It was a rainy morning in Portland, and I was sipping my second pour-over coffee at my studio when something unexpected caught my eye. I had just logged into Midjourney, ready to generate a few visuals for a client, when I noticed the “Animate” button glowing softly on the interface. One click later, I was staring at something I hadn’t seen before: my image, moving—alive.
Midjourney, the beloved AI image generator known for its dreamlike compositions, just released its first video model, V1. And with it, the boundaries between still art and motion graphics may be changing for good.
Now, for just $10/month, anyone can turn a single image into a 5-second AI-generated video clip. You get 3.3 hours of fast GPU time, and yes—it’s surprisingly simple. Upload or select an image from your gallery, hit “