Make an anime clip
Two paths to an animated anime scene: generate the look from text, or turn a real photo into anime, then bring it to motion with consistent characters and audio — a full recipe in Sunra.
Anime is a *look* plus *motion*. You make the frames in an anime style, keep the character consistent, then animate them. There are two ways in — start from a description, or start from a real photo — and they meet at the same animation step.
Path A — From text
Generate the key frame in the image generator using the anime AI generator, or a model with a strong illustrated look like Midjourney V8. Describe the character, the shot, and the anime sub-style:
A teenage girl with long teal hair and a school uniform stands on a rooftop at sunset, wind moving her hair, modern anime style, cinematic lighting, detailed background. Vertical 9:16.
Path B — From a photo
Turn a real picture into anime with image-to-image — upload the photo and ask for an anime restyle. Great for turning a selfie or a pet into a character. See Image generation basics.
Convert this photo into modern anime style — keep the pose, framing, and likeness, cel-shaded with clean linework and soft colors.
Step 1 — Keep the character consistent
For more than one shot, feed your key frame back as a reference so the same character carries across scenes. See Prompting for images and Annotate & reference images for holding identity stable.
Step 2 — Animate it
Drop the anime frame into the Start frame of the video generator and describe the motion. Kling 3.0 handles stylized, illustrated motion and multi-shot sequences well; see Choosing a model and the Image-to-video guide.
The girl's hair and skirt sway in the wind, she turns her head slightly and the camera slowly pushes in, petals drifting past. Smooth anime motion, 4 seconds.
Step 3 — Add sound
Score it in the audio studio: a music bed for mood, sound effects for impact, and voiceover or dialogue if your characters speak. See Music, sound effects & dialogue.
Step 4 — Assemble and export
Sequence your shots in Studio or Flow, cut to the music, and export at 9:16 for Shorts/Reels or 16:9 for YouTube.
Common fixes
| Problem | Try this |
|---|---|
| The character drifts between shots | Save your key frame and feed it back as a reference on every new shot |
| Photo-to-anime loses the likeness | In image-to-image, ask to keep the pose, framing, and likeness; lower the restyle strength |
| Motion looks too realistic, not anime | Use a model strong on stylized motion like Kling 3.0; name "anime motion" in the prompt |
| The style shifts mid-sequence | Settle the character design first, then animate — don't change style partway |
| The background warps when it moves | Keep camera moves simple and shorten the clip |
The fast path
Want one picture turned into a moving anime scene with minimal setup? Take Path B above: image-to-image to restyle the photo into anime, then one pass in the video generator to animate it — two steps, no character design needed. For ready-made themed motion templates (not anime-specific), browse the one-tap Effects library.
Related articles
- Image generation basicsWrite a good image prompt, choose between models like GPT Image 2, Nano Banana Pro and Seedream 5.0, use reference images, and edit results with the annotate tools.
- Image-to-video guideAnimate a still you already have: pick a strong source image, use Start and End frames, write motion (not a scene), and choose the best model for image-to-video on Sunra.
- Prompting for imagesA practical method for AI image prompts on Sunra: a reliable structure, weak-to-strong rewrites, the style and lighting vocabulary models understand, references, and fixes.
- Choosing a modelHow to pick the right AI model on Sunra: what each image and video model is best at, a quick decision table, a worked comparison, head-to-head matchups, and Fast vs Pro tiers.