Brand & Product
Starting from everyday photos taken by vivo users, four art worlds each tell their own story, and the adventure finally returns home for a Spring Festival reunion.
01 / Background
Kuaishou Kling AI invited Liandan AI Studio to make this vertical short for the vivo × Kuaishou Kling AI Spring Festival Creative Challenge, using photos taken by real vivo users and provided by the campaign. The core brief: let the photos spark new imagination while making it clear they come from real users. That way the adventure stays tied to taking photos on a phone, and viewers see that an everyday snapshot of their own can become the starting point for something creative.
The challenge was that paper-cut, oil painting, pixel art and graffiti differ widely in forms, textures and pacing. The film gives each world a small plot and ties them together with the idea of “home in the heart,” so the styles are not just a reel of effects samples but a journey that starts from everyday life and ends back with family.
02 / Creative Highlights
User photos such as a boy climbing a ladder and city traffic are placed right before the matching art scenes, with the same poses or compositions, so viewers can compare them. First comes the real photo of the ladder climb, then the cut to an oil-painted sky ladder and white wings, so viewers can see which photo the imagination grew from, rather than just watching the art style keep changing.
Red paper-cuts raise the curtain, the oil-painted sky ladder is about reaching upward, a pixel figure sets off on the way home, and in the graffiti segment a grandmother and granddaughter DJ together. When the style changes, what the characters do and how they relate change too, and viewers remember each style through its small story.
Paper-cut buildings and the sky ladder draw the eye upward, while a pixel train carries the adventure onto the road home. A knock on the door at the end of the pixel segment is answered by Grandma opening the door, so a single door becomes the handoff between two styles: the style changes, but the journey home continues.
Grandmother and granddaughter together, family scenes and fireworks bring all the earlier exploring together into a reunion. The style keeps changing, but the emotional direction is always home, grounding both the Spring Festival theme and the photo-taking idea of “every great moment.”
03 / Scene Breakdown
A top-down shot of a stone house gives way to a meadow under a pink-and-purple sunset, where a girl raises her phone and photographs the house; the photo then becomes a red paper-cut house and unfolds into an entire paper-sculpture city.
A small stone house between a dirt road and orange shrubs cuts to a meadow at sunset. The caption states the theme directly: word is that vivo and Kuaishou Kling AI are doing amazing things with users' photos.
With her back to the camera, a girl holds her phone upright to photograph the stone house, and the next shot is the photo she just took. The caption reads “When you want to go home, take a photo,” and the adventure begins with the press of the shutter.
The same stone house turns into a red paper-cut house with openwork patterns, then high-rises, towers and a train pop up layer by layer, and the festive New Year feeling arrives at once.
A ladder in a paper-cut forest leads to a sky ladder under a Van Gogh-style starry night, where a boy reaches for the moon; after a real photo of a boy climbing a ladder, he grows white wings in the oil painting.
The camera follows the ladder up through the paper-cut forest, the scene becomes a swirling starry sky and golden wheat fields, and a boy in red climbs to the top and reaches for the moon.
After a shutter click, a vivo user's photo of a boy climbing a ladder appears with its original watermark, then cuts to an oil-painted version with the same composition, so viewers can tell which photo the image came from.
White feathered wings flap, and the boy stands atop the ladder with wings spread before a huge moon. Caption: vivo gives you wings for your dreams.
Bursting through the clouds into a pixel city, a top-down photo of railway tracks and traffic becomes pixel art; an office worker leaps onto a train roof, slices through the dragon blocking the way with a lightsaber, and rides home.
The boy sits on a cloud atop the ladder, the camera pushes in fast, breaks through the clouds and lands on the city at night, where someone just off work stands on a rooftop. Caption: “When you want to clock out, take a photo.”
A vivo user's top-down photo of railway tracks and six lanes of traffic appears first, then cuts to a pixel version with the same composition, turning holiday traffic heading home into the start of an adventure.
