From fairy tale to film

What you get#

The fairy tale behind the project «Роверы и ёжики. Зимняя доставка» (Rovers and Hedgehogs. Winter Delivery): just before New Year, hedgehogs in a café on Arbat plot to take over the world, a delivery robot overhears the conspiracy, and the rovers lure the hedgehogs into their containers with apples and take them to the zoo to sleep. From this text we made a 2 minute 14 second short film: 8 scenes, 27 shots, a narrator’s voice-over.

The style is a volumetric 3D world with flat, almost hand-drawn characters. The videos are Seedance 2.5 drafts in 480p with the model’s own sound: noises and ambience, no music or speech. Music is easier to add in the final edit outside the platform.

01Create the project#

On the home page, click New project and choose the Short film type — one film: scenes and shots right away, without seasons and episodes. The type cannot be changed after creation.

The second step has Name and Idea / logline. Paste the whole text of the fairy tale into the logline: it becomes the project’s original story, and the assistant will later write the script from it.

Project style#

Turn on Catalog styles and pick a visual medium. The medium is mixed into every generation of the project: characters, locations, frames and video. So a mixed style — a 3D environment with flat characters — has to be described as one medium rather than set separately for characters and locations.

Next: Film duration (sec, max 600) 150 seconds, genre “Fairy tale”, tone “Ironic”, frame format 16:9.

Default video#

Open Generation parameters: video model Seedance 2.5, resolution 480p, and check Generate synchronized audio and Seedance: draft at 480p by default. Now every shot generates a cheap draft with sound by default.

On the last step, check the summary. Leave LLM auto-generation off: we will create scenes, characters and locations from the script, which makes them easier to control. Click Create project.

02Write the script#

Open Script and click Write script for the film. On the right is the Script assistant. It sees the project’s original story, so one task with the key decisions is enough: duration, number of scenes, narration only, and the characters’ names.

Edit through drafts#

The assistant saves its answer as a draft; the script itself does not change. You can compare the draft with the current text inline or in Side by side mode. We noticed a typo and an unfortunate detail and asked for a fix:

All drafts and the edit history are on the Versions tab. Apply the draft you need with Apply and confirm with Confirm.

Create the scenes#

On the Scenes tab, click Update episode scenes: each INT./EXT. heading becomes a project scene. We got 8 scenes.

03Create the characters#

In the Characters section, ask the Characters assistant to create the characters from the script. It fills in the profiles — appearance, height, personality, voice — but does not generate images.

References and portrait#

If a character has a real-life prototype, upload a photo: Add reference → Upload file. For the rover we uploaded three photos of a delivery robot, for Ulyana a photo of a girl. Generations use them as design references.

Then, for each character in order:

1. Portrait. Generate portrait — the front view, the character’s base image.
2. Views. In the strip under the portrait, select “3/4 left”, “3/4 right”, “Left profile”, “Right profile”, “Back” and click the view’s generate button. In our style the views matter most: a flat character does not rotate in 3D but switches between drawn sides.
3. Layout. In the Layout block, Generate: the character full-body from every side.
4. Character sheet. Create character sheet puts the portraits, layout and emotions into one reference for frames.

Fix an emotion with an outline#

For the hedgehogs’ ringleader we also generated an Emotion sheet. The sixth cell came out with fear, but in the story Yo Gun falls asleep at the end. There is no need to redo the whole sheet.

Click Correct above the sheet, outline the cell with the brush and describe the fix:

BeforeAfter

The corrected sheet becomes a new version, and the character sheet is assembled from it.

04Create the locations#

In the Locations section, ask the Locations assistant to create all the settings in one message:

Models know real places poorly. For the Turandot fountain we uploaded three photos to Add reference — and the fountain came out recognizable.

Then each location gets Generate 3/4, and the street ones also get cardinal directions: Generate North. The cardinal directions come in handy for 3D scenes.

05Break the scenes into shots#

The assistant can split the scenes into shots on its own, but the frames come out bland: everything in medium shots. So we wrote a shot list in advance with varied shot sizes and angles — from above, from below, over the shoulder, from inside a container, flythroughs — and gave it to the Project assistant on the Storyboard. Here is the start of the message:

The assistant created 27 shots, linked the characters and locations, and picked cameras. It added the line “no music and no speech” to every shot’s video prompt — that is the instruction for Seedance’s sound.

06Prepare flythroughs in 3D scenes#

For three shots with camera movement — the descent to the café (1.1), the flythrough along Arbat (2.3) and the flight over the column on the Garden Ring (6.1) — we recorded previzes in the 3D Scenes section. A previz is a rough flythrough video of a simple 3D scene: the video model repeats its camera path and blocking and takes the style from the references.

Scenes, paths and flight recording in detail — see the “3D Scenes” guide. Here is the task the 3D scenes assistant used to place the column of rovers and set the flythrough for shot 6.1:

Link a saved previz to the shot on the Previz tab: From library → the 3D scene folder → Set as shot previz.

07Generate the key frames#

On the Storyboard, select shots: Shift+click a card’s caption. Create frames and Create video appear at the bottom with the number of selected shots. We selected all 27 and started the frames.

Review the frames before spending money on video. A bad frame is fixed the same way as the emotion sheet — with Correct and an outline.

08Generate video drafts#

Open a shot by clicking its frame and go to the Video tab. Thanks to the project settings, the button already reads Generate draft — Seedance 2.5, 480p, with sound. The price is shown under the button: a 6-second draft costs 240 ₽.

On shots with a previz, turn on Send previz → Original before generating: the previz goes to the model as a reference video — movement, framing, timing.

The arrows in the shot header switch to the neighboring shot — a handy way to go through all 27 in a row and start each one separately.

09Voice the narrator#

The narrator’s voice is the last step before merging. A new video generation of a shot clears its timeline along with the voiceover tracks.

We split the tale into short phrases — one per shot, matching the shot’s length. On export the sound is cut at the end of the shot’s video, so the phrase has to fit inside it.

On the shot timeline, click Add track → Audio track, then Text to speech in the track header. Type the phrase, pick a voice and click Generate.

For the narrator we used the male voice Reliable Man from the MiniMax library. The voice is picked in the same list: character voices first, then the ElevenLabs and MiniMax libraries below, each with a preview.

The finished voiceover lands as a clip on the “Audio” track; you can move and cut it. The Seedance sound stays on the video track.

10Watch and merge the film#

Open Studio and assembly. On the Studio tab the whole film already plays straight through, with the voiceover, even before merging: the strip at the bottom is all the shots, on the right are the selected shot’s versions. This makes it easy to find a weak shot and replace it.

On the Assembly tab, click Create assembly — the shots line up by scene, as on the Storyboard. Here you can reorder them and exclude them from the edit.

Click Merge episode. In the confirmation window you can substitute an animatic or a frame for missing video, turn on overlap and shot numbers. We left everything as is: No overlap → Merge.

A couple of minutes later the film appears on the Splices tab: 27 clips, 2:14. The Watch and Download buttons are above the assembly.

What’s next#

480p drafts are good for checking the film as a whole. Successful shots can be finalized in high resolution, and music added in the final edit.

Each section in detail — in the separate guides: “Script”, “Characters”, “Locations”, “3D Scenes”, “Storyboard”, “Shots” and “Studio and assembly”.