How to Make Viral Animated Shorts Using Claude (Full Workflow) — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Look at these two videos. This one has
2. 0:0229 million views and it's not a one-off.
3. 0:05That channel is brand new and its last
4. 0:0780 shorts got over 200 million views.
5. 0:10The other one, that's mine. And no, it
6. 0:12didn't come out of an AI video
7. 0:14generator. Claude built it in 3D with
8. 0:17code every single frame. In this video,
9. 0:19I'll show you exactly how I made this
10. 0:21animated short, how I trained Claude on
11. 0:23this style frame by frame. What went
12. 0:26wrong and how I fixed it, and how you
13. 0:28can get it, too. You're going to get all
14. 0:30of that for completely free. All right,
15. 0:33let's get into it. If you've never seen
16. 0:35this type of short, it's this. The
17. 0:37characters are 2D, but the world around
18. 0:39them is 3D. So, how do you train Claude
19. 0:41to make this? First, you need
20. 0:43references. A lot of them. I went to the
21. 0:46channel and had Claude download the last
22. 0:4720 shorts in this style, the ones that
23. 0:49look this good. Now, here's the thing.
24. 0:51If you just tell Claude to analyze a
25. 0:53video, it won't look at every frame. It
26. 0:55grabs a few here and there, but a normal
27. 0:57video runs at 30 frames per second. And
28. 0:59you've probably seen this style all over
29. 1:01your feed. Most of those look trash. The
30. 1:04reason is the tiny stuff. Micro
31. 1:06animations, a little camera move, a
32. 1:08little shading, a little light. That's
33. 1:10what makes it feel real. And you only
34. 1:12catch that at 30 frames per second.
35. 1:14Every single frame, every camera move,
36. 1:16every little change in the light. So
37. 1:18that's the main thing I told Claude.
38. 1:19Watch all of them at 30 frames per
39. 1:21second. and check everything. The
40. 1:23lighting, the contrast, the shadows, the
41. 1:26movement, the effects, the cuts,
42. 1:28everything, 20 shorts, about 18 minutes
43. 1:30of video, over 32,000 frames, and it
44. 1:33came back with a rule book. So, what's
45. 1:35the actual workflow behind these shorts?
46. 1:38It comes down to three layers. How the
47. 1:40script is engineered, how the visuals
48. 1:42are constructed, and how Claude measured
49. 1:44all of it. First, the script. To decode
50. 1:46it, Claude needed the audio. And the
51. 1:48first time YouTube handed it the German
52. 1:50dub classic. So it pulled the original
53. 1:53English track and transcribed all 20
54. 1:55itself. And every single one opens like
55. 1:58this. They buried a man alive with a
56. 2:00bell tied to his finger. He bet his life
57. 2:02savings on the slowest horse in the
58. 2:04race. A knight paid a priest to forgive
59. 2:06a crime he hadn't committed yet. There's
60. 2:08a button in the middle of town and
61. 2:10nobody's allowed to press it.
62. 2:11>> A paradox in the very first sentence. No
63. 2:14intro, no setup. Then it escalates. Then
64. 2:17comes the pivot where the real reason
65. 2:19comes out. Then the payoff. One last
66. 2:21line and the twist lands. And there's a
67. 2:23signature move. 14 of the 20 flip into
68. 2:26the explanation with the exact same two
69. 2:28words. You see? You see? You see? You
70. 2:31see? You see?
71. 2:32>> And the delivery is relentless. Almost
72. 2:34four words a second with basically zero
73. 2:36dead air. Second, the visuals. The
74. 2:39characters are flat, two-dimensional,
75. 2:40but they're lit like they physically
76. 2:42exist in that world. They catch the key
77. 2:44light and they cast real shadows. The
78. 2:46world is real 3D geometry traced with
79. 2:49black ink outlines like a comic book.
