Animate AI images to video — Nano Banana and GPT Image stills

The image models that joined eroq in October 2026 make stills, and only stills: a prompt in, a picture out. The moment a frame needs to move, the Animate button hands it to the video studio as the first frame of an image-to-video clip. That is the most controllable way to make video, because the subject, the framing and the light are already decided before a single second renders. This tutorial covers making a still that animates well, the hand-off, which engine to pick, and how to write motion.

1. Make the still with motion in mind

• Pick 16:9 or 9:16 if it will move. Those two formats are native on every engine that takes a start frame. 1:1, 4:3 and 3:4 are native on fewer of them; Veo 3.1 and Runway Gen-4.5, for instance, take only the wide and the tall.
• Leave room for the move. Sky above a landscape for a crane up, space ahead of a walker, air around a product for an orbit.
• One subject, one silhouette. Crowded stills animate as crowded clips.
• Keep lettering out, or small. Text in a still can warp once the camera travels.
• Choose the image engine for the frame. Nano Banana Pro or Seedream 5.0 Pro when the still has to be right, GPT Image 2.5 Flare for dramatic key art, Nano Banana 2.1 for a quick test still.

2. Press Animate

Open any image from the History tab or your Library to see it full screen, then press Animate. The video studio opens with that image in the First frame slot, and the format switches to follow the still's own shape, snapped to the nearest ratio the chosen engine renders. Pick a fixed ratio if you want a different crop. When the clip lands, a before-and-after slider wipes it against the still it grew from.

Private-mode renders never reach your Library, so they have no Animate button. Download the image and drop or paste it into the First frame slot instead; a pasted picture rides inside the request.

3. Pick the engine

Every video engine on eroq except Sora 2 Pro, which renders from text alone, takes a start frame. The main options, priced at each engine's default settings:

Engine	Plan	Short clip	End frame	Good for
Motion One	any plan	60 for 5 s	Yes	eroq's own: sound baked in, private
Seedance 2.0 Mini	any plan	45 for 5 s	Yes	The most affordable clip, for tests
Veo 3.1 Lite	any plan	56 for 4 s	Yes	The economical Veo, native audio
Kling 3.0	Hobby	170 for 5 s	Yes	Fluid motion and faces
Hailuo 3 Max	Hobby	110 for 5 s	Yes	Fast Hailuo motion, no soundtrack
Grok Imagine	Hobby	185 for 5 s, plus a frame charge	No	Quick clips
Seedance 2.5	Creator	310 for 5 s	Yes	Long takes with sound
Veo 3.1	Creator	424 for 4 s	Yes	Dialogue, ambience and effects
Hailuo 3	Creator	175 for 5 s	Yes	Convincing physics and camera language
Runway Gen-4.5	Creator	160 for 5 s	No	Motion quality, close to the prompt

Motion Pro, eroq's second engine after Motion One, is on every account and takes a start frame in 5, 10 or 15 second clips. Wan 3.0 is on every account too, with sound and long clips where your plan allows, but no end frame. Kling 3.0 Pro, Seedance 2.0, Seedance 2.0 Fast and Veo 3.1 Fast fill in the tiers between. All credits figures are per clip at the length shown.

A practical routing rule: a face goes to Kling; rain, smoke and anything with weight to Hailuo; a clip that must arrive with sound to Veo or Seedance; and the first test of whether a still animates at all to Seedance 2.0 Mini.

4. Write the motion, not the picture

The still already tells the engine who, where and in what light. Describing it again gives the engine licence to drift from it. Write four things instead:

1. Subject: what the subject does. One action.
2. Air: what the environment does. Rain, mist, light, dust, traffic.
3. Camera: one move, named. Push-in, crane up, slow orbit, static.
4. Anchor: what holds still. "Everything else stays still" is a real instruction.

Four motion prompts, each written for a still made on one of the new models:

1. City at blue hour, Nano Banana Pro, 16:9. "Light trails stream along the river road and windows flicker on one by one, haze drifting between the towers, slow aerial drift forward, calm and steady."
2. Key art on a pier, Flare, 9:16. "He lifts his head toward the sweeping lighthouse beam, coat snapping in the wind, rain driving sideways, slow push-in, the title lettering holds still."
3. Mountain valley, Seedream 5.0 Pro, 16:9. "Morning mist slides down the ridgelines and lifts off the river, the first sun moving across the pines, slow crane up, unhurried."
4. Perfume on marble, GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst, 1:1. "A slow quarter orbit around the bottle, the highlight sliding along the glass, a thin mist curling at its base, everything else still."

5. Plan the ending with a last frame

Motion One, the Seedance family, the Veo 3.1 tiers, Kling 3.0 and Pro and both Hailuo engines also take a last frame, and render the journey between the two pictures. The end frame has to match the start or the clip morphs. The third-party image models cannot edit a picture, but Eroq One can: open the still in its Edit mode, write the change ("the same street at night, lamps lit", "the door now wide open") and it keeps the picture's frame. That edit is your last frame.

What it costs, and when it is refused

A Nano Banana Pro still plus a five-second Kling 3.0 clip is 294 credits. A Nano Banana 2.1 test still plus a Seedance 2.0 Mini test clip is 76 credits. Failed renders refund themselves, and your plan caps clip length (15 seconds on Hobby, 20 on Creator, 30 from Studio).

Apart from eroq's own Motion One and Motion Pro, video engines are moderated upstream by their providers. Seedance can refuse a start frame showing a real-looking person. When it does, the message says so and nothing is billed. Kling, Veo, Hailuo and Wan 3.0 accept the same picture. Motion One does too. Real, identifiable people without their consent are banned by the acceptable-use policy on every engine.

For the general method on any still, see the image to video guide and the image to video page. For poster-specific motion, the AI movie poster generator has the workflow, and the Nano Banana Pro guide covers making the still.

FAQ

How do I animate an AI image on eroq?

Open the image from your History or Library, press Animate, and it becomes the first frame in the video studio. Pick an engine, write what moves, and render.

Which video engines can animate a still?

Every engine except Sora 2 Pro, which works from text alone. Motion One, the Seedance, Veo 3.1, Kling and Hailuo engines also take an end frame.

Can I animate a Private-mode image?

Yes. It is not in your Library, so there is no Animate button: download it and drop or paste it into the First frame slot.

Why was my start frame refused?

Upstream engines run their own filters. Seedance, for example, can refuse a picture of a real-looking person; nothing is billed, and Kling, Veo, Hailuo or Motion One can take the same still.

Does animating a still cost more than text-to-video?

Only on Grok Imagine, which adds a charge per frame picture. Everywhere else the start image is free and you pay the engine's clip price.

Pick your best still and press Animate, or open the video studio.