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I turned doodles into video clips in minutes with Runway's new AI video tool - here's how

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AI transformed doodles of birds into scary winged creatures. Webb Wright/ZDNET/via Runway AI

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ZDNET's key takeaways

A new feature from Runway lets you generate video from doodles.

It's impressive, but it performs best with some careful hand-holding.

Access requires paying for (at least) a Standard Runway account.

A family of settlers, admiring a herd of bison, breaks into a run as two demonic winged creatures fly overhead. The little girl passes through a fencepost like a ghost.

This surreal five-second scene was created thanks to a new feature within AI platform Runway called Motion Sketch. As the name suggests, it generates videos from simple doodles that you can make directly on top of a still image.

In the case of the clip below, I started by generating an image using Google's Nano Banana Pro -- one of the text-to-image models offered through Runway's platform -- then simply drew a smattering of bird-like shapes and two arrows pointing the direction in which the family and the bison should flee. I added some text prompts for a little extra guidance, and the model did the rest.

Runway iterpreted these doodles to animate a short video. Webb Wright/ZDNET/via Runway AI

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