User guide
Nine shots. Then you cut.
FicReel turns your story into an anime short. It does not make the film in one click: you get a 45-second storyboard skeleton first, then you generate the picture shot by shot in the editor and decide which shot stays and which one gets redone.
Building against the API instead? Go to the API reference — this page is for people using the product.
Read this one line first
This product will not hand you a finished film. It hands you a timeline and 9 empty shots, and your job is to generate them one at a time and cut them together. Once that clicks, every screen after it makes sense.
What this is
You bring three things and get back a 45-second timeline of 9 shots.
| You bring | What it does | What comes out |
|---|---|---|
| A story | Cuts it into shots and writes the camera language | 9 shots with a camera line and a narration line each |
| A character | Locks the face so all 9 shots match | A character bible + a reference image |
| A style | Unifies the texture of the whole film | All 9 shots share one style |
What you can make your own
Three things decide what the film looks like. Only two of them are yours to write today — and we would rather you hear that here than discover it halfway through the wizard:
| Layer | Who writes it | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| World | Ours, or yours | Pick one of ours, or open “Define your own world” on the world step and write the five lines every shot inherits (era, places, atmosphere, palette, and what must never appear). Your world is saved to your account and marked as yours. |
| Story | Yours | Fully free: one or two sentences is enough. It is the one layer where you can say anything, and the storyboard turns it into shots. |
| Character | Ours, from the world you picked | Characters come from the library registered in that world; a world with none lets you carry on without one. Uploading your own reference image is not exposed in the wizard yet — that is a gap on our side, not something you are doing wrong. |
| Style | Ours | You pick one; you do not supply one. |
Why the world matters more than it sounds
The world is not decoration: the storyboard turns its lines into hard picture rules — the era, the places, the atmosphere and the palette are written into every shot's prompt. That is why a world you write beats anything you write later in the story: say it once, in the world, if it must never change.
How to think about it
Treat it as “an editor with a generate button”
It is not “give it a topic, wait a few minutes, receive a film”. You work like an editor: timeline on one side, shot list on the other, preview in the middle. The difference is that in a normal editor you import footage — here you press a button to generate the footage, and each shot is billed on its own.
Start in five minutes
A new device starts with 150 credits — that is a complete 30-second watermarked short (6 shots + a score) (6 × 5s = 120 credits of picture + 7 for the score, with 23 left for a retry). The wizard presets the skeleton to those 6 shots for you, so you can cut and export a real film without paying. No card needed.
- Open the site and hit
+ New shortin the top right - Walk the wizard: world → character → style → story → skeleton (pick the defaults if you have no preference)
- You get the storyboard skeleton — this step costs nothing
- In the editor, pick a shot and hit
Generate: 5 seconds = 20 credits, wait 1–3 minutes - Not happy with it?
Regenerate— only that shot is charged again - When the shots you want look right, add a score (7 credits), then export — export is 0 credits
What the trial gives you (this changed on 2026-09-30)
150 credits buy a complete 30-second watermarked short (6 shots + a score): 6 shots × 5s = 120 credits of picture, plus 7 for the score, plus 23 left over for a retry. The wizard presets the skeleton to 6 shots so you can finish and export a real film before paying. It used to be 6 shots and no complete film was reachable — we fixed that, because a trial you cannot finish is not a trial.
Why the trial film is 30 seconds and not 45
The trial is a complete film, just a shorter one: 30 seconds instead of 45. It is watermarked, and a paid plan gives you the full 45-second timeline without the watermark — the shots you already generated stay yours.
The full flow
1
Pick a world
The world fixes the ground rules of the picture: what the buildings look like, the weather, the palette, what must never appear (no modern objects, say). We ship three — Kasumi Shrine (a snowy night shrine), White Mist Terminal (a steam-era station at dawn), Shio's Morning (a rain-washed street at first light). It is also what makes 9 shots look like one place.
