The character versions are made the same way as the human ones, with a different face going in. People take a still of a character — Shrek, the Hotel Transylvania cast, a footballer — and run it through a CapCut template or an image-to-video generator, so the character appears on the golden-hour pier singing into the lens. The technique is identical. What changes is who is in the photo, and that is where the rules start mattering.
What are the character versions of the Raindance AI trend?
The trend began as a real TikTok challenge in December 2025, built around the bridge of "Raindance" by Dave featuring Tems where Tems repeats "I love you". Within weeks it split into a few recognisable families:
- Animated-character edits. Shrek is the big one, usually Shrek and Fiona as a duet, played straight — the joke being an ogre delivering a sincere love song at sunset. Hotel Transylvania (Mavis and Johnny) is the other recurring pair, and the same treatment lands on whatever animated couple is in circulation that month.
- Footballer and athlete edits. Fan accounts put players on the pier, often two rivals side by side. These live almost entirely on fan pages.
- Game and franchise characters. Anything with a recognisable face and an existing fanbase.
- Deliberately absurd subjects. Mascots, statues, cartoon animals. These travel further than careful edits, because the gag is the mismatch between a tender ballad and an unlikely singer.
They all share the visual grammar of the trend: a wooden pier over the sea, low sun, a medium close-up, the subject looking straight down the lens, a slow push-in. The trend explained covers the format, and the look traces back to the real music video, shot in Lagos and opening on a pier at sunset.
How do people make them?
Three routes, in rough order of how common they are.
- CapCut templates. The simplest. Drop a still of the character into a template slot and the template handles the cuts, timing and audio. No AI person generation is involved — the template is editing the image you gave it. This is why character versions spread so fast: a Shrek screenshot is easy to find and the template is free. Walkthrough in the CapCut template guide.
- Face-swap and motion-control tools. People take an existing pier clip and swap a character's face onto it, or drive a still image with a reference performance. This gets closer to "the character is really singing", and it is where most of the ethical problems live, because the same tool that puts Shrek on a pier puts a real person there.
- Image-to-video generators. Feed a character still into a model with a prompt describing the pier scene. Results vary a lot with stylised art — models trained mostly on photographs drift toward realism and give you an uncanny half-human. The prompt structure that works is in the Raindance AI prompt guide.
Our own generator is built for real photos of real people and pets, so it is not the tool for an ogre — a cartoon still gets animated as if it were a person, and you will not like the result. For a duet of two real people, duet mode is the relevant feature.
Can I make a Raindance AI video with a celebrity?
Not with us, and you should think hard before doing it anywhere else.
Our tool requires that everyone in the video is a consenting adult. It is built for four cases: yourself, you and your partner, friends who have agreed, and your pets. We do not allow minors, and we do not allow photos of people who have not agreed to be in the video.
The reasons are not only ours:
- Platform rules. Major platforms prohibit misleading synthetic media of real people, and TikTok asks creators to label realistic AI-generated content — there is an AI-generated content toggle under "More options" before posting. Realistic video of an identifiable person who did not consent is the category most likely to be removed, and repeat removals cost you the account. TikTok's help pages cover why audio gets removed and how to appeal a muted video; likeness takedowns are handled separately and are less forgiving.
- Likeness and publicity rights. Many jurisdictions give people control over commercial use of their name, image and voice. A fan edit is not automatically fine, and it stops being arguable the moment it looks real or promotes something. This is not legal advice — if you are making something commercial with a real person in it, get permission in writing.
- Harm, not just rules. What this trend does is make someone appear to sing a love song to camera. Pointed at an ex, a classmate, a coworker, or a stranger whose photos you took from their profile, that is making someone appear to express intimate feelings they never expressed. People have been harassed with exactly this format. Do not do it, even privately, even as a joke. Ask them first.
So: no celebrities, no exes, no strangers, no colleagues, no one's children. If you cannot get a yes, pick a different subject.
What are the copyrighted-character versions, legally?
Shrek, the Hotel Transylvania cast and most game characters are owned by studios. Fan edits are extremely common and usually tolerated, but "common" is not "permitted" — studios do issue takedowns, and the risk rises sharply if you monetise the video or imply the studio made it. Again, not legal advice. If a character edit gets removed, that is a normal outcome rather than a bug.
What should I make instead?
The consented versions are genuinely funnier, and they perform better because the audience knows the people.
- You, straight-faced. The most effective version of this trend. No irony, just you on the pier at golden hour. How to make one.
- You and your partner as a duet. Two photos, one person each, side by side on the pier. The couple guide covers the photo pairing that makes it work.
- Friends who agreed, as a duet. Two friends who absolutely cannot sing, playing it completely seriously. Ask first; it takes one message.
- Your dog and your cat. The highest-return version there is. An earnest golden retriever on a pier does more comic work than any character edit, and nobody needs to consent except you. Pets mode and the pet guide.
- Scene swaps instead of face swaps. Keep yourself and change the world: rain on the pier at blue hour, sunset beach, reception lights under string lights.
- A cosplay version of yourself. If you want the character energy, be the character. Your face, their outfit — no consent problem, no likeness problem.
All of these are one photo and a few minutes. You get one free 5-second watermarked teaser per account to test your photo (details), and full clips start at $4.99 — pricing. The real limits: the clip is silent, no song and no AI vocals, so you add the official sound in TikTok yourself (how), and the mouth movement is a soft singing performance rather than exact lip-sync, because the model never hears the track.
We are not affiliated with Dave, Tems, their labels, TikTok, CapCut, DreamWorks, Sony or the Raindance Film Festival.