Kakao, OpenAI Collaborate on AI-Generated Short Animation Based on Ryan Begins Webtoon
Kakao announced on November 10 that it has produced Ryan Begins, the first AI short animation starring its popular character Ryan, through a technology collaboration with OpenAI.
Based on the the webtoon of the same name, the approximately seven-minute short combines human creative direction with generative AI tools in its planning and production.
The production team includes director Jiwon Han, who directed Netflix's animated film Lost in Starlight, and AI supervisor Young-jun Kim. The team used ChatGPT's image generation feature to create initial images based on scene sketches and detailed prompts. Artists then manually refined and revised the images to achieve the intended visual quality.
According to the production team, they used approximately 1,500 prompts for a single scene to achieve the desired direction and emotional tone.
Kakao held a special advance screening and a Q&A session on November 8 at Movieland in Seongsu-dong, Seoul. The event also featured an exhibition showcasing the animation's production process. Tickets for the Q&A session sold out within a day of going on sale.
Han said the team focused on conveying Ryan's emotions without relying on dialogue or exaggerated facial expressions, allowing viewers to find their own interpretations of the story. Kim added that the team repeatedly revised AI-generated images whenever they did not match the intended emotional tone, emphasizing that the creators' decisions and hands-on work determined the final result.
The webtoon launched last year and features the Kakao Friends character Ryan. Unlike previous slice-of-life webtoons featuring Kakao Friends, this series marked the first official storyline-driven webtoon that builds on Ryan's universe.
An English version of the original webtoon is not available.
Source: YNA (Ji-eun Oh)
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