A pixel figure sits on a train roof watching the sunset; a moment later a giant dragon rises from the flames, facing the oncoming train head-on. Caption: nobody can stop you from clocking out.
The pixel figure raises a blue lightsaber at the dragon, followed by a close-up of the blade turning fiery red, and the fight is told in just those shots.
The train passes green mountains and an old pagoda, the pixel figure sits by the carriage window with a suitcase beside him, and finally the train rolls into a city on a sunny day.
The pixel figure knocks, and a graffiti-style Grandma opens the door; her granddaughter is DJing, the two try it together, and in the end Grandma takes over on her own.
A pixel-style hand knocks on a wooden door, and in the next shot a graffiti-style Grandma peeks out from behind it: what's she up to? One door joins two styles.
A hand wearing a ring scratches a turntable, cutting to the blue-haired granddaughter DJing in front of a wall covered in graffiti. Caption: your granddaughter is a great DJ, let's join her.
The frame splits into three panels showing the granddaughter's face, her scratching hands and her full figure at once, and the pace suddenly picks up.
Grandmother and granddaughter DJ side by side, then the white-haired grandma, wearing headphones, works the decks on her own, beaming.
The granddaughter photographs Grandma with her phone, followed by a vivo user's photo of a grandmother and its graffiti version; then a pixel family at dinner, a rooftop fireworks view in oil painting, and fireworks in all four styles going off together.
The granddaughter holds up her phone to photograph Grandma at the decks; then comes a user photo of a grandmother covering her eyes with green fruits, which turns into a graffiti version of her DJing in headphones. Caption: vivo phones.
Sunlight streams through the window as a pixel-style family gathers around the dinner table. Caption: here to witness it with you.
The winged boy and his family stand on a rooftop watching fireworks fill the sky, then fireworks in several styles burst in turn. Caption: every great moment.
04 / Storyboards & Final Frames
In final-cut order: each shot first describes what it shows, then the still locked in before it was turned into video. Comparisons between the users' original photos and the AI images are in the Case Study.
Shot 1.1
A top-down view of a dirt road, orange shrubs and a small stone house in the middle: the opening starts with a strikingly real empty shot.
Shot 1.2
The camera comes down to the stone house and meadow under a pink-and-purple sunset, leaving room for the girl who raises her phone to take a photo.
Shot 2.1
The same stone house goes from photo to red paper-cut, with its outline and position unchanged so viewers recognize it as the same house.
Shot 2.2
Red paper-cut high-rises, towers and a train unfold layer by layer, with the festive feeling coming from the paper's red color and openwork patterns.
Shot 2.3
A ladder stands in the middle of a paper-cut forest, and the next shot follows it into the oil-painting world.
Shot 3.1
A Van Gogh-style swirling starry sky and golden wheat fields, with a boy in red at the top of the ladder reaching for the moon.
Shot 3.2
Repainted in oils from the user photo's composition, with the boy's pose and the ladder's position matching the photo.
Shot 3.3
A close-up of a white feathered wing flapping amid blue brushstrokes.
Shot 3.4
The boy, wearing his wings, stands atop the ladder in the clouds with a golden moon behind him.
Shot 3.5
The boy sits atop the ladder looking at the moon, with city lights below; from here the camera bursts through the clouds into the pixel world.
Shot 4.1
A pixel-style city at night, with a figure standing at the edge of a rooftop and the sunset burning orange-red.
Shot 4.2
A user's top-down photo of railway tracks and traffic, repainted as pixel art with the same composition.
Shot 4.3
The pixel figure sits on the train roof, facing the sunset and the city skyline.
Shot 4.4
A giant dragon rises from the flames, facing the oncoming train head-on, with the hero standing on its roof.
Shot 4.5
A close shot of the hero raising a blue lightsaber, facing the dragon's glowing red eye.
Shot 4.6
A close-up of the blade turning fiery red, with sparks scattering all around.
Shot 4.7
The train runs along an elevated line past green mountains, a river and an old pagoda, heading from the city toward home.
