For this year’s Christmas video at Grace Communications, we’ve brought our beloved mascot, Dear Grace, to life once again. Following the success of our AI-generated Halloween video, this festive follow-up was also created entirely using AI platforms and tools, showcasing the magic of creativity and technology. Here’s how it all came together:
The Process
1. Bringing Dear Grace to Life To animate Dear Grace, we used an image created for the Halloween video and turned it into a Christmas theme using detailed prompting in PicLumen. This image was then the foundation for animating Grace’s movements and expressions in Act One.
2. Crafting the Concept and Script
The script for the video was developed by our Creative Director, Tracey and with only 30 seconds to deliver the performance, I used Runway’s Act One feature to record myself singing it—albeit not too tunefully!—to create the base footage for Act One to do its magic.
3. Preparing the Performance
Whist this footage was being created, we employed Runway’s ‘remove background’ tool to replace my background with a green screen. This allowed for seamless integration with other elements of the video.
4. Enhancing Audio
The audio from my recording was cleaned and enhanced using the Adobe Podcast tool. To create a bespoke female voice for Dear Grace, we used ElevenLabs to craft a Scottish accent using this enhanced audio. While the voice transformation worked well, the Scottish twang was unfortunately lost. If anyone has advice on improving this, we’d love to hear from you! Additionally, ElevenLabs’ sound effects tool was used to design a jingle bell sound, which was layered over the backing music.
5. Music and Sound Design
The festive backing track was composed using detailed prompting in Soundraw, adding a cheerful and Christmassy vibe to the video.
6. Intro and Outro Scenes
The intro scene was created using text-to-image generation in Runway and animated with Kling for smoother results. I found the results from Kling were more accurate to my prompt than Runway in this instance. The outro ‘Merry Christmas’ scene was more intricate: I began with a rough illustration in Adobe Illustrator, which served as the style reference in Firely. I then added an AI generated lightbulb lit letter as the composition reference along with a prompt for the scene in order to create the final image in a snowy field. This image was then brought to life with a falling snow prompt and motion added using Runway’s Motion Brush tool.
7. Background Design
The final scene’s background, also used as the backdrop for my green-screen footage, was generated in Adobe Firefly. Prompts were carefully tailored to ensure the colours aligned with our corporate branding.
8. Animating Dear Grace’s Performance Throughout the video, viewers can see my own exaggerated head and facial movements transposed onto Dear Grace. This side-by-side effect provides a glimpse into how Act One works and highlights how my 'performance' (a term I use loosely here!) was mapped to Dear Grace.
We hope you enjoy our 12 Days of Christmas video as much as we enjoyed creating it. From all of us at Grace Communications, Merry Christmas!
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