2
Pick a character
The character decides what the person looks like and is then locked for the whole film — face, hair length, eye colour, clothes cannot drift between shots. Today the characters on offer are the ones registered in the world you picked, and a world with none lets you carry on without one. Uploading your own reference image is not in the wizard yet — if a film needs your own character, that is a real gap on our side.
3
Pick a style
Style sets the texture of the whole film and is shared by every shot: 90s cel, modern painterly, modern TV anime, photoreal cosplay, cinematic 3D. Pick one.
4
Write the story
Type the story into the box — one or two sentences is enough. It does two things: cuts the story into 9 segments, then gives each segment its camera language (angle, framing, action, environment, light). Write both what happens and how it feels and the shot language comes out much richer.
5
Get the storyboard skeleton
The output of this step is text, not pictures. You get 9 shot descriptions and the narration line for each one. This step is free — a skeleton is planning, it generates no images. The wizard ends here, and it deliberately does not go on to make the film for you (see “Why not one click?” below).
6
Generate the shots in the editor
This is the core step. Each shot is generated on its own —
Generate once per shot, 5 seconds each = 20 credits, usually 1–3 minutes. Not happy? Regenerate — that redoes only that shot and charges only that shot. You can also queue every empty shot at once (see “What a generation does”).7
Add a score
Hit the
MUSIC block once. It writes a background track sized to your actual timeline and mixes it in at export. A flat 7 credits, however long the film is. You can also skip it and export a silent cut.8
Export
Hit
Export film →. Export costs no credits, however many times you do it. When it finishes you get the first frame, the runtime, the frame size, the file size, whether a score is inside, and a direct link you can copy.Reading the editor
Remember four places and you can use it:
| Area | Where | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Shot list SHOTS | right column | Generation starts here. Every card is marked READY / EMPTY |
| Timeline TIMELINE | bottom left | The nine shots laid out from 0:00 to 0:45 — the shape of the film |
| Preview stage | top left | Plays the shot you have selected |
| CREDITS | top bar | The ledger: available / reserved / consumed |
Reshaping the cut: you can reorder shots, trim a shot’s length and swap a shot — select a card in SHOTS first, then the toolbar actions apply to it. Exporting is never metered, no matter how many times you re-cut.
What a generation does
- You hit
Generate/Regenerateon one shot - That shot’s credits are reserved — the top bar shows
1 shot in flight · 20 reserved - The stage turns into a working panel that says which shot, how long it has been running, how much longer
- Success: the reservation becomes consumed and the shot turns
READY - Failure: you get the reason + the credits are refunded + a retry entry point
Two ways to run the queue
One shot at a time is the default, and it is the point of the product — you judge each shot before paying for the next. If you would rather not sit there clicking, the shot list also has a queue button that generates every empty shot one after another. It still renders shot by shot, still charges shot by shot, and every shot stays regenerable on its own — it just saves you from babysitting. A 9-shot run at 1–3 minutes a shot is 10–27 minutes of waiting, so the queue exists for exactly that.
Why there is no percentage on the progress
The upstream service only reports “queued / running / done” — it has no fine-grained progress to give. So this screen deliberately draws no percentage: a fake progress bar is worse than none. It gives you a time range instead, e.g.
est. 1–3 min left.Shot states
| State | What it means | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
EMPTY | Never generated | Hit Generate · 20 pts |
QUEUED | Submitted, queuing or rendering | Wait; or cancel |
READY | There is a picture on it | Preview it, or Regenerate · 20 pts |
FAILED | The render failed | Read the reason; credits were refunded; hit retry |
The billing rules (there are only three)
① One generation makes one shot, and only that shot is charged;
② Redoing a shot charges only that shot — shots you already generated are never charged again;
③ Export is never billed, not by the minute, not by the number of attempts.
② Redoing a shot charges only that shot — shots you already generated are never charged again;
③ Export is never billed, not by the minute, not by the number of attempts.
