Valentines Day eCards
2021 eCard:
I used to follow an Instagram account called minimalista.sister who used to create very nice animated images that looked like Paper Cut-outs. I found out the creator's name was Oxana and she was from Ukraine. I commissioned her to do a custom Valentine's e-card for me - I think I paid maybe $70. I even purchased Alight Motion, the software she was using and signed up for an Udemy course, but like many things in my life I never had the patience and time to learn how to use it. After Russia invaded Ukraine, I somehow lost touch with Oxana...
Bespoke eCard commissioned in 2021
2026 eCard
I decided to do a similar card this year but using Nano Banana Pro and Kling, the AI tools that I use often.
Nano Banana Pro, which I access via OpenArt, is extremely easy yet powerful for editing, as you can see from the sequence of three images below.
I saved the final version of the 2K image to my computer and uploaded it to Kling for the animation. Because I wanted the Kling card to be animated with me talking, I trained Kling with a custom voice using a 25-second recording of my voice saved as an mp3 file.
The prompt I gave Kling (Model 2.6) is shown below.