Shot 4.8
The pixel figure sits in the carriage looking out the window, with a suitcase beside him.
Shot 4.9
Under a sunny sky, the train pulls in among the buildings.
Shot 4.10
A pixel-style hand knocks on a wooden door, and in the next shot a graffiti-style Grandma comes to open it.
Shot 5.1
A white-haired grandma in black-rimmed glasses peeks out from behind the door, curious about what's going on inside.
Shot 5.2
A hand wearing a blue ring scratches a turntable amid graffiti color blocks filling the screen.
Shot 5.3
The blue-haired granddaughter, in headphones, DJs in front of a graffiti wall.
Shot 5.4
The granddaughter pulls Grandma in to work the decks together, the two standing side by side at the DJ setup.
Shot 5.5
Grandma, in headphones, works the decks on her own, beaming.
Shot 5.6
The granddaughter raises her phone to photograph Grandma at the decks, and the phone screen shows Grandma too.
Shot 6.1
The grandmother in the user's photo, covering her eyes with green fruits, repainted as a graffiti version of her DJing in headphones.
Shot 6.2
A pixel-style family around the dinner table, with bright sunshine outside the window.
Shot 6.3
The winged boy and his family stand on a rooftop, looking up at fireworks filling the sky.
Shot 6.4
The same fireworks rendered in oil painting, pixel art, graffiti and paper-cut, bursting in turn at the end of the film.
05 / Results
The 69-second 9:16 vertical film was released on Kuaishou on January 23, 2025 with the campaign hashtag. The organizers boosted it, and it drew 1.336M views and 58K likes on Kuaishou.
Case Study
What can a photo of a stone house turn into?
In this film, it is first “cut” into a red paper-sculpture city, then takes viewers into a Van Gogh-style starry sky, a pixel-art commute home and a DJ session in front of a graffiti wall.
Kuaishou Kling AI invited us to make this 69-second vertical short for the vivo × Kuaishou Kling AI Spring Festival Creative Challenge, built from photos taken by vivo users. It went from kickoff to release on Kuaishou in under five days.
01
The requirements were clear: make a short of about one minute using at least four or five user photos carrying the vivo watermark, and use AI to transform them in unexpected ways. It should be fun and feel high-tech, ideally with some Spring Festival atmosphere, and must not claim the photos were taken by the creators.
The hard part was that the photos were only a starting point. Simply animating a few photos one after another is something viewers scroll past and forget. We needed a thread to string several unrelated photos into one story.
The strongest emotion of the Spring Festival is going home. So we settled on the theme “Instant · vivo Cosmic Dream Adventure”: each photo opens a world in a different art style, and in every world someone is hurrying home.
02
We chose paper-cut, oil painting, pixel art and graffiti. The four differ enough in texture and color that viewers know at once when they've entered a new world, and the red of paper-cut carries a built-in New Year feel.
Switching styles alone wasn't enough; someone in each world had to be doing something. Paper-cut is the opening city; in the oil painting, a boy climbs a sky ladder and grows wings; in pixel art, an office worker leaps onto a train and slices through a dragon blocking his way home; in graffiti, a granddaughter pulls her grandma in to DJ together.
Each style was first locked in with stills, keeping characters' clothing, colors and proportions consistent within a segment, before the stills were turned into moving shots.
03
After reviewing the first cut, the organizers wanted the film to make one thing clear: these photos were taken by vivo users. In the first cut the images started transforming right away, and viewers never saw what the original photos looked like.
We restructured it as “snap first, then transform”: the opening adds a shot of a girl holding up her phone vertically to photograph the stone house, and before each world begins, a shutter clicks, the user photo appears with its original vivo watermark, and then it cuts to the AI image with the same composition.
The voiceover changed too, to “When you want to go home, take a photo,” “When you want to fly up and look around, take a photo,” and “When you want to clock out, take a photo.” Every segment starts with taking a photo, so the phone becomes what sets each story in motion.