80. 2:51The colors are heavily saturated, warm
81. 2:53highlights, cool blue shadows, and the
82. 2:55lighting follows the story. Warm and
83. 2:57bright while it sets things up, then a
84. 2:59deep night blue right as the explanation
85. 3:01begins. And the camera almost never
86. 3:03cuts. 12 of the 20 have one hard cut or
87. 3:06none at all. Instead, the camera
88. 3:08physically travels into the next moment.
89. 3:10Third, and this is the real secret, how
90. 3:12Claude analyzed all of it. It didn't
91. 3:14just eyeball it. It wrote its own
92. 3:16measuring tool. Every 2 seconds of video
93. 3:18became one contact sheet. 60 frames on a
94. 3:21single image, 549 of them. Then it
95. 3:24tracked the camera with phase
96. 3:25correlation, measuring how far the image
97. 3:27shifts frame by frame. It flagged every
98. 3:30hard cut. And it measured the
99. 3:31brightness, the contrast, and the
100. 3:33saturation of every short. That's how it
101. 3:35found that in about 80% of the frames,
102. 3:37the camera is almost perfectly still.
103. 3:39Just tiny drifts. So, here's the tip.
104. 3:42Don't ask Claude what it thinks of a
105. 3:43video. Make it measure. You can't
106. 3:45recreate an opinion. You can recreate a
107. 3:48number. So now I had the whole
108. 3:49blueprint. Now the story. We made the
109. 3:52same type of short but with our own
110. 3:54story. Same lighting, same camera, same
111. 3:57cuts, same script formula, just our own
112. 3:59characters. My first topic was why time
113. 4:02seems to slow down when you're in
114. 4:03danger. But while Claude studied the 20,
115. 4:06it noticed one of them already covered
116. 4:07the exact same experiment with 5.7
117. 4:10million views. So, we threw it out and
118. 4:13picked a new story, one the channel had
119. 4:15never told. 1831, 74 soldiers march
120. 4:18across an iron bridge, all in step, and
121. 4:20one end of the bridge drops into the
122. 4:22river. Before writing a single word,
123. 4:24Claude checked every fact, the date, the
124. 4:27number of soldiers, even how deep the
125. 4:29river was, 2 feet. And that turned into
126. 4:31the best joke in the whole short.
127. 4:33Luckily, the river was only 2 ft deep.
128. 4:36Unluckily, the river was only 2 ft deep.
129. 4:39Then it wrote the script with the exact
130. 4:41formula from the 20. A paradox in the
131. 4:44very first line. 74 soldiers knock
132. 4:46[music] down an iron bridge just by
133. 4:48walking across it. It's then it builds
134. 4:50up. Then you see then the twist. After
135. 4:53that, Claude started building. At first,
136. 4:56it used Blender. Same as my very first
137. 4:58test. Before any of this, I asked Claude
138. 5:01for a quick 5-second test just to see
139. 5:03the look. Claude designed its own
140. 5:04character, a little courier. It grabbed
141. 5:07free 3D buildings, made flat cartoon
142. 5:09clouds, and matched the camera timing
143. 5:11from the channel's frames. There was
144. 5:13just one problem. On the third camera
145. 5:15push, the camera flew right past the
146. 5:17character. So, for the bridge, Claude
147. 5:19started in Blender again. It tested the
148. 5:21ink lines there and drew the whole cast
149. 5:23in code. Soldiers, an officer, people
150. 5:25from the town, a kid, and a parent. Then
151. 5:28I had a hunch. Maybe these shorts are
152. 5:30made with 3JS. That's 3D built with code
153. 5:33right in the browser. Claude checked the
154. 5:35frames. Flat characters standing in a
155. 5:37real 3D world. 3JS can do exactly that.
