Week 1
Story, taste, assets
A small story, a clear audience promise, core references, first character/world assets, and realistic scope.
Resources / Animation Accelerator
AI Animation Accelerator Field Guide
For cohort members, alumni, and anyone scouting the Animation Accelerator before they apply: a practical public field guide for making a short AI-assisted animation. Story scope, production economics, voice-first performance, review language, repair moves, platform literacy, reference pools, and the terms people actually use in the room.
- Course arc
- 3 weeks + finish line
- Production guides
- 6 field tools
- Glossary
- 34 definitions
Start Here
Six ways into the guide.
Not sure where to start? Pick the thing you actually need right now.
Walk the course path
Three weeks from idea to a finished clip, plus how the finish line works.
See the production map
Six field tools for mid-render decisions: credit, voice, review, region, platform, reference pools.
Run the credit reality check
The credit budget worksheet: what to spend on, what to cut, when to stop.
Look up a term
The Animation Accelerator Glossary, searchable and filterable by production stage.
Read the reading list
Craft, labor, rights, representation, and platform context worth checking before a cohort.
Check rights before you release
What to verify before anything goes public, commercial, or into a festival.
Course Map
The path from idea to shippable clip.
The accelerator is not a tool tour. It is a career-navigation and craft-values sprint where one small finished thing beats a perfect unfinished plan.
Week 2
Production mechanics and performance control
First-pass shots, cleaner references, voice or audio direction where performance matters, and a credit-aware iteration plan.
Week 3
Review, triage, and ship path
A reviewed work-in-progress, a fix list in priority order, and a smallest shippable version.
Finish line
Package what you made
A private learning artifact, portfolio clip, Film Club submission, or showcase candidate with rights and consent checked.
Tiny Ghost Production Timeline
Five checkpoints for a small finished film.
Follow the arc visually, then jump into the matching guide section when you need the details. The pictures support the steps; the written actions below carry the instructions.
Step 01
Story and scope
Start with the smallest honest story.
Define the audience promise, the story beat, and the version you can actually finish before the tools start making the project bigger.
Open this guide section
Step 02
References and voice
Collect the cues that steer the model.
Separate visual references, voice direction, performance notes, and what-not-to-copy constraints so each generation has a job.
Open this guide section
Step 03
Character and world consistency
Make continuity a production habit.
Track character sheets, style frames, places, props, and continuity risks before spending credits on full motion.
Open this guide section
Step 04
Review and polish
Choose fixes by story value.
Use review language, re-roll limits, region fixes, and stop rules to decide what to repair, simplify, replace, or cut.
Open this guide section
Step 05
Finish-line screening
Package the version you can stand behind.
Check credits, consent, provenance, and release context before a private artifact, portfolio clip, Film Club submission, or public showcase.
Open this guide section
Production Tools
Handouts for when the render queue is already running.
Simple beats fancy here. These are the decisions people need when they are mid-render: what to spend on, what to fix, what to cut, and when to stop.
Credit budget worksheet
Use when: Before committing to a production plan, buying another subscription, or letting one shot eat the night.
- Estimate finished shots, still explorations, video re-rolls, voice takes, subscriptions, and available hours.
- Write a stop rule before generating: understandable beat, recognizable character, clean-enough still, or cuttable shot.
- Decide whether to keep, simplify, replace, or cut the shot based on story value.
Voice-first workflow
Use when: Any shot where dialogue, narration, hesitation, or emotional timing matters.
- Write the line or beat before touching video.
- Generate several cheap voice takes with acting direction for distance, mood, pause, breath, and emphasis.
- Edit the strongest fragments together and upload final voice as the performance reference.
Work-in-progress review rubric
Use when: Reviewing your own piece, giving peer feedback, opening office hours, or deciding what to fix before deadline.
- Watch once without pausing, then name what is already working.
- Check story clarity, character consistency, shot complexity, audio/performance, and bump-out risk.
- Choose the smallest honest version you can show by the deadline.
Photoshop / region-fix micro-guide
Use when: A still is almost right but one region is wrong: hand, prop, face detail, costume piece, object position, or continuity detail.
