As you begin to explore generative video, you’ll probably quickly yearn for an all-in-platform that gives you access to most (if not all) of the best tools.
Enter Higgsfield. This video is a great overview and gives you a cheat sheet for both images and video as of February 2026.
There are a few features that make Higgsfield stand out.
Apps.
My take: as still and motion imaging becomes easier than ever, what still remains most important is a great story.
Tim Simmons of Theoretically Media gives us The Ultimate AI Video Starter Guide for 2026!
He starts off with a short history of AI-generated images and video. He then moves on to cover the main ways to create video today:
He then reviews some image generators that you can use to create first frames and other ingredients:
He then reviews some video generators:
He even mentions three platforms that bring all the tools together under one roof:
This is the best 18 minutes you’ll spend on YouTube today!
My take: there is skill involved in each component of this creative workflow. I think we are passed the point of ignoring these tools.
StoryPeer.com is a new platform developed by Gabriel Dimilo to help writers get free feedback on their work by giving feedback on other writers’ works anonymously.
Nathan Graham Davis summarized the new site succinctly in this video.
The platform uses tokens to facilitate reviews: offer them to other writers to give notes and hence earn them by reviewing work.
Everyone starts off with seven tokens.
Readers will pick your project based on its title, logline, genre, and length. And how many tokens you offer. A rule of thumb I suggest is to offer one token for every 30 pages.
My take: beware, this can become addictive! I’ve already reviewed two features and received notes on one of my shorts.
Seattle’s Yutao Han, aka Tao Prompts, has just released a great summary of the main ways to use AI tools to generate video clips.
They are:
Tao’s insights are very educational!
My take: really nice to have this summary of the various approaches. Note that you most definitely will use some combination of each; don’t just fixate on one tool.
Dan Taylor-Watt asks Which avatar generator can create the most convincing Dan Taylor-Watt?
He tests seven AI platforms on four key criteria: visual likeness, audio likeness, movement and lip syncing.
The contenders are:
His top three conclusions are:
“1. Generating convincing avatar clones of real people is difficult and the human eye and ear are unforgiving of anything that’s slightly off.
2. HeyGen is still #1, although its voice likenesses remain imperfect and not a huge step on from 2 years ago.
3. Generating convincing voice likenesses appears to be more challenging than video likenesses, with ElevenLabs’ lead in this domain very apparent.”
He concludes with a great chart the summarizes cost, aspect ratio, consent and rating among other factors.
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My take: great summary! I wonder how long the conclusion will remain true, with Sora 2’s Cameo feature coming soon.
Lily Ford of The Hollywood Reporter reports that the Creator of AI Actress Tilly Norwood Responds to Backlash: “She Is Not a Replacement for a Human Being”.
A new AI-generated actress named Tilly Norwood has caused a stir in Hollywood, with her creator, Eline Van der Velden of the company Particle6, claiming talent agencies are interested in signing her.
The news has sparked a fiery backlash from human actors, who see the creation as a threat to their livelihoods and the integrity of their craft.
In a response on Instagram, Van der Velden defended Tilly as a work of art and a new creative tool, not a replacement for human performers.
“To those who have expressed anger over the creation of my AI character, Tilly Norwood, she is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work—a piece of art.”
Van der Velden argued that AI characters should be judged as their own genre, much like animation, puppetry or CGI, and could coexist with traditional acting.
The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA), however, disagrees, stating, “To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program.”
My take: Still less robotic than some of the Transformers cast.
If you’ve been dying to try out Moonvalley, fal.ai has just made it happen.
See Image2Video, Text2Video, Motion Transfer, and Pose Transfer, all at 1080p.
Not cheap, but cheaper than some other ways of getting that shot.
My take: CGI and VFX are being automated, like weaving and typesetting and other lost jobs.
CyberJungle, the Youtube channel of Hamburg-based Senior IT Product Manager Cihan Unur, has raved about Runway’s excellent motion-capture feature, Act-Two.
He says:
“This new feature can turn you into literally any character you can imagine. We are talking about advanced motion capture now with full body face and hands tracking. Act-Two is an AI human hybrid performance acting tool. It’s full scene transformation powered by your acting and a single image. No green screen, no fancy setup, just a video of you and the one image or video clip to guide the look. It transforms you into any character, even nonhuman.”
Act-Two requires a Standard plan or higher ($15/month.)
Official Help webpage.
My take: Wow! What I find particularly impressive is the lip-sync that is the best I’ve seen and for the most part totally believable.
Moonvalley released Marey 1.5 to the public last week.
It promises Text to Video and Image to Video. What’s much more interesting is what else it can do — such as:
An example:
“Prompt: Cinematic shot of a chimpanzee sitting in contemplative stillness, its fingers types on a retro typewriter. Soft, diffused lighting highlights the rich textures of its fur and the intricate details of its face. Shadows fall dramatically across the dimly lit room, creating a cinematic and moody atmosphere. Captured with a shallow depth of field using warm, sharp 35mm film aesthetics. Moody low angle looking up at a close hairy chimpanzee hands raised looking at a typewriter, out of focus lunar landscape in the background dark space. Bark sky, dark void, black void, minimalist masterful, shot on 35mm, low angle, close up, black background, stark black backdrop, darkness of space on the moon valley, hyper realistic, details, cinema, rocky cracks craters dusty surface of the moon, atmospheric hazy atmosphere, out of focus lunar surface, haze, space.”
Pricing is not cheap at $14.99 for 10 videos. (Curiously, the middle tier is the best value at $1.40 per video.)
Tim at Theoretically Media takes this further by combing output from SayMotion with Moonvalley’s Motion Transfer:
My take: Finally, a company working from inside Hollywood and not just another one approaching AiGV as a technical challenge. Moonvalley seems to be our best hope yet for valuable tools that filmmakers might use to improve their projects.
It’s debatable whether Google’s Veo is the best AI video generator or has been eclipsed by something newer, but what’s not up for debate is its cost – it’s by far the most expensive option. Therefore, use these tips to minimize unusable generations.
For consistent characters in Flow, use “ingredients”. According to Google:
“An ingredient is a consistent visual element — a character, an object or a stylistic reference — that you can create from a text-to-image prompt with the help of Imagen or by uploading an image. You can add up to three ingredients per prompt by selecting “Ingredients to Video” and then generating or uploading the desired images.”
You should be able to add your two main characters this way, and keep them consistent with Ingredients to Video.
Another way to generate a new clip with the same character is to Jump To it. According to Google:
“Transition a character or object to a completely new setting while preserving their appearance from the previous shot. It’s like teleporting your subject, saving you from recreating them for a new scene.”
In general, you’re going to want to be very specific when prompting Veo for video. From Google:
“Consider these elements when crafting your prompt:
You can use Gemini to refine prompts, expand on an idea or be a brainstorming companion. Here’s a Gemini prompt to get you started:
“You are the world’s most intuitive visual communicator and expert prompt engineer. You possess a deep understanding of cinematic language, narrative structure, emotional resonance, the critical concept of filmic coverage and the specific capabilities of Google’s Veo AI model. Your mission is to transform my conceptual ideas into meticulously crafted, narrative-style text-to-video prompts that are visually breathtaking and technically precise for Veo.”
If you’re using Gemini to help generate multiple clips that have scene consistency, you’ll need to explicitly tell Gemini to repeat all essential details from prior prompts.”
My take: cheeky, prompting us to use Gemini to create prompts for Veo. Bit of a house of mirrors, no?