I turned doodles into video clips with Runway's Motion Sketch

Runway’s Motion Sketch turns simple doodles drawn over a still image into short animated clips. In one example a text-generated image of a settler family and a herd of bison became a five-second scene of the group running as winged creatures flew overhead; the clip had surreal imperfections, including a child passing through a fencepost.

The tool can produce striking results but often needs careful guidance, much like prompting large language models. Runway’s product manager Aditi Poduval says the feature helps users get precise movement without needing to craft a specific written prompt. In hands-on tests, a snake sketched with motion arrows produced unexpected artifacts—duplications and limb-like growths—until a simple text prompt (“The snake slithers along the branch”) corrected the direction.

Uploading a photo of Prospect Park and drawing wavy flame lines yielded a dramatic bonfire that briefly revealed the original sketch in psychedelic motion while nearby trees appeared to blacken.

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