From Zero to an AI Short Drama Channel: Topic, Script, Storyboard and Publishing
Building an AI short drama channel feels a lot like opening a small restaurant. You don't start by buying the fanciest stove — you start with a menu people actually want to order. The same logic applies here: topic first, then script, then storyboard, then publishing. Get the order right and the whole kitchen runs smoother.
Below is the workflow I'd walk a friend through if they told me they wanted to launch an AI short drama channel this month, using the tools inside 墨川导演台 (MiniMax H3 AI Director Studio).
Step 1: Pick a Topic That Survives the Scroll Test
Most beginners obsess over visuals before they've locked a premise. That's backwards. A gorgeous clip with no hook is like a beautifully plated dish nobody ordered.
Three practical filters for choosing your topic:
- One-line tension. If you can't describe the conflict in a single sentence ("the maid is secretly the CEO's daughter"), the audience won't either.
- Visual feasibility. Ask yourself: can this scene be built with characters, props, and locations I can actually generate? A courtroom drama needs more assets than a two-person apartment scene.
- Series potential. Short dramas live on cliffhangers. Pick a premise that can stretch across 10–30 episodes without repeating itself.
Once you have a rough idea, open AI 编剧 inside the director studio. You chat with it the way you'd brief a co-writer, and it replies with a six-segment script structure plus a storyboard draft — and crucially, it writes that draft into your 剧本库 rather than leaving it floating in the chat. The AI writer supports Chinese, English, Spanish, Arabic, and Japanese, so if you're targeting an overseas short-drama audience, you can draft in the target language from the start.
💡 Tip: If you already have a preferred LLM, the writing and dialogue features let you plug in your own API key. You're not locked into one brain.
Step 2: Turn the Topic into a Real Script and Shot List
Here's where a lot of creators stall. They get a nice premise, then freeze because "script" sounds intimidating. Think of it as a shopping list, not literature.
Inside 剧本库, you manage scripts, episodes, and storyboard cards. You can import an existing script or start a new one. The six-segment structure the AI writer gives you is a skeleton — you still need to flesh out dialogue, pacing, and the emotional beats.
A few working habits that save time later:
- Write in episodes, not scenes. Each episode should end on a question the viewer needs answered.
- Name your characters early. Before generating anything, decide who they are and what they look like — because consistency is the hardest part of AI video.
- Keep shot descriptions short and physical. "She slams the door, rain on her face" beats "she feels betrayed."
Once the script feels solid, move into 项目库. This is where you organize generation tasks and versions by project. You can generate single shots or batch-generate video, which matters a lot when you're producing a full episode rather than a one-off clip.
Step 3: Storyboard, Assets, and Consistency — The Part Everyone Underestimates
If script is the menu, storyboard is the kitchen prep. This is where AI short drama lives or dies.
The 资产库 is your pantry: characters, scenes, props, and reference videos. Upload reference images for your characters and locations so the model keeps them looking the same across shots. This is the single biggest difference between amateur-looking AI drama and something that actually holds together.
For visuals, use AI 制图 to generate first frames, last frames, and character reference images for each storyboard card. Text-to-image and image-to-image both work here — start from a reference when consistency matters, and from pure text when you're exploring.
A workflow that keeps things sane:
- Lock character reference images first.
- Generate a first frame and a last frame for each key shot.
- Queue the shots through the cloud ComfyUI workflow, which handles reference-image consistency, storyboard transitions, and batch queuing.
- Review in AI 日志 / 系统志, where you can watch generation logs and system status in real time.
Don't forget audio. 音频库 covers voice cloning, lip-sync, background music, and sound effects. AI 配音 uses IndexTTS 2.5 for multilingual voiceover with emotion control — so your lead can sound cold in episode three and broken in episode seven without you re-recording anything.
If your channel leans musical or you want a promo MV, AI MV handles AI music video generation as a separate track.
Step 4: Choose Your Runtime, Then Publish
You have three real options for where the heavy lifting happens:
- Local deployment — runs on your own GPU machine. Good if you already own the hardware.
- Cloud deployment — connects to a GPU server you rent, via SSH tunnel. Supports AutoDL, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, 仙宫云 (Xiangongyun), and custom SSH servers. The local tunnel ports are isolated per user, so multiple people don't collide.
- API calls — integrate the studio's capabilities into your own pipeline.
If you want to test cloud deployment on 仙宫云 specifically, the flow is: register at their site with invite code B1H9M6, complete verification, then send your 仙宫云 account ID to customer service. Once your test account is opened, you'll see the director studio image — deploy an instance with it, grab the SSH host, port, and password from the instance panel, and paste them into the 云部署 page. Click 验证 SSH, then 启动云端 ComfyUI, and wait for the green success indicator. Then you're ready to write a script and test a video generation.
On publishing itself: the platform doesn't publish for you. What it does is give you a repeatable production line so you can actually ship on a schedule. Batch your episodes, keep a consistent visual identity, and publish at a rhythm your audience can predict. That predictability is what turns viewers into subscribers.
A Few Honest Notes Before You Start
- Don't chase perfection on episode one. Your tenth episode will be better, and that's fine.
- Consistency beats novelty. A recognizable character style is worth more than a flashy one-off shot.
- Keep your asset library clean. Future-you will thank present-you.
If you want to see the full toolset in action or ask about deployment specifics, the official site is www.ymcdirector.com, and the support WeChat is ymcandai. You can also find the team on Taobao by searching 「杨墨川AI」. For anything involving pricing, hardware requirements, or account setup, check with the official site or the WeChat contact — those details shift, and it's better to get them straight from the source.
Start with one topic, one script, one storyboard. Publish it. Then do it again. That's the whole channel.