- Duplicate or cut the problem area, then clean the bad source area.
- Generate or paste the corrected element and feather, mask, and composite it.
- Use the cleaned still as the video prompt instead of spending video credits on a broken source.
Platform and model literacy
Use when: Tool names, model names, credits, commercial terms, and access paths start blurring together.
- Separate model, platform, aggregator, and workflow in your notes.
- Recheck pricing, rights, resolution, output length, safety controls, and Canada access before each cohort.
- Compare current job fit instead of brand loyalty.
Reference-pool addendum
Use when: Representation, culture, place, body type, clothing, language, or unique character design matters.
- Build separate references for character, culture/place, style, motion, and what to avoid.
- Try culturally specific references and non-English or mixed-language prompt experiments.
- Treat corpus-bias failures as production bugs worth fixing.
Credit Reality Check
Count the re-rolls before they count you.
Use rough numbers to pressure-test a production plan. This does not save input, compare platforms, or assume any current pricing.
Planning summary
0
estimated attempts across first passes, re-rolls, still explorations, and planned video generations.
- Shot passes
- 0 first passes + 0 expected re-rolls
- Exploration load
- 0 still + 0 video attempts
- Time pressure
- 0 attempts per hour
- No generation pressure yet.
- Budget check
- Add cost and attempts to see a per-attempt planning number.
Stop rule
Write a stop rule before generating so the tool does not set the deadline for you.
Reference Pool Builder
Plan what the model should learn from before you spend credits.
Use this as a scratchpad for direction, review language, and repair notes. Nothing is uploaded, stored, or sent to a model.
Copyable brief
Plain text for a prompt doc, review note, or shot plan.
Ready to copy
Voice-first utility
Voice Performance Planner
Plan the acting note before generating or editing a voice take. A final edited voice can become the video reference for timing, face motion, cuts, and shot generation.
Copyable output
Ready to copy
WIP Triage Board
Decide what to keep, fix, simplify, cut, or ship.
Mark each review dimension by hand, then copy the next-action summary into notes, comments, or a production checklist. Nothing is uploaded, saved, scored, or analyzed here.
Review stance
This is a decision aid for tired humans at the end of a render pass, not a grader.
Triage summary
Copy this plain-language note into the next review conversation.
Reading List
Worth reading before a cohort.
These links are not homework and not endorsements. They give the course its map of craft, labor, rights, representation, tool capability, and platform volatility.
Last verified: 2026-07-02
- 2026 AI Index ReportStanford HAI
Broad context on AI adoption, capability, responsible-AI gaps, policy, and public opinion.
- Copyright and Artificial IntelligenceU.S. Copyright Office
Primary source for digital replicas, copyrightability, and AI training policy in the U.S.
- The Art in Artificial IntelligenceFuture Skills Centre
Canadian creative-sector context on AI exposure, complementarity, ownership, and entry-level pressure.
- AI and AnimationThe Animation Guild
Entertainment-worker lens on generative AI, labor impact, and animation-sector advocacy.
Context for the entertainment-jobs study commissioned by creative-worker groups.
- Introducing Runway Gen-4Runway
Useful model language for character, object, location, and style consistency.
- Sora 2 system cardOpenAI
Video/audio generation capability language and safety framing.
- VeoGoogle DeepMind
Google video-generation framing around audio, control, realism, and prompting.
- Ray2Luma
Official Luma video-model reference for motion, instructions, and image/video inputs.
Commercial-safety language and the distinction between Adobe models and partner models.
Animation Accelerator Glossary
What the terms mean, and when they come up.
Search by term or filter by production stage. Use this when a model, platform, credit, shot, or rights term sounds obvious to everyone except you.
34 of 34 terms
Systems and tools
Model
The underlying AI system that generates or transforms output.
Production meaning
Name the model separately from the platform when comparing results or explaining how a shot was made.
Use when
Use this term while making plan, generate, review decisions.
Why it matters
It gives the team a shared word for systems and tools choices before the work gets harder to fix.
