it shares one cast. From one upload you can make many distinct films, each with its own link, and every one of them uses the same characters and places. A longer story is made in more than one upload, a few chapters at a time.

Step by step

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, and it is fully animated, free. 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.

An hour with the same faces

Our studio made The Red-Headed League this way: 9,109 words of Arthur Conan Doyle in claymation, about an hour of film, posted on YouTube in two parts. The Holmes of the last scene is the Holmes of the first, in the same chair, in the same sitting room.

Doing it with clip-by-clip tools

You can hold a cast steady in a general AI video tool too, if it takes reference pictures. Make one picture per character and per place, give the same pictures to every clip, keep a list of which pictures each shot used, record every voice for the whole script in one sitting, and fix one shot at a time on a timeline. Which tools save a character, and for how long a clip.

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.

The first trailer is free: 15 to 20 seconds of your story, animated, so you see the cast hold before you make anything long.

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.