I almost didn't realise this charming Disney remake was AI, but I love it anyway

AI art doesn't usually convince me as a finished product, and AI video even less so. It still tends to look so obviously artificial and uncanny. But the best AI image generators can be useful for testing concepts and ideas, and this unusual felt or wool-like stopmotion remake of Disney's Beauty and the Beast is a concept that's won me over.

I almost didn't realise it was AI at first glance – until I focused on the movement. A lot of AI videos are still a series of short shots of characters not really doing anything. But the characters themselves are quite intriguing, and what really stands out is the timelessness of the story.

Writing on X, the Spanish AI art explorer AlexandrIA says she made the animation by starting in Midjourney to create the character images. She used a style ref that she liked and dropped its weight "for better color variation closer to the fairy tale’s aesthetic". Using the sref helped maintain consistency across images, although it also made it harder to accurately depict specific characters.

She built a structured prompt using ChatGPT, letting the chatbot replace parts with key movie scenes. For some characters, she used reference images directly and asked for minimal descriptions since Midjourney doesn’t always recognise the characters by name. She then animated the still images using Kling and edited everything in CapCut.

"The storytelling, the visuals... the absolute GENIUS of a classic like this must never be forgotten," AlexandrIA says, insisting that she intended her Beauty and the Beast animation as a tribute to Disney's movie (see our guide to the Disney animation principles). The piece is a charming example of how AI can be used to test out concepts and ideas, which could then be developed using the best animation software.