From nothing to approved stills.

The whole path, in order.

Each step shows its price before anything is made. In Manual mode nothing moves on until you approve it; in Auto mode one confirmation covers the whole run.

1. Sign up. Signing up is free and starts a 14-day free trial, no card needed. Subscribe before it ends to keep making things.
2. Connect your key. Paste your AI provider key into Settings once. What that means and how to get one.
3. Choose your models. Also in Settings: pick which AI model does each job (the storyboard writer, stills, animation, lip sync, lyric timing, the editor assistant). Each list shows the best value first, with its price. You can change them at any time.
4. Make a studio. A studio is one story world. Click the + next to STUDIOS and upload an IP bible made from the template.
5. Build the cast. In Cast, give each character, each recurring place and the overall style a reference sheet. Upload your own pictures or have them generated. These sheets are what keep faces and places the same from shot to shot.
6. Start a project. A project is one film, short film or music video. Describe it, or upload a project file; for a music video, add the song.
7. Let it find the beat. When a project has a song, its tempo and sections (intro, verse, chorus…) are found on their own, free. Rename or move a section if it's off. Then time the lyrics (a few cents): each line gets its place in the song, so scenes and captions line up with the words.
8. Write the storyboard. Press Write the storyboard and the writer model drafts the scenes from the IP bible, your brief, the lyrics and the beat, using only the characters and places in your Cast. Or upload a project file instead. Each scene gets its time in the song, cut on the beat.
9. Fix it up. Edit any scene in place: what happens, who is in it, the place, the camera framing, the motion for the animation, whether someone sings. Move scenes with ↑ ↓, add one with +, delete with ✕. In Manual mode, approve it when it's right.
10. Make the stills. One picture per scene, built from the storyboard and the cast sheets. The page shows the cost first.
11. Approve, redo or mark up. Click a still to see it large and step through them. Approve it, redo it with a note, or draw on it to change only part of it. Earlier versions are kept.
12. Animate. Each approved still becomes a short clip, starting on that exact picture so faces stay the same. You see the price per second and the total first. Every scene is its own job: redo one without touching the others, and keep every take.
13. Sound (short films and films). In the project's Sound section, give each speaking character a voice: pick one from your ElevenLabs account, or have three designed from the Voices line of the IP bible and keep the best. The voice is kept on their Cast sheet, so they sound the same in every scene and every project. Then make the spoken lines, sound effects, ambience and the score, all from the project file's Script, Sound column and Soundtrack brief. You see the cost in credits and dollars first. Finished sounds go straight onto the editor's sound layers.
14. Lip sync. Scenes marked singing can be sent with their stretch of the vocal; in a film, scenes with voiced lines can be sent with those lines. The mouth follows the words. Use that take or the plain clip, whichever looks better.
15. Accept the clips. In Manual mode a clip goes on the timeline when you press Accept. (In Auto mode they go straight on.)
16. Edit. Open the editor. Every scene is already on the main video layer in order, with the voices, sound effects, ambience and music on the layers below. Drag either end of a clip to change its first or last frame (later clips move along, so there are no gaps), drag clips to reorder them, put transitions on the cuts and drag their edges, add effects and text on their own layers, split with Ctrl+B, and zoom with Ctrl + scroll. Add more clips by uploading or from the Library. The preview plays the real clips and sounds. Or just ask the assistant: "swap scenes 3 and 4", "make scene 2 four seconds". It never spends money on its own: a redo comes back as a button with its price.
17. Export. One 16:9 video, 1280×720, every layer, transition, effect and sound as the timeline shows them, captions burned in if you picked a caption style. It is marked as made with AI in the file's hidden metadata (no watermark). Download it from the editor; it is also kept in the Library.

Auto or Manual?

Manual: you approve the storyboard, every still and every clip. Slower, and you see everything. Auto: press Make the whole video, check the total cost once, and the storyboard, stills, clips and lip sync are all made in one go. You can still change anything in the editor afterwards. Set the mode in the project's brief.

What it costs

You pay the AI provider directly through your own key, at their prices. Every step shows its price before it runs and is logged after, redos included. The project page shows what the whole video has cost so far. The beat map, editing and export are free: they run on our server.

"Bring your own key", in plain words.

Getting one takes about five minutes

1. Open openrouter.ai and create an account. OpenRouter is one account that reaches many AI models.
2. Add a little money. In OpenRouter, open Credits and add a small amount to start, for example $10. A still usually costs a few cents; Inkreel shows the price before each one.
3. Create the key. In OpenRouter, open Keys and click Create key. Name it "Inkreel". If it offers a credit limit, set one: it caps what this key can ever spend.
4. Copy it straight away. OpenRouter shows the full key only once.
5. Paste it into Inkreel. Open Settings, find OpenRouter, paste the key and save. Use the test button there to check it works.

Two templates do the setup for you.

Inkreel reads two plain text files. Fill them in once and the app sets up your studio, your cast, your places and your storyboard from them. Both are .md files: plain text you can open in Notepad, TextEdit or any editor.

Make a studio from an IP bible.

1. Download the IP bible template and save a copy named after your IP.
2. Change the three lines at the top: the name, 2 or 3 initials, and an accent colour.
3. Fill in the sections. Keep every heading that starts with ## exactly as written: the app finds each section by its heading. Leave a section empty if you don't know yet.
4. In Inkreel, click the + next to STUDIOS and upload the file. The studio appears with its bible filled in.

You can upload a newer version later on the studio's page. Only the sections the new file fills in are replaced.

Start a project from a project file.

1. Download the project file template.
2. Set the type at the top: music video, song, short film or film.
3. List the characters and the locations, one per line, like - **Name**: description.
4. Fill in the scenes table, one row per scene, in order. There is no set number of scenes. For a film, add an Act column or use one table per act.
5. Upload it when you start the project, or later on the project's page. The app fills in the brief, the characters, the locations and the storyboard.
6. Make cast sheets from it. Each character and location in the file can become a reference sheet with one click, using the file's own description.

Nothing is invented: what the file doesn't say stays empty, and you can fill it in on the page.

Let your favorite AI fill them in.

You don't have to write the files by hand. ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini or any other AI assistant will do. Give it the template and your notes, and upload what comes back.

1. Attach the template to a new chat. For a project file, attach your IP bible too.
2. Paste a request like the one below, with your own idea, script or lyrics added.
3. Save the answer as a .md file and upload it to Inkreel.
4. Read it before you approve anything. Fix what's wrong on the page, or ask the assistant for a new version and upload that.

Fill in the attached IP bible template using my notes below.
Keep every "##" heading exactly as written.
Use only what my notes say. If something is missing, leave that section empty. Do not make anything up.
Give me the result as one .md file.

My notes:
[paste your notes here]

Fill in the attached project file template for a [music video / short film / film].
Use only the characters and places in the attached IP bible, plus the ones I name below.
Keep every "##" heading and the header row of the scenes table exactly as written.
One table row per scene, in order.
Do not add facts about real people or real places.
Give me the result as one .md file.

The idea, script or lyrics:
[paste here]

Common snags.