Where credits go
Credits are the unit this product is priced in. They are only ever spent on generation — never on watching, and never on exporting.
| Action | Credits | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Generate a 5-second shot | 20 | 4 credits per second of film; one generation returns one shot |
| Regenerate a shot | 20 | Redoes that shot only |
| Generate the score | 7 | One track; unrelated to runtime |
| Export | 0 | Never metered |
A complete 45-second short:
9 shots × 5 seconds = 180 credits
1 score = 7 credits
Total 187 credits
Shots only, no music = 180 credits
1 score = 7 credits
Total 187 credits
Shots only, no music = 180 credits
Budget for redos, not just for the first pass
The 187-credit figure is what a film costs if every shot lands first try. In practice people regenerate. If you redo about one shot in two, a film costs roughly 281 credits; redo half of them twice and it is more. We would rather you see that number here than discover it on your bill — count the redos when you pick a plan.
Where the sound comes from
Two things make noise, and only one of them is generated today. Being precise about this matters:
| Sound | Where it comes from | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Score (music) | Generated on demand for 7 credits, one track for the whole cut, mixed in at export | Available now |
| Narration lines | The skeleton writes a narration line for each shot and the editor shows it as text with that shot | Text only — no spoken audio |
| Voiceover audio | Not generated | Not in the product today |
| Sound effects | Not generated | Not in the product today |
“Silent cut” means one specific thing
Exporting without the score gives you a cut with no audio track at all — no music and no speech. It does not mean “music off, voice kept”, because there is no generated speech to keep. The narration lines exist so you can read what each shot is saying; if you want them spoken, you would record or synthesise that yourself today.
What you get out
| Spec | Value |
|---|---|
| Format | MP4 (H.264), downloadable and linkable |
| Default frame size | 1080 × 1920 — 9:16 vertical, sized for TikTok / Reels / Shorts |
| Also available | 16:9 landscape 1920 × 1080 |
| Frame rate | 25 fps |
| Quality | 720p generation, delivered in the frame size above |
| Watermark | Trial renders carry a FICREEL PREVIEW watermark; paid plans do not |
| Runtime | Whatever the shots in your timeline add up to — the default skeleton is 9 × 5s = 45s, and shots you never generated are not in the file |
| Music | Inside the MP4 if you generated a score and kept it |
Not every cut is the whole timeline, and the export panel says so instead of hiding it: a short file is labelled EXPORTED CUT · PARTIAL · 5 OF 9 SHOTS with a line telling you how many shots are missing and why.
Plans and the trial
| Plan | Price | Credits / month | Buys roughly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $9.9 / month | 550 | ≈ 2 anime shorts (45s) or 27 five-second shots |
| Creator | $19.9 / month | 1170 | ≈ 6 anime shorts (45s) or 58 five-second shots |
| Studio | $39.9 / month | 2400 | ≈ 12 anime shorts (45s) or 120 five-second shots |
Monthly credits are a hard cap
Credits are issued monthly and unused ones do not roll over; when the month’s credits run out generation stops, and nothing is charged beyond them automatically. To keep going, buy a credit pack or move up a plan. The trial is granted per device and is not granted twice to the same device.
About the free tier, in plain arithmetic: trial = 150 credits = 120 credits of picture (6 × 5s = 30s) + 7 for the score ⇒ a complete 30-second watermarked short (6 shots + a score), with 23 credits left for a retry. A paid plan buys the full 45-second film, which is 187 credits: the lightest plan is $9.9 for 550 credits — ≈ 2 anime shorts (45s) or 27 five-second shots. Extra credits: +250 for $3.99 via the pricing page.
Billing, tax, invoicing and refunds are handled by Paddle as merchant of record. Refunds follow our 14-day policy; subscriptions renew monthly and can be cancelled at any time.
Questions
Why can’t I make the whole film in one click?
That is on purpose. Plenty of tools will hand you one assembled video, and the thing they hand you is not something you control. Here you generate shot by shot and replace shot by shot — every second of the 45 was chosen by you.
How long does one shot take?
Usually 1–3 minutes, longer at peak. The screen gives you a time range, not a fake progress bar.
Do I have to generate all 9 shots?