04
The biggest risk in joining four styles is that viewers feel they're watching four clips stitched together. For every transition we found something that could carry the viewer across:
The stone house photo is “cut” into a paper sculpture using first-and-last-frame generation; the ladder in the paper-cut forest connects to the oil-painted sky ladder; the end of the oil-painting segment bursts through the clouds and pushes fast into the pixel city; the pixel figure knocks on a wooden door, and in the next shot a graffiti-style Grandma opens it.
A pixel-style hand knocks and a graffiti-style Grandma opens the door. The style changes, but the action of coming home never breaks.
The ending also returns to taking photos: the granddaughter raises her phone to photograph Grandma at the decks, followed by a user photo of a grandmother covering her eyes with green fruits and its graffiti version, then a pixel family at dinner, a rooftop fireworks view in oil painting, and fireworks in several styles going off together.
The winged boy and his family watch fireworks from a rooftop, bringing the adventures from every world to rest in a reunion.
05
With time tight, we split the film into segments by style and worked on them simultaneously: some on paper-cut, some on oil painting, some on pixel art and graffiti, with others handling the opening and ending, and editing running in parallel.
Every segment followed the same order: pick the photos and set the style, write the segment's small story, create stills with Midjourney, turn the stills into moving shots with Kling AI, and finally move into editing.
All stills, videos and prompts went into a single storyboard document arranged in final-cut order, so the editor could match every shot from that one document. Music, fonts and sound effects all used licensed assets.
06
The film was released on Kuaishou with the campaign hashtag on January 23, 2025. The organizers boosted it, and on Kuaishou it drew 1.336M plays, with 58K likes.
For the brand, the user photos in the film aren't just decorative assets; each one is what sets a story in motion: someone takes a photo first, and the adventure follows. Viewers come away thinking the casual snapshots on their own phones could be played with like this too.
For us, it was a short, intensive exercise: a theme that can tie many photos together, a few styles that differ enough, something to carry viewers across every transition, and a workflow split into parallel segments. Together they made it possible to deliver a complete story short in just a few days.
FAQ
Yes. This film starts from photos taken by vivo users: viewers first see the original photo, then it cuts to paper-cut, oil-painting, pixel-art and graffiti images with the same composition. Each photo leads into a small story, and everything closes on a Spring Festival reunion.
This project took under five days from kickoff to release on Kuaishou. The approach was to split the work by style and run segments in parallel: each segment locks its stills and style first, then generates moving shots, with all shots kept in one storyboard document and editing running alongside.
Find something to carry the viewer across each transition: the same stone house “cut” from photo to paper sculpture, a paper-cut ladder leading to an oil-painted sky ladder, the camera bursting through clouds into a pixel city, and a pixel figure knocking on a door that a graffiti grandma opens.
Yes. This film was made in 9:16 at 1080 × 1920, with voiceover captions, and released directly on Kuaishou.
Approach
Production went in order: selecting user photos, setting styles, writing story copy, generating images, and finally editing. Rather than stopping at a vague idea of “many dimensions of time and space,” the plan came down to plots that could actually be shown, such as climbing, going home, and grandmother and granddaughter making music, giving paper-cut, oil painting, pixel art and graffiti each a direction of action that finally converges on a Spring Festival reunion.
Because the brief required making clear that the photos were taken by vivo users, the opening highlights where the photos came from, and the story adds the act of taking pictures, comparisons between photos and art images, and copy such as “wings for your dreams” and “heading home from work.” Taking a photo on a phone becomes what sets the story in motion: first a moment from everyday life is captured, then AI expands it.
The grandmother-and-granddaughter segment builds step by step: opening the door, close-ups of the DJ gear, the two in the same frame, and Grandma taking over herself. The shots first establish the granddaughter's hobby, then bring Grandma in, and finally return to capturing it on a phone; the bold graffiti colors set off the lighthearted interaction and place “every great moment” among family.
More Work
Ideal for brand launches · public-sector communications · cultural-tourism campaigns · IP transformation · event openers · earnings visualization · social campaigns · AI workflow development
