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Can AI Beat $10,000 VFX Artist?

2026-11-04 · case-study tutorial · Adil, Patrick Kalyn · recording, 15:26 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Post-production & finishing (also: Pre-production & story, Assets, references & consistency, Video generation & shot direction, Prompting & AI assistants, Image generation & editing) · mode: Tutorial · tags: guest or collaboration, fiction, prompts shared, one creator's experience, series

In round three of his AI-versus-VFX challenge with ErikDoesVFX, Adil turns Erik's forest footage into a 12-shot dinosaur chase with himself in it, using Claude through Higgsfield MCP, Seedance 2.5 and Cinema Studio; VFX artist Patrick Kalyn judges Erik's traditional VFX version better for bespoke creature animation, while Adil says his took eight hours.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — AI vs VFX round three: Erik's challenge and the judge

  • ★★ In round three of their AI-versus-VFX challenge, Erik (ErikDoesVFX) challenged Adil to turn his forest footage into a dinosaur chase: Erik made his version with VFX, Adil his with AI, putting himself in the dinosaur's path. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Adil says that in 2026 you need no professional camera, high-end hardware or VFX skills to become a filmmaker: you can start with just your phone. — 00:00:13
  • ★★ For the dinosaur chase Adil generated some shots inside Claude through Higgsfield MCP and others in Higgsfield Cinema Studio. — 00:00:29 · Claude, Higgsfield MCP, Cinema Studio
  • ★★ Adil brings in Patrick Kalyn, an Emmy-nominated VFX artist who worked on Dune, Avatar and Blade Runner 2049, to judge both versions of the dinosaur chase. — 00:00:40

00:00:53 — The brief and the Cinema Studio project setup

  • ★★ The brief: turn Erik's forest footage into a cinematic dinosaur chase, with Adil in place of Erik and a massive explosion at the end. — 00:00:53
  • ★★ Adil works on the chase's 12 shots separately and reassembles them; in a Cinema Studio project he keeps an Assets folder for references and a subfolder per shot, so footage and results are easy to find. — 00:01:01 · Cinema Studio

00:01:15 — Dinosaur design: character sheets from ten image models, motion tests, skin and feather textures

  • ★★ To use Higgsfield through MCP in Claude, Adil adds it in Claude's connector settings with the Higgsfield link, then signs in. — 00:01:22 · Higgsfield MCP, Claude
  • ★★ For the creature design Adil gives Claude one request: generate dinosaur character sheets using the top 10 image models. — 00:01:30 · Claude, character sheet
  • ★★ To choose among the dinosaur designs, Adil uploads Erik's raw footage and has Claude make each dinosaur run toward the camera, which shows how each design holds up in motion. — 00:01:40 · Claude
  • ★★ Adil likes generating creature references because he can try different versions without buying a finished 3D dinosaur model; choosing took him longer than generating. — 00:01:54
  • ★★★ Adil says the chosen dinosaur's feathers and skin still looked too AI-generated, and the video model works from those textures; his trick is to give it real materials to copy, letting Claude find the references. — 00:02:05 · Claude
  • ★ Adil tried a scaled version of the dinosaur too, but the feathered one worked better in his tests. — 00:02:33

00:02:41 — Video character sheet and Elements

  • ★★★ For a video character sheet, Adil advises recording a short 180-degree video of yourself turning slowly, face clear and lighting even: it gives the model more views and keeps your appearance consistent between shots. — 00:02:44 · character sheet

00:03:18 — Shot 1: face swap, dinosaur placement and focus

  • ★★ For shot 1 Adil gives Claude the source clip, his video character sheet and the dinosaur image, explains the changes and asks for a Seedance prompt, then pastes it into Cinema Studio with Seedance 2.5. — 00:03:33 · Claude, Seedance 2.5, Cinema Studio, character sheet
  • ★★ In Cinema Studio Adil selects the dinosaur and face references saved as Elements by their @ tags, so he does not have to upload them again. — 00:03:44 · Elements, Cinema Studio
  • ★★ Adil's first Seedance 2.5 results for shot 1 put the distant dinosaur in the wrong place and rendered it too sharp, and his face did not come out right. — 00:03:55 · Seedance 2.5
  • ★★ To place a distant creature, Adil marks its position on a frame and asks Claude for a reference image with the size and blur already in place. — 00:04:10 · Claude
  • ★★★ To put his face on Erik in the footage, Adil has Claude blur Erik's head in the source clip and keeps his own video as the identity reference. — 00:04:19 · Claude, face swap

00:04:34 — Higgsfield Instant extension

  • ★★ Adil says the Higgsfield Instant extension opens a panel next to the video player that shows all the prompts, skills and attachments in real time, with no need to search blog posts. — 00:04:35

00:04:45 — Controlling the dinosaur's size and position; reusing the face blur

  • ★★ With no separate reference shot from Erik, Adil took a screenshot of the DaVinci Resolve viewer from Erik's video brief to show Claude the size and position he wanted for the dinosaur. — 00:04:57 · DaVinci Resolve, Claude
  • ★★ Adil's position screenshot is only a guide for Claude and does not go into the video generation; showing the position first means less guessing and fewer wasted generations. — 00:05:08 · Claude