No. Generate only the ones you want — shots that were never generated are not in the film, and the export panel tells you exactly how many are missing. If nothing has been generated at all, there is nothing to export yet.
Does regenerating one shot re-charge the others?
No. Only the shot you clicked is charged again.
Will refreshing the page charge me twice?
No. After a refresh the running task is picked back up, and the screen says plainly that this shot was already submitted and will not be charged twice.
What happens if a generation fails?
You get the reason, the credits are refunded automatically, and there is a retry button. Same thing if you cancel a queued shot: the reserved credits come back once the server marks it cancelled.
What if I run out of credits?
The month’s quota is a hard cap — generation stops when it runs out, nothing is over-charged behind your back. Upgrade the plan or buy a credit pack to keep going.
Can I use my own world or character?
Your own world: yes. On the world step of the wizard, open “Define your own world” and write the five lines the storyboard turns into picture rules — era, places, atmosphere, palette, and what must never appear. It is saved to your account and shows up in your world list, marked as yours.
Your own character: not yet. Characters come from the library that ships with each world, and reference-image upload is not exposed in the wizard today. Be honest with yourself about that when you try it — if you need your own character to make the short you want, that is a gap on our side, not something you are using wrong.
Styles always come from our library: you pick one, you do not supply one.
Your own character: not yet. Characters come from the library that ships with each world, and reference-image upload is not exposed in the wizard today. Be honest with yourself about that when you try it — if you need your own character to make the short you want, that is a gap on our side, not something you are using wrong.
Styles always come from our library: you pick one, you do not supply one.
Can I use only the API and skip the website?
Yes — the whole flow can be driven over HTTP. See the API reference.
Does the free trial let me finish a whole film?
Yes — a short one, and that is on purpose. 150 trial credits are enough for a complete 30-second watermarked short (6 shots + a score): 6 shots of 5 seconds (30 seconds of picture) plus one score, watermarked, and 23 credits left over for a retry. So you can generate shots, cut them together and export a real film before paying anything. The paid plans give you the full 45-second timeline and remove the watermark.
Can I get a refund?
Yes — refunds follow our 14-day policy. Paddle is the merchant of record and handles the payment, tax, invoicing and the refund itself. Billing questions go to admin@mail.ficreel.com.
If you get stuck
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
QUEUED | Waiting for a render slot | Wait 1–3 minutes; if it is past 5 minutes you can cancel and retry |
FAILED | The upstream render failed | Credits were refunded — just hit retry |
| “Not enough credits” | The month’s credits are gone | Move up a plan or buy a credit pack |
| “Sign in first” | Projects live on the server, so they need an identity | Sign in with your email — projects are stored under your account |
| “Export refused: the score is still rendering” | You exported before the music finished | Wait for the score, or export without it |
| The stage says “pick one in SHOTS” | No shot is selected | Click a card in the SHOTS column |
| The export has no sound | No score was generated (or it was skipped) | Generate the score and export again — or accept a silent cut |
Two identities, one sentence
Trial credits belong to the device; your projects belong to your account. A different browser or a private window counts as a new device and gets its own trial credits — but your projects will not be there until you sign in with the same email.
Words on the screen
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
SHOT | One shot — 5 seconds by default |
SHOTS / SKELETON | The storyboard skeleton: 9 shot descriptions (default: 9 × 5s) |
WORLD | The world the picture is built on |
CHARACTER BIBLE | The spec that locks what the character looks like |
STYLE | The art style |
CREDITS | The unit generation is priced in — nothing else is metered |
available / reserved / consumed | Spendable / held by a running job / already spent |
READY | This shot has a picture |
EMPTY | This shot has not been generated |
QUEUED | Submitted, queuing or rendering |
REGENERATE | Redo this shot (charges this shot only) |
EXPORTED CUT | The film you exported |
FICREEL-1.0 | The name we publish our generation model under |
Still confused?
If a step “does not add up”, the fault is almost certainly that our screen did not explain it. Send us what you saw in your own words at admin@mail.ficreel.com — that is faster than guessing.