How I Made a 3D AI-Animated Explainer Video in 3.5 Hours (Using ChatGPT-4o and Hedra Character-3!)
AI animation is advancing at lightning speed — by the time I publish this, there might be a million new tools. But right at this moment my mind is blown because I created an entire 3D animated ad, complete with characters, a script, and product branding, in just a few hours!
I used ChatGPT-4o to generate the concept, characters, and script, and Hedra Character-3 for the animation. A full AI animation 3D explainer video — in just 3.5 hours! Watch the video above, then let’s break down how me and my little AI friends made it happen.
Did you watch the video? Okay good, let’s get started!
Pre-Production for Ai Animation
So to start, I prompted ChatGPT with exactly what I wanted to do. To be honest, writing this blog post was actually the end goal so even that’s a part of the prompt (although I’m actually writing this blog post myself… mostly… I swear… this article is actually taking way longer to write than making the video)
After that, I got some early character designs.
I got some UX designs for the CanGuru app.
And I got a script.
Pro tip, I prompted it to format the script with Voiceover on left and Visuals on right.
| Voiceover / Dialog | Visual Description |
|---|---|
| REX (cheerfully): “G’day, mates! I’m Rex Rumbles — adventurer, relic hunter, and proud can collector!” | Wide shot of Rex sitting on a crate in the Outback. He’s grinning, wearing a bush hat and rugged shirt, with a belt of colorful vintage cans. A kangaroo hops in the distance as the sun sets. |
| REX: “You’ve heard of gurus for yoga, gurus for coding… but what about cans? That’s where CanGuru hops in!” | Logo reveal: a soda can featuring a kangaroo in a turban. The words “CAN” and “GURU” are stylized below. |
| REX: “It’s the ultimate app for can collectors. Rare finds, verified sellers, and even can-slingin’ swap meets!” | Medium shot of Rex holding up a smartphone with the CanGuru app open. We see UI tabs: “Marketplace,” “Events,” “EncycloCANpedia.” |
| REX: “Find that elusive 1965 Tab Cola. Or plan a ‘Can-ival’ in your town. We’ve got more fizz than a shaken soda!” | Montage: app animations show global collector events, a blinking vintage can listing, and a calendar with event dates being circled. |
| REX (winks): “Join the CanGuru crew. Trust me—once you pop open this app, you’ll never look at a can the same again.” | Close-up: Rex pops a vintage Pepsi and hands it to camera. Transition to download screen. |
| REX: “CanGuru. Crack it open. Live the legend.” | Final screen: CanGuru logo, QR code, App Store and Google Play badges. Uplifting music fades out. |
All of this with one prompt! (okay two if you count the script formatting prompt)
Next I wanted to make the character look like 3D animation.
This guy looks great, and I love the cans around his shoulder, but the cans don’t end up in the final video and you’ll see why later.
Next I asked my friend ChatGPT for a few shots of Rex showing us the app on his phone.
And I asked for a closing image.
Okay so at this point, I have a good idea of what the video will look like. I love looking at these frames above. I love that little kangaroo too.
Okay so let’s make some 3D ai animation with Hedra!
Production
That belt of cans is really cool, but obviously it’s going to cause problems with the animation, so let’s just get rid of it and not worry about that. This is a limitation that I’ve noticed with other AI Animations I’ve made. The hands seem to grab whatever can be grabbed and manipulated.
Okay, this is looking good even though The Outback looks just like Arizona. Had to do an image search to make sure the AI didn’t hallucinate. It’s good. This is The Outback. Let’s animate this guy and see how he looks.
Hmm… Couple of things. I need to widen the image in Photoshop, so I did that first.
But more importantly, I don’t like this AI voice performance with the AI animation at all. I think the combination of the two together makes it feel really robotic. There’s the uncanny pause after “Rex Rumbles” when he looks away, then says “Adventurer…” I could go into CapCut or Premiere to edit the audio and Frankenstein a performance, but why do that when I can just record the audio myself?
I happen to do some voice over work for our animated explainer videos at TADApix, so I whipped out my terrible Austrian accent (joking) and gave it a shot.
The performance is a lot better with a human voice. It seems to take cues from the vocal inflections and it really improves the character animation.
I don’t like how he looks away when he says “G’day mates” so I tried prompting Hedra with “Look at camera the entire time” but that didn’t change anything.
Next I used my best friend ChatGPT to create a close up shot of Rex and a version with Rex holding up his phone. I’m going to use a Zoom Transition in CapCut (for desktop) from a medium shot of Rex to the shot holding up the phone.
Okay we have all the angles we need to make all the shots with Rex. Now we need some other fun things to happen. When he says “You’ve heard of gurus for yoga, gurus for coding… but what about cans?” I want to show a Yoga Guru, a Code Guru and a Guru for Cans.
Let’s go back to good ol’ ChattyG
I don’t like it. Try again.
No
This is excellent! Just the right amount of silly without being over the top. Let’s pop it in Hedra and this time, we don’t need any audio. I just used Kling 1.6 12v to generate an animation.
And this is the resulting AI animation with NO PROMPT which looks AWESOME!
Then I generated images for CodeGuru and the Can Fan and made animations with them.
Hi, how are you. Whats your name?
Do you mind typing with your feet?
Where did the cute asian girl go tho?
Oh well, this looks like it might work. I used Kling 1.6 I2V for the Ai Animation and got the following result.
Then I tried to make some funny Can Fan / Can Gurus, but I didn’t like them much.
Then I told ChaG to make the cans levitate around him and it worked out pretty well. The ai animation came out pretty well too except the logos on the cans got messed up. If this was a video for a client, we would just animate those cans separately and clean up the shot but alas CanGuru is not a real product or client so I kept it as is. It shows you the limitations as of writing this post on April 26, 2025.
Okay, finally I made some scenes for the Can-ival and the Can Swap Meet
Post Production
Okay so finally we put everything together in an edit suite. I used CapCut for this because I like the transitions and some of the coloring tools. It’s just really good. I wish they paid me to say that but they don’t.
I asked Alex from the motion graphics team at TADApix to put together some of the UX animations for the CanGuru app. He spend about 2 hours on it mainly because his computer kept crashing.
So if you’re really trying to add up the hours, it’s about 1.5 hours for the MGFX and 3.5 for the AI stuff and editing. So total of 5 hours total. Of course this is a parody product and an experiment. If there was a real client we would spend a lot more time cleaning up anything sloppy and of course there would be rounds and rounds of revisions. So in the real world, this would take a lot of time.
Well that’s about it. This article took me from 8 am to about 1:30 pm to complete, so I can confidently say that writing this article took longer than making that video.
Thanks for reading!
One Response
Good job me