Sendé on Stage: The Magic of AI in Ryan Castro's Tour

Invisible Work
Aug 15
2 min read

Updated: Aug 18

A month ago, Ryan Castro’s team came to us with a crystal-clear vision: create “Sendé,” a character that would not only star in the tour’s visuals but also interact with Ryan live on stage, following a predefined script and narration. It was a major challenge—and an irresistible opportunity to blend creativity, music, and cutting-edge technology to surprise thousands of fans.

From Sketch to Screen: The Birth of Sendé

It all began with sketches the client shared, along with a script that already featured both Sendé and his partner. From the very start, we worked with artificial intelligence, first exploring a 3D-inspired aesthetic before evolving into the definitive cartoon style they were aiming for.

The Role of AI: More Than a Tool, a Creative Partner

In this project, AI was key in several stages:

Character design: quickly iterating on the initial sketches, exploring style variations, features, and outfits until finding Sendé’s final look.
World building: designing the 4 unique settings where Sendé would live his stories, each with its own atmosphere and distinctive props.
Final look: defining the color palette, textures, and overall aesthetic to ensure visual coherence across all pieces.
Image generation and animation: producing key frames and sequences that were later assembled to bring the character to life.

The Challenges of Animating the "Impossible"

Bringing Sendé to life was a journey full of technical and creative challenges:

Flawless consistency: keeping the character identical across all 4 pieces, with wardrobe changes, prop interactions, and even scenes with another character.
A head of flames: Sendé’s most distinctive feature is his head made of fire. Animating it organically, fluidly, and expressively—without losing its fiery nature—was a unique challenge.
Lip-sync: matching every line of dialogue to the client’s narration in such a defined cartoon style required meticulous attention to detail.
AI timelines: unlike traditional workflows, working with AI is less predictable. Achieving the exact result you envision requires patience, countless iterations, and a lot of experimentation.

The Result: Stage Magic

The final outcome was four visual pieces where Sendé comes alive, tells his story, and becomes another main character in the show.

This project stands as proof of the power of collaboration: a clear client vision combined with our creative and technical flexibility to make it a reality, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with new technologies.