AI and Anime: Nik Shaw's Journey with ElevenLabs

Nik Shaw, the creator behind RE:Anime, is known globally for transforming popular anime series into live-action adaptations. His YouTube channel has amassed millions of views and a strong fan following among anime enthusiasts. Nik's latest venture is an animated comic book, Anima, which he aims to bring to life using advanced AI technology.

Challenge

For creators like Nik, one of the main challenges lies in bringing authentic, engaging character voices to life, especially when targeting a global audience. Another is effectively pitching new projects to potential investors and platforms. Creators need a captivating concept and if they plan on targeting an international audience, they should also demonstrate how the final product will resonate across languages and cultures.

Solutions

To address some of these challenges, Nik has turned to our voice AI tools. Voice Design helps in the pitching phase: it lets Nik create bespoke character voices from scratch, selecting their attributes like age, gender or accent. This accelerates development, giving Nik the freedom to experiment and establish a clear direction early on. For the series itself, Nik plans to employ professional voice talent, but Voice Design helps pitch the concept to potential investors who get a better feel for the storyline from the outset.

For localization, Nik plans to use AI Dubbing. This tool offers automated, end-to-end video localization across 29 languages, significantly reducing the time and cost traditionally involved, all while preserving the original speakers’ voices. It's a game-changer for content creators who want to go global and the tool will soon be expanded into the Dubbing Studio workflow, enabling users to dub entire movies, as well as generate and edit their transcripts, translations, and timecodes, thus providing extra control over localization. We’ve added this additional control precisely with creators like Nik in mind, who aren’t prepared to compromise on quality and authenticity.

New standard

Our voice AI tools not only help in overcoming the challenges of character voice development and global reach but are also setting new standards in content creation and localization. These tools offer a blend of creativity, efficiency, and market reach, empowering storytellers like Nik to bring their visions to life and set them in a global context.