Create Your First AI Video in 5 Minutes

Welcome to Paintbrush! This guide will walk you through creating your very first AI-generated video — from character creation to final render. By the end, you'll have a short video clip with a consistent character in a custom environment.

There are two ways to make a video in Paintbrush. You can describe or paste a story into the creation agent and approve what it proposes, or you can build each piece yourself. This guide walks through the manual path so you understand every part. The agent uses the same characters, settings, and scenes under the hood.

Step 1: Create a project

After signing in, you'll land on the dashboard. Click "New Project" to get started. Give your project a name — something descriptive like "Forest Adventure" or "Sci-Fi Short" helps when you have multiple projects later.

Next, pick your aspect ratio. 16:9 is standard widescreen, great for YouTube or cinematic content. 9:16 is vertical, ideal for TikTok, Reels, or Shorts. You can also use 4:3 for a more classic framing or 3:4 for portrait-oriented content.

Finally, choose an art style. This sets the visual tone for your entire project. Anime produces bold, colorful results with strong character consistency. Realistic aims for photographic quality. Watercolor, pixel art, and other styles offer more experimental looks. Don't overthink it — you can always change the style later or use a custom style prompt.

Step 2: Create a character

The left Assets panel lists your characters and settings. Click the + button and choose Character to open the character creation dialog.

The most important field is the prompt. Be specific about your character's appearance — describe their hair color and style, eye color, skin tone, clothing, and any accessories or distinguishing features. The more detail you provide, the more consistent your character will look across scenes.

For example: "A young woman with long silver hair, bright green eyes, wearing a dark red hooded cloak over a white tunic, leather boots, and a silver pendant necklace" will produce far better results than "A girl in a cloak".

Hit "Generate" and Paintbrush will create a reference sheet for your character: a front view, a side profile, and a back view, each with the background removed. This reference sheet is the foundation of character consistency — it's attached to every scene generation that mentions this character.

Step 3: Create a setting

Click + in the Assets panel again and choose Setting to create a background environment. Settings work similarly to characters: describe the environment in the prompt field, and Paintbrush generates a wide reference image.

Good setting prompts describe the atmosphere and key visual elements: "A dense enchanted forest at golden hour, shafts of sunlight filtering through the canopy, moss-covered ancient trees, a narrow dirt path winding into the distance, fireflies glowing softly".

Settings serve two purposes. First, they provide visual consistency — every scene that references @Forest will use the same environment. Second, they save you from re-describing the background in every scene prompt.

Step 4: Write your first scene

Create a new scene from the timeline. This is where the magic happens. In the scene description, use @mentions to pull in your character and setting:

@Aria walks slowly through the @Enchanted Forest, looking around in wonder at the glowing fireflies

The @mention system is what ties everything together. When you type @, Paintbrush shows a dropdown of your characters and settings. Selecting one attaches their reference images to the generation — the AI doesn't just read a name, it sees what they look like.

Set your duration. Standard clips run 3 to 15 seconds and Pro clips 4 to 30. For a first scene, 5 seconds is a good starting point — long enough to show meaningful action, short enough to generate quickly.

Hit Generate. Paintbrush sends your description to the video model along with the reference images for every @mention, and generates the clip directly. A 5-second Standard clip costs 84 credits, and you'll see the estimate before you generate.

Step 5: Preview and iterate

Once generation is complete, preview your clip in the right panel. Watch it a few times and assess whether the character looks right, the setting matches your vision, and the motion feels natural.

If you want to adjust, you have several options:

• Trim — Remove unwanted frames from the beginning or end of the clip. Useful for cutting out awkward starts or motion blur at the end
• Regenerate — Generate a completely new version using the same inputs. Each attempt produces different results, so regenerating is a good way to explore variations
• Tweak — Apply targeted edits using a text prompt. For example, "make the character smile" or "add more wind to the hair". This modifies the existing clip rather than starting from scratch

That's it — you've created your first AI video!

Step 6: Add more scenes

One clip is a start, but stories are built from sequences. Create another scene for your next shot. If the new shot should continue the first one without a cut, click Extend on the first scene instead. Paintbrush takes its last frame and uses it as the starting image of the new shot, so position and lighting carry over.

Try introducing action or a camera change in your prompt: "@Aria turns and sees a mysterious glowing light deeper in the @Enchanted Forest". The @mentions ensure your character and setting stay consistent while the new prompt drives the narrative forward.

You can reorder scenes by dragging them in the timeline panel.

Tips for better results

After working with thousands of user-generated videos, here are the patterns that consistently produce the best output:

• Be specific in character prompts. "A knight" gives the model too much freedom. "A tall woman in dented steel plate armor, short brown hair, green eyes, carrying a worn wooden shield" gives it an anchor
• Keep scenes short. 3–5 second clips tend to have better motion quality and consistency than 10-second clips. You can always stitch shorter clips together for longer sequences
• Use settings. A well-defined setting does half the work of a scene prompt. Instead of describing the background in every scene, create a setting once and @mention it
• Iterate, don't agonize. Generation is cheap. If the first result isn't right, regenerate. Most users get a result they like within 2–3 attempts
• Trim aggressively. AI-generated clips often have a strong start that weakens toward the end. Trimming the last second or two often produces a much tighter result

Understanding credits

Every generation in Paintbrush costs credits. A Standard character sheet costs about 12 credits and a Standard setting about 4. Video is priced per second: Standard is 16.8 credits per second, and Pro is 47.3 credits per second for higher quality. Speech costs 10 credits per scene. These rates are current as of October 2026.

You can see your credit balance in the header at all times, and the account page shows a full breakdown of your usage history. Your first credit pack is $3 for 100 credits, which covers a character and a 5-second Standard scene.

Next steps

Now that you've made your first video, explore the features that make longer projects possible: create multiple characters and have them interact in the same scene, build out several settings for different locations, and use Extend to create flowing sequences. When you're ready to go faster, paste a story into the creation agent. Check out our other guides for deep dives into character consistency and scene chaining techniques.

To improve your next scene description, use the scene-prompt guide.