Useful during
PlanGenerateReview
Related terms
Glossary dictionary
Alphabetical definitions pulled from the same term data as the interactive production map.
- Aggregator
- A platform that gives access to multiple models in one interface.
- Systems and toolsUseful during Plan, Generate
- Animatic
- A rough timed version of a piece, often made from stills or sketches.
- Story and postUseful during Plan, Review
- Attribution
- Naming or crediting the people and sources involved.
- Rights and releaseUseful during Release
- Bump-out
- A mistake that pulls the viewer out of the story.
- Image and videoUseful during Review, Repair
- Character consistency
- Keeping the same character recognizable across shots.
- Image and videoUseful during Reference, Generate, Review
- Character sheet
- A reference set showing a character across angles, poses, expressions, and lighting conditions.
- Prompting and referencesUseful during Plan, Reference, Review
- Consent
- Clear permission from a person to use their work, likeness, voice, or testimonial.
- Rights and releaseUseful during Plan, Reference, Release
- Corpus bias
- Bias created by what is overrepresented or underrepresented in training data.
- Prompting and referencesUseful during Plan, Reference, Review
- Credit
- A platform-specific unit used to pay for generation. Credits are not comparable across platforms.
- Systems and toolsUseful during Plan, Generate, Review
- Digital replica
- AI-generated or AI-modified likeness or voice of a real person.
- Rights and releaseUseful during Plan, Reference, Release
- Fair use
- A legal doctrine for certain uses of copyrighted work. Context-specific and not automatic.
- Rights and releaseUseful during Plan, Release
- Image-to-video
- Animating or generating video from a still image.
- Image and videoUseful during Generate, Repair
- Model
- The underlying AI system that generates or transforms output.
- Systems and toolsUseful during Plan, Generate, Review
- Outpainting
- Extending an image beyond its original border.
- Image and videoUseful during Repair, Generate
- Performance
- The acting expressed through voice, motion, face, timing, and edit.
- Story and postUseful during Plan, Generate, Review
- Picture lock
- The point when visual edit decisions should stop changing.
- Story and postUseful during Review, Release
- Platform
- The product or service where you use a model.
- Systems and toolsUseful during Plan, Generate, Release
- Prompt
- The instruction or input you give a model.
- Prompting and referencesUseful during Plan, Generate, Repair
- Prompt adherence
- How closely output follows the instruction.
- Image and videoUseful during Generate, Review
- Provenance
- Record of where material came from and how it can be used.
- Rights and releaseUseful during Plan, Reference, Release
- Reference audio
- Audio used to steer performance, timing, or lip movement.
- Prompting and referencesUseful during Reference, Generate
- Reference image
- An image used to steer style, content, character, or composition.
- Prompting and referencesUseful during Reference, Generate, Repair
- Reference pool
- A deliberate collection of references used to steer a project.
- Prompting and referencesUseful during Plan, Reference, Review
- Smallest shippable version
- The shortest honest version you can show by the deadline.
- Story and postUseful during Review, Release
- Story beat
- A meaningful unit of story action or emotional change.
- Story and postUseful during Plan, Review
- Style frame
- A still that defines the look of a project or shot.
- Prompting and referencesUseful during Reference, Generate, Review
- Voice-first
- Building the audio performance before generating the video.
- Story and postUseful during Plan, Reference, Generate
- Wide-shot tax
- The extra cost and difficulty of wide or multi-character shots.
- Image and videoUseful during Plan, Generate, Review
- Workflow
- The repeatable sequence you use to move from idea to finished asset.
- Systems and toolsUseful during Plan, Review, Release
Representation
Corpus bias is a production issue.
If a model has seen fewer examples of what you are asking for, expect to direct more carefully. Build reference pools intentionally, try culturally specific references, compare non-English prompt experiments, and plan extra setup time for unique character design.
Release Notes
Public work needs a rights check.
This guide is practical course context, not legal advice. Before public, commercial, client, festival, or showcase use, check platform terms, source licenses, music, likeness, voice, consent, credits, and provenance. Tool names, pricing, and policy claims should be rechecked before each cohort.