Painter: Inpaint

A fake beauty commercial that starts as a legitimate ad, then gradually reveals absurd AI-generated origins and surreal consequences, ending with ...

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Inspiration

This project was born from a simple question I read online: "How can I create a professional beauty cream commercial?" Instead of just answering, I decided to show it through action – and add a satirical twist about AI-generated content.

The idea: create a fake ad that starts completely realistic, then gradually reveals its absurd AI origins, ending with aliens debating whether humans even exist.

What I Learned

Creating this fake commercial taught me the complexity of professional advertising production:

  • How to orchestrate multiple AI tools for a cohesive narrative
  • Precise audio/video synchronization using character counting for timestamp estimation
  • Advanced masking techniques in After Effects for seamless compositing
  • The importance of iterative testing – some clips required 20+ regenerations
  • Workflow organization is critical: proper file naming and folder structure saved hours

How I Built It

Total time: 70 hours over 8 days

Workflow:

  1. Storyboard creation – planned the narrative arc from serious to surreal
  2. Keyframe generation – used Flux Dev, Qwen Image Edit 2025, Nano Banana
  3. Animation – Minimax Hailuo and Wan 2.2 for video generation
  4. Audio production – ElevenLabs for voiceover, Suno for music, Freepik for SFX (Alien Voice)
  5. Audio/video synchronization tests – CapCut
  6. Compositing – After Effects for masking, layering, transitions and render

The Story:

The commercial starts as a legitimate beauty ad for "Inpaint" cream. Gradually, the absurdity emerges:

  • The "active ingredient" comes from a lab technician's... donation
  • The model uses too much product and inflates like a balloon
  • She floats into space, where aliens mistake her for a weather balloon
  • Final dialogue: aliens debating whether humans exist

Challenges Faced

Technical Issues:

  • Masking errors during sliding door animations – required multiple After Effects layers
  • Perspective shifts made overlay text unreadable (partially unsolved due to camera angle changes)
  • Transition glitches between clips – Wan 2.2 failed after 20+ attempts; Hailuo solved it on first try
  • Green screen compositing using RunwayML for character extraction

Creative Challenges:

  • Maintaining visual continuity while escalating absurdity
  • Timing dialogue with visual beats – used NotebookLM to analyze real beauty ads for pacing
  • Balancing realism and satire – the ad had to look professional before revealing the joke

Tool Limitations:

Each AI tool had strengths and weaknesses. I used 6+ image generators because no single tool could handle all variations. Success required knowing when to switch tools rather than forcing one to work.

Why "Inpaint"?

The product name directly references AI's inpainting function – the technology that "fills in" missing or unwanted parts of images. It's a meta-joke: an AI-generated ad for a product named after AI technology, with increasingly unrealistic results that mirror AI's occasional absurdity.

Built With

  • after-effects
  • audacity
  • capcut
  • chatgpt
  • claude
  • comfyui
  • elevenlabs
  • flux-dev
  • flux-inpaint
  • freepik
  • minimax-hailuo
  • nano-banana
  • notebooklm
  • photopea
  • qwen-3
  • qwen-image-edit-2025
  • runwayml
  • suno
  • wan
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