This intricate pen and ink gothic illustration features a gentle hooded skeleton in a floral embroidered cloak reaching up to a fluffy white cat perched on a vintage grimoire shelf. The cozy mystical apothecary study holds potion bottles, ivy, and delicate moths, with a crescent moon stained glass window casting soft light across the scene. The monochrome palette with subtle warm accents creates a whimsical dark academia mood full of quiet, cozy magic.

Hooded skeleton reaches up to greet a white cat perched — AI video by @CaylaCatz

@CaylaCatz · 10/21/2026

Entry in the October Videos! Bloopers welcome too theme on BudgetPixel.

reaper's day off: pick up cat, pet cat, repeat. ✨🐈‍⬛✨ With Muse, I animated one of my sketch to ai images. In my pic, the hood is down but for some reason the video ai kept magically popping the hood up. I asked Meta about it and it said there's a strong visual bias towards hoods being on. So I changed the image to start with the hood up instead of magically appearing on. I am finding it's better to go with a bias instead of fighting it so there are not weird consistency issues. You can see the original image as #5 in the series below. Before I made it hood up. https://budgetpixel.com/p/97353

This intricate pen and ink gothic illustration features a gentle hooded skeleton in a floral embroidered cloak reaching up to a fluffy white cat perched on a vintage grimoire shelf. The cozy mystical apothecary study holds potion bottles, ivy, and delicate moths, with a crescent moon stained glass window casting soft light across the scene. The monochrome palette with subtle warm accents creates a whimsical dark academia mood full of quiet, cozy magic.

Tags: gothic illustration, skeleton art, dark academia, witchy study, white cat art, grimoire books, apothecary aesthetic, crescent moon art, whimsical goth, pen and ink art, spooky cute, magical library, stained glass art, moth art, cottagecore goth

21 likes · 19 comments

Comments

CaylaCatz

Initially, the original start frame had the hood down. the problem is the video model did not keep it down. Even if I reinforced to not put the hood up, it still put the hood up. The model strongly expected the hood to be up so even if it starts off down, very quickly with 1-2 seconds, suddenly the hood is on the head. I could keep generating over & over, slightly tweaking the prompt until finally it kept the hood down but it's wasted time. once I changed the start image to the hood up, I got the video I wanted on the next gen. I redid it because the music wasn't right. It came through smoothly on the next gen too. To me it's like any tool. Know a tool, its limitations, strengths and workarounds. Like cameras. A pinhole camera has a strong vignette effect; a DSL does not. If I choose a pinhole camera, I use the vignette effect. I was using the Muse model (on Meta dot ai , currently I can make vids for free). Another vid model might be able to do hood up.

CaylaCatz

Thank you! I'm happy you liked it. I started on it before you said you liked it because I thought it'd make a good video. I'm sorry to hear about the mariachi. That's too bad. No workaround on getting the lipsync to work with the day of the dead face?

legion

I see what you were talking about now; it’s excellent—I really like it. I tried doing a lip-sync with the mariachi, but it didn’t turn out well; the lip paint makes the AI ​​misidentify the mouth...

beastxyz

I see. I guess it is because it is trained with vast images of hood down which is why it defaulted to that as the "normal"

legion

You're welcome! It turned out really well. I’ll have to experiment more with the mariachi.

beastxyz

How about using another model that allow using a start frame with the hood down?

CaylaCatz

The kitty purrs. It loves being cuddled. She can come over any time

panos

Awww... (Amalia says: I want to cuddle that kitty, too!!!)

CaylaCatz

can't wait to see what you come up with

CaylaCatz

Happy and purring because his friend is home.