156. 5:40So, it moved everything over and
157. 5:42Remotion turns it into a video frame by
158. 5:45frame. Then, it built the world. 37 free
159. 5:483D models. Trees, rocks, flowers, market
160. 5:51stalls, a cart, even a windmill. And
161. 5:54every texture, the grass, the
162. 5:56cobblestones, the roofs, the water was
163. 5:58painted by code. The characters got 14
164. 6:00different faces. laughing, whistling,
165. 6:03nervous, shocked. Then the bridge. Two
166. 6:06towers, iron chains, and a deck 5 m
167. 6:08wide. 74 soldiers march across it, four
168. 6:11side by side. Every step makes it
169. 6:13bounce, and the bounce keeps growing
170. 6:15until it snaps. For the ink lines,
171. 6:17Claude wrote its own effect. It finds
172. 6:19the edges in the 3D world and draws a
173. 6:21black line on them. About an hour after
174. 6:23the switch, all 15 shots were working.
175. 6:262,25 frames. But before rendering any
176. 6:29video, Claude checked still frames. Good
177. 6:31thing it did. In three shots, the camera
178. 6:34was stuck inside a house. The trees were
179. 6:36teal and a chain was right in front of
180. 6:38everyone's faces. While Claude was
181. 6:40fixing that, I put one of our frames
182. 6:41next to the original, and it looked
183. 6:43cheap. Here's what I told Claude. The
184. 6:46original is colorful, high contrast. It
185. 6:48looks premium. Ours looks dull. So, go
186. 6:51analyze it frame by frame. Take your
187. 6:53time. Use 10 agents if you have to. Just
188. 6:56make it as close as you possibly can.
189. 6:58And Claude agreed. Ours looked cheap.
190. 7:00Then it broke down exactly why. The
191. 7:03original has black ink lines on the
192. 7:05whole 3D world. Ours had almost none.
193. 7:07Their colors are bold with long blue
194. 7:10shadows and deep darks. Ours were pastel
195. 7:12and flat. Their wood and stone look hand
196. 7:15painted. You can see the grain and the
197. 7:17dark gaps between the planks. Ours were
198. 7:19plain. Their backgrounds are blurry so
199. 7:21your eye goes straight to the character.
200. 7:23Ours were mostly sharp. And the
201. 7:24characters, theirs have egg-shaped heads
202. 7:26and thin little limbs. Ours had perfect
203. 7:29circle heads and chunky bodies. They
204. 7:31looked like clip art pasted on top. And
205. 7:33this is where it gets interesting. I
206. 7:35asked for 10 agents. Claude used 12. And
207. 7:38it didn't just throw them at the
208. 7:40problem. It built a team. Seven agents
209. 7:42to study the gap. One for color, one for
210. 7:44the ink lines, one for light and
211. 7:46shadows, one for textures, one for the
212. 7:49characters, one for depth and framing,
213. 7:51and one for motion. The camera and the
214. 7:53characters. Each one put the original
215. 7:55frames next to ours and measured the
216. 7:57difference. No guessing, real numbers.
217. 7:59An eighth agent worked on the sound.
218. 8:01Then four more agents to rebuild
219. 8:03everything. One for the camera, one for
220. 8:05the world, one for the characters, and
221. 8:07one for the final look. But here's the
222. 8:09problem. Four agents working on the same
223. 8:12project can break each other's work. So
224. 8:14Claude gave each one its own copy of the
225. 8:16project, and each agent owned its own
226. 8:19files. Nobody else could touch them.
227. 8:21When they were done, Claude merged
228. 8:22everything back file by file. So, here's
229. 8:25the tip. When you use a lot of agents,
230. 8:27don't just split the jobs, split the
231. 8:29files. Then, I gave Claude 10 hours. 10
232. 8:32hours to learn this style and make the
233. 8:34finished video. Here's what the seven
234. 8:36agents found. First, the ink lines. The
235. 8:39original has black lines on almost three
236. 8:41out of four edges. On ours, the agent
237. 8:44found zero. The ink effect was there,
238. 8:46but the blur effect ran in the same step
239. 8:48and wiped it out. And the blur itself,
240. 8:50it was so weak you couldn't see it
241. 8:52anywhere. Next, the camera. Ours snapped
242. 8:54from one spot to the next in three
243. 8:56frames. The original glides over about
244. 8:5923 frames. Slow in, slow out. Then the
245. 9:02color. The original has no pure black
246. 9:04anywhere. Ours went almost black. And at
247. 9:07sunset, their shadows are purple. Ours
248. 9:09were brown. And the characters, their
249. 9:11bodies are 3 and 1/2 heads tall. Ours
250. 9:13were under three. And our arms and legs
251. 9:16were five times too thick. But the
252. 9:17agents also found something I didn't
253. 9:19expect. Some of our own notes were
254. 9:21wrong. Remember the egg-shaped heads?
