A No-Camera Personal IP Pipeline Turns Articles Into Animated Videos
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The biggest psychological barrier for many people building a personal IP is showing their face, but the truth is a personal IP doesn't necessarily require appearing on camera. Its essence is letting others continuously recognize you, trust you, and think of you when they need you.
This year, OPCs have sprung up like mushrooms after rain. For a one-person company, managing a personal IP well can become a customer acquisition channel. Several B2B deals I've signed this year came from readers who found my articles, some from Juejin, some from my WeChat official account. Today, this skill only needs an article or a voiceover script as input, and it can directly output a personal IP animated video to help you acquire customers.
1. From IP Illustration to Animation
I originally made this video by hand. It started last week when I had a sudden idea to turn my IP illustration into an animation to test the traffic. After I posted it, many friends in various groups wanted to learn it and asked if I could make a one-click generation skill. As the group owner, I naturally had to oblige, so I spent two days over the weekend finishing this skill.
Using this skill is very simple: just drop in an article or a voiceover script.
After waiting a few minutes, the skill generates a video with IP attributes. The generated IP video can be directly used to empower our IP content. I made two versions: one is a pure text-to-image version:
The other is a low-cost image decomposition version, which breaks down image elements and displays them sequentially:
Observant readers may have noticed that my video differs from my usual bob-haired girl avatar. This is a new image I designed, more aligned with my profile picture. Later, the two personas will take turns appearing to see which one gets better reception.
2. Skill Technical Roadmap Breakdown
This skill is considered a medium-to-high difficulty skill. Its technical structure can be divided into five major modules: generating voiceover based on a Chinese script, semantic storyboarding, storyboard image generation, storyboard image to video clips, and writing all elements into a Jianying draft. The main technical difficulty of this skill lies in the image-to-video clip part. I made two approaches: one is image-to-video, and the other is image decomposition where image elements are loaded along a timeline.
When generating the storyboard script, the skill first asks the user to confirm whether it meets their expectations. If they are not satisfied with the storyboard results, they can have it re-split and adjust.
Next, the skill generates images based on the storyboard. The image generation uses a previously open-sourced IP template skill. This skill generates images according to our designed IP image and color scheme. I recorded a tutorial video for this skill but didn't write an article, mainly because I had already written a similar article about making IP cards before and didn't want to repeat myself. Friends who need the skill can download it directly, pair it with their own IP image and color scheme, and generate images in the same style.
After the storyboard images are done, we reach the difficult part of this skill: Originally, I just wanted to use image-to-video to make video clips and then lay them onto the Jianying timeline. After looking at several video APIs, the cost was really not low, so I made two paths: one for image-to-video, and one for low-cost decomposition animation.
The final step writes the generated audio and video clips into the Jianying draft:
That's the complete breakdown of the skill's technical roadmap. Interested readers can give it a try. This Skill has been included in the shared learning group's resource library; group members can directly use and reuse it.
3. Start Your Personal IP Early
Now, my avatar and image style have increasingly made viewers recognize me. Many people know it's me just by looking at the avatar. This is the role of a personal IP: branding your personal abilities. The best decision I made was deciding to build a personal IP in 2022 and sticking with it. Friends running one-person companies, start building your personal IP as soon as possible too. Keep it up.
That's all for today's article. Thanks for watching, see you next time~