Every button, explained

• 1Video tools. Full video makes a whole story film. Single scene makes one narrated clip. Animate art moves a drawing (silent by design). Manual video builds a slideshow from your own photos and audio.
• 2Engine. The lane your plan includes. Unlimited Director's Cut comes with Creator and above — full films, no credits. Unlimited Premiere renders 720p HD on Pro, Unlimited Ultra full HD on Studio. On Single scene, More engines opens the per-clip credit engines.
• 3Format. Shorts 9:16 for TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts. Long 16:9 for YouTube. Pick before you generate — it shapes every scene.
• 4Characters. Your saved cast. Tap a character to put them in this story (up to three), tap None for AI-designed characters, tap ＋ New to add one. The same chips appear inside the picture button's panel.
• 5Voice, Music, Camera. Scroll the rail for the voice picker with ▶ samples, six music moods (Bedtime, Playful, Dreamy, Adventure, Twinkle, or none — each previewable), and seven camera moves from Auto to Orbit. Auto lets the director choose per scene, which is usually best.
• 6Story box. Paste up to 20,000 characters — a full script or three sentences both work. Below it sits a ready-made example story: press Use this story to see the whole pipeline run before spending anything of your own.
• 7Picture button. THE character door. It opens Your characters — upload a reference, name it, save it. Full walkthrough in step 2 below.
• 8AI writing tools. The sparkle. Write me a story turns your idea into a full script, Surprise me drops in a fresh idea, Improve my text polishes what you wrote. Its Story settings choose age group, story length and story language.
• 9Generate. Plans your story and shows the scene count before anything renders. Full videos on unlimited lanes are included in your plan — no credits.
• 10Audio · Video · Image. The three Studios. Audio narrates a story as an MP3 with the same voices. Image makes illustrations and coloring pages in four art styles with its own engine, style, aspect-ratio and quality controls.
• 11Your creations. Everything you have made, newest first, filterable by type. Renders keep going when you close the page — the card shows live progress until the video is ready.

1. 1Open Video → Full video — the character panel lives on the main video tool.
2. 2Click the picture button beside the story box — the square button with the image icon, next to the sparkle. A panel opens titled Your characters (0/3).
3. 3Press “＋ Add character 1 of 3” — and choose the image from your device.
4. 4Name the character — type the name in the box — “Ella” — and press Save character. Use this exact name in your story text; that is how scenes know who appears.
5. 5Done — forever — the character is saved to your account. Next time, they are one tap away in the panel or in the rail's Characters row. Repeat for up to three per story.

✓ One character, plain background

✕ Several characters in one picture

On Single scene and Image, the same picture button adds one reference image that guides the look of that creation. On Animate art, the upload square at the left of the caption box takes the artwork you want to bring to life.

The voice picker is in the settings rail, under the format choice. Voices come in four groups: Kids Voices (child narrators), Storytelling and Narration Voices (warm English adults), and Language Voices (adult narrators in other languages). Tap the ▶ on any row to hear a sample. A Spanish story read by an English voice will sound wrong — always match the language.

• ✓Paste your story as flowing text — the director plans the scenes, the shots and the camera for you
• ✓Dialogue in the script is spoken aloud, in the voice you picked
• ✓Scene length follows your words: short lines make snappy scenes, long ones linger
• ✓Call characters by their names consistently — “Milo” every time, not “the fox” halfway through
• ✓New character? Render one Single scene first — ten seconds tells you everything before a long story