255. 9:23The agent measured 38 of them. Their
256. 9:25heads are actually rounder than ours.
257. 9:27Ours were the egg-shaped ones. And
258. 9:29remember the measuring tool from the
259. 9:30start? It said the camera is almost
260. 9:32still 80% of the time. It's not. The
261. 9:35camera is moving in 65% of the frames,
262. 9:38slowly pushing in. The tool just
263. 9:40couldn't see moves that slow. And this
264. 9:42is exactly the part other tutorials
265. 9:44skip. I found only two other tutorials
266. 9:46on this style. One sells it inside an
267. 9:48app, $67 a month or $97 for everything.
268. 9:53The other one gives you a few prompts
269. 9:55and it says, "Your first results might
270. 9:57not look as clean." So, here's how you
271. 9:59can get mine. Everything from this
272. 10:00video, every rule and every fix I save
273. 10:03as one skill for Claude and I'm giving
274. 10:05it away fully free on my GitHub. You get
275. 10:08the whole repository with 5,000
276. 10:11reference images. The link is in the
277. 10:12description. So, you don't have to do
278. 10:14anything. Just install it and start
279. 10:16making videos. Everything is already set
280. 10:18up, so the output should be as polished
281. 10:20as it gets. And I'm going to keep
282. 10:22uploading new things there. I'll keep
283. 10:24updating it and making it better. And
284. 10:26you get all of that for free. And here's
285. 10:28one more thing. I'm making a video on it
286. 10:30tomorrow. This realistic 3D video, as
287. 10:33you can see, I made it. That's my name
288. 10:34on it. Here's something wild. Pull every
289. 10:37blood vessel out of your body and lay
290. 10:39them in one straight line. Most people
291. 10:41guess it would reach across a football
292. 10:43field. Not even close. Your body hides
293. 10:46billions of microscopic tubes branching
294. 10:48through every muscle, every organ, even
295. 10:50your [music] bones. Lay them all out and
296. 10:52the line would leave your city, cross
297. 10:54entire countries, stretch over oceans,
298. 10:57and keep on going. [music] Scientists
299. 10:58estimate about a 100,000 km. That's
300. 11:01enough to wrap around the whole Earth
301. 11:03roughly 2 and 1/2 times. Just so you
302. 11:05know, I've never seen anything like this
303. 11:08made with AI. Other people have made
304. 11:09this style with Claude, but not like
305. 11:11this. I looked and I couldn't find a
306. 11:13single tutorial that gets this close. If
307. 11:16this showed up on your feed, you'd never
308. 11:18guess AI touched it. In that video, I'll
309. 11:20show you exactly how I made it. How to
310. 11:22animate a realistic face with an
311. 11:24open-source AI model, how to rig the
312. 11:26character for free on your own computer,
313. 11:28how to make the world look real, how to
314. 11:30cut the render from 7 and 1/2 hours to 1
315. 11:33hour, and how to render it smaller then
316. 11:35upscale it so it renders as fast as it
317. 11:37gets. You can find the skill and
318. 11:39everything in the description. The link
319. 11:41to the GitHub repository is right there,
320. 11:43completely free. That's all for today.
321. 11:45Make sure to subscribe and like. And
322. 11:47with this type of workflow, you can
323. 11:49pretty much clone any style. Bye.