AI claymation and craft-style ads

What AI claymation and craft-style ads look like

The frame looks like a miniature set lit for stop-motion. In the examples on this page you can see clay figures (a man asleep at a cluttered desk, a figure standing in a shower), grey paper scenes, brick-built sets, crochet dolls inside a crochet bedroom, a paper sticky-note title card, and a knitted mascot speaking into a podcast mic.

Almost all of them are vertical. The camera stays close to the figures, so the texture of the material fills the screen.

Why brands choose a handmade look

A handmade look tells the viewer this is not a stock product shot, and it lets a brand show an awkward problem (bad sleep, a messy bathroom, a body ache) in a way that reads as gentle or funny instead of clinical.

It also separates the ad from live-action UGC sitting next to it in a feed. A brand that already runs talking-head ads can test the same message in a style that looks nothing like them.

Pick the material before you write

Each material suits a different tone. Decide this first, because it changes how characters move and what the voiceover sounds like.

Beat sheet for a craft-style ad

1. Open on the problem, acted out by a clay or craft figure, in the first second. No title card first.
2. One line of voiceover or on-screen text names the problem in plain words.
3. The product appears as a craft object in the same material, then cuts to a real pack shot or keeps the craft version, depending on the brief.
4. Show the change: the same figure, same set, now without the problem.
5. One or two reasons to believe, shown as craft props or paper labels.
6. Close on the product and the offer, with the brand name readable.

Writing the script for clay characters

Clay figures cannot carry long lip-synced speeches. Write most lines as voiceover from a narrator or the main character's inner voice, and keep on-camera dialogue to short lines.

Give every beat one physical action the figure can do: yawn, slump, trip, wave. AI video handles a single clear action per shot more cleanly than several at once.

Frame and length

Make it 9:16 for Reels, TikTok and Shorts, and crop a 4:5 version for feed placements. Keep the figures in the middle of the frame so the crop does not cut off a face.

Length follows the script. A single problem-to-product story fits a short cut; a list of reasons runs longer, so make a short and a long edit from the same shots.

Make it with AI

The usual workflow is image first, then motion:

• Generate a still of each character and the set in the chosen material, and approve them before any video.
• Animate each still with an image-to-video model, one action per shot, using the approved character image as the reference every time.
• Record or generate the voiceover, then lip-sync only the shots where the figure speaks on camera.
• Add a light music bed and soft foley (squish, paper rustle) in the edit.

For model-specific prompting, see Seedance for ads and Kling for ads. For a prompt skeleton, keep material, lighting and action in fixed slots:

[material] stop-motion style, [character] in [set], [one action], soft studio light, shallow depth of field, vertical frame

Moving a winning script into clay

The craft version keeps the script's hook, angle and order, and swaps people for figures. Read the script line by line and write one physical action for each line; any line you cannot show as an action becomes voiceover.

That is how this format fits one winning script made in every format: the words stay, the look changes. Start from a tested script and the UGC script template instead of writing a new story for the clay version.