00:05:44 — Arrow flight with motion guides and the arrow impact

  • ★★★ Seedance 2.5 needs at least 2 seconds of input video, so Adil has Claude stretch a sped-up 1-second clip to 2 seconds. — 00:05:52 · Seedance 2.5, Claude
  • ★★ For the arrow shot Adil has Claude track the stump and show four rough versions of the arrow's path; he picks one, and the rough preview helps Claude write the prompt. — 00:06:04 · Claude
  • ★★ In Cinema Studio Adil attaches the stretched source clip, the arrow reference and the dinosaur sheet; the rough blocking video stays in Claude as a guide. — 00:06:17 · Cinema Studio, Claude
  • ★★ When the dinosaur came out in the wrong place facing the wrong way, Adil gave Claude the first frame, the dinosaur image and a marked frame and had it use Seedream to make a layout: the dinosaur small in the distance, in front of the stump, facing left. — 00:06:38 · Claude, Seedream
  • ★★★ Adil's takeaway: if an action is hard to explain, show it; a marked frame or a rough motion guide makes instructions much clearer. — 00:06:59 · Claude
  • ★ For the arrow impact Adil asked for a sharp impact, a few pieces of bark and a little vibration in the shaft; all the batches came out well. — 00:07:18

00:07:27 — Directing the dinosaur's reaction with a marked frame

  • ★★ When the dinosaur turned the wrong way, Adil drew two circles on the frame, one for where to stand and one for where to look, which made the instruction clear. — 00:07:46

00:08:17 — The chase: an ostrich-like run and the grenade

  • ★★ In the first Seedance 2.5 batch of the chase, the dinosaur's legs ran but its body stayed stiff and the whole run looked too slow. — 00:08:33 · Seedance 2.5
  • ★★★ To fix the stiff dinosaur run, Adil tells Claude what looks wrong (the feet move but the body does not react) and asks it to study an ostrich's run and adapt it: stronger strides, more body movement, a tail that helps balance. — 00:08:46 · Claude
  • ★★ For the grenade shot Adil reuses his character reference and describes the action in order: pull it out, try to throw it, realise it is still there. — 00:09:28

00:09:47 — The dinosaur charge toward the camera

  • ★★ Because the camera barely moves in the charge shot, Adil takes a sharp frame from the footage as the forest reference alongside his dinosaur image. — 00:09:55
  • ★★★ When neither the prompt nor a friend's recorded movement reference gave the dinosaur's charge enough weight, Adil turned what worked in testing into a dinosaur motion skill for Claude: how the feet take the weight, how the body moves, how head and tail react. — 00:10:13 · Claude

00:10:38 — Claude skills for dinosaur anatomy and motion

  • ★★ Adil made two Claude skills: dinosaur anatomy, which helps Claude describe the body, and dinosaur motion, which helps describe how it moves. — 00:10:42 · Claude
  • ★★ To use the dinosaur skills, go to Skills in Claude, upload and activate them, then give Claude your references, explain what needs fixing and ask it to use the motion skill. — 00:10:51 · Claude
  • ★★ For a dinosaur run with weight, Adil's prompt has the leg take the weight and the body settle when the foot lands, with head and tail following on a slight delay; these small differences break up the mechanical rhythm. — 00:11:07
  • ★ To make the dinosaur affect the ground, Adil asks for feet that compress the moss and kick back small pieces of damp soil when they push off. — 00:11:26
  • ★★★ Seedance 2.5 must generate at least 4 seconds, so for a short attack Adil has the dinosaur reach the camera in the first 2 seconds and leaves the rest as black screen. — 00:11:33 · Seedance 2.5
  • ★★ Adil's dinosaur anatomy and dinosaur motion skills for Claude are in the video's description to try on your own creature. — 00:11:49 · Claude

00:11:53 — The mannequin trick and the final explosion

  • ★★ For the final shot Adil first asks Claude for a prompt that replaces Erik's head with a plain mannequin head, keeping the clothes, body and movement, as a stand-in for his own face. — 00:12:04 · Claude
  • ★★ When the camera angle varied across takes, Adil used the first frame of the take with the right framing as the starting frame of the next generation, which kept the angle in later tests. — 00:12:30 · keyframe
  • ★★★ Adil's rule for face or character replacement: if it keeps going wrong, first make a simple stand-in, then give the model a clear reference for what should replace it. — 00:12:37 · face swap

00:12:49 — The finished AI dinosaur chase and Erik's VFX version

00:13:40 — Adil compares the two versions

  • ★★ Adil grants that Erik's explosion looks better, but points out that in Erik's version the dinosaur disappears just before it explodes. — 00:13:40
  • ★★ Adil prefers the look and movement of his own dinosaur: he finds Erik's Ceratosaurus too small for a creature that could grow over 20 feet long, and his Velociraptor more sensible in size. — 00:13:52
  • ★★★ Adil likes that this AI workflow lets him try different creatures, put himself in the footage and build a whole action sequence without building or animating a 3D model. — 00:14:06

00:14:18 — Patrick Kalyn's verdict

  • ★★★ Patrick Kalyn says AI tools are getting better, but for creature animation this bespoke, Erik's version, made as he believes with a traditional VFX pipeline, still holds up better at this stage. — 00:14:22

00:14:43 — Eight hours of work, takeaways and outro

  • ★★ Adil made his AI version of the dinosaur chase in eight hours and guesses Erik spent much longer on his. — 00:14:45

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Cinema Studio · Claude · Dinosaur motion skill · ErikDoesVFX · face swap · Higgsfield MCP · Patrick Kalyn · Seedance 2.5

Also: Works: Avatar · Blade Runner 2049 · Dune

Organizations: Discord

Concepts: character sheet · keyframe · tracking shot

Products: DaVinci Resolve · Dinosaur anatomy skill · Elements · Higgsfield Instant · Seedream

Also centred on ErikDoesVFX: I Challenged a Pro VFX Artist to Beat AI · AI vs VFX: Can Seedance 2.5 Beat VFX? · Can AI Beat VFX? (feat. ⁨⁨ErikDoesVFX)

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