
How to Create AI Characters with HeyGen Avatar IV and ElevenLabs Voice Changer
Create studio-quality AI characters by animating images with HeyGen's Avatar IV and enhancing voiceovers with ElevenLabs Voice Changer.
AI-generated video is no longer just a technical demo — it’s a creative toolset for storytellers, educators, and content creators. With HeyGen’s Avatar IV, you can animate still images into lifelike characters. Paired with ElevenLabs Voice Changer, those characters gain professional-grade speech and personality.
Whether you’re building short films, voice-driven explainers, or anonymous avatars for YouTube, this workflow gives you studio-quality results — without a studio.
Here’s how we built the character shown in the demo:
Step 1: Upload your image to HeyGen
Start by heading to HeyGen and selecting Photo to Video under Avatar IV. Upload a high-resolution image of your character. Avatar IV will use this as the visual anchor—animating facial movements and syncing speech with remarkable fidelity.
Tip: Use images with clear lighting and neutral expressions for best results.
Step 2: Record a rough voiceover
Instead of using typed text or selecting a synthetic voice, we recorded a quick voiceover manually. This step gives you maximum creative flexibility — intonation, pacing, and emphasis all come from your original take.
But most creators aren’t voice actors. Even with a strong script, recordings can lack clarity, presence, or tone.
Step 3: Upgrade your voice with ElevenLabs
That’s where ElevenLabs comes in. Upload your voice recording to our Voice Changer, then choose from a library of natural-sounding voices — trained on professional-grade data and capable of preserving your original emotion and cadence.
In seconds, your rough recording becomes a polished voiceover that sounds like it was recorded in a sound booth.
This step isn’t just about polish — it’s about character. Voice shapes how your audience perceives the personality behind the image. Our voice library helps creators find the right match for their story.
Step 4: Sync audio with Avatar IV
Take the generated voiceover from ElevenLabs and upload it back into HeyGen. Click Generate, and Avatar IV will render the final video: your chosen image, brought to life with realistic facial animation and studio-quality speech.
The result is a fully-voiced AI character you can use in film, YouTube, education, or customer interaction scenarios.
Why it matters
This workflow makes high-fidelity character creation more accessible. You don’t need a green screen or a sound engineer. With just an image and your voice, you can now generate animated characters that speak naturally — ideal for storytelling, localization, or even creating private personas.
By combining HeyGen’s visual realism with ElevenLabs’ voice technology, we’re moving closer to a future where high-quality content can be produced by anyone, anywhere.
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