Getting Started on Bat Storm - Recreating My Old GoAnimate Series with Generative AI

Original Go!Animate Bat Storm scene (left).
iClone AI reimagined Bat Storm scene.

As mentioned in my introductory post to Building My Two Cartoon Web Series, Resident Dragon and Bat Storm, I'm also going to document the behind the scenes process for Bat Storm - starting with this post. Click the Resident Dragon link for the first behind the scenes post in that series.

My Bat Storm series is an existing four part animated series I created nearly two decades ago with a cartoon making website then known as Go!Animate (now known as Vyond). It's a little cringe to watch now but the story was strong and there was some good humor too. 

My goal is to recreate the series using the ultimate cartoon making tool for dummies - generative AI. (I use the term 'dummies' in the sense that, just like Go!Animate, anyone can use AI to make cartoons).

The AI Animated Cartoon Workflow

Generative AI is an evolving space with different AI models being updated or emerging all the time. Regardless of the AI platform you use, currently the accepted workflow is along the lines of:

1. Write a script.
2. Generate character model sheet images.
3. Generate location background images.
4. Generate the storyboard using your character and background images as reference for the AI to maintain consistency.
5. Record or generate dialogue files.
6. Generate the animated scenes using the storyboard images as start frames for the AI, and uploading the dialogue audio for lip sync.
7. Gather/generate any other audio you need such as sound effects or music.
8. Bring everything together into your video editor for assembly into a final production including post processing effects etc.

I will be loosely following this process however, I already have a script and storyboard in the form of the original Go!Animate series, so my process will be more about updating those to an entirely new 3D/Pixar animation style.

Generating the Characters

The two leads of the story, Bat Storm and his teenage daughter, Bat Flash, I've already made character models that I'm happy with using Reallusion's Character Creator for iClone. To make their character model sheets I simply posed both characters in iClone, exported several images at different rotations and I was done.

Bat Storm and Bat Flash Character Model Sheets created from their iClone Character Creator designs.

The Convenience Store Cashier Character Model
Sheet with images taken from my restyled
storyboard scenes. This character only appears
in the opening scene.

For characters that are just incidental, and only appear in one or two scenes I'm generating them, and then creating a basic model sheet when I'm restyling scenes from my storyboard. All of this work is being done with Google Gemini, which gives you limited free access to Nano Banana Pro, one of the best generative image and video AI's available.

Generating the Backgrounds

Presently I'm only trying to recreate the first two scenes of the first episode (as a proof of concept) which feature Bat Flash, thwarting a convenience store robbery, followed by a cut to Bat Storm's home in the suburbs, where Bat Storm is lamenting the cost of replacing a door that Bat Flash smashed to pieces in the previous scene.

It really doesn't take much to restyle the Go!Animate scenes. It's literally a single prompt asking Gemini to reimagine each scene in a 3D/Pixar art style. If there are any characters in the scene, they get restyled too, and I crop them from the scene for a character model sheet.

Bat Storm's home in the suburbs. Go!Animate version on the left. Gemini AI
restyled - with a single prompt - on the right.

Since Nano Banana Pro was one of the first AI's capable of relatively accurately editing images, it's a simple case of regenerating any scene and asking Gemini to remove the characters to get a clean background reference image.

Storyboarding the New Scenes

It's very likely I could find an AI capable of taking my original Bat Storm episodes and, with one prompt, asking it to restyle the whole episode as a 3D/Pixar cartoon. However I want to use my specific Bat Storm and Bat Flash Character models, and I may want to rework some scenes to be even better than what was possible with the limitations of Go!Animate more than a decade ago.

Any scene that doesn't have either Bat Storm or Bat Flash in I can get just by restyling the original scene from Go!Animate. To get a scene that has my current version of either of my Bat characters I have to re-prompt for those scenes, uploading images of my characters and the scene as reference shots for the AI.

Original Go!Animate scene on the left. The scene on the right is not a direct one to one
restyle of the original image. It's a combination of using all the various reference images
i.e. background, character model sheets, and the original image to recreate the events 
of the scene. This is literally my first test image so I wasn't concerned that it was not
an exact match of the original scene.

That's where I'm at currently. Storyboarding all the scenes needed to create new versions of the opening two scenes of episode one.

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Once I finish my storyboard I will be creating all the dialogue for each character. The original animation used Text To Speech (TTS) voices that sounded great in the mid 2000s but are just awful up against what AI voices sound like now.

That's where I'll pick up again in the next article.

In the meantime, if you want to see me talk about this animation and my behind the scenes work in more detail, I recorded a video for my AnimLife YouTube channel that is also embeded below.

Recreating my Original Early 2000s Cartoon Series using Generative AI - Bat Storm Behind the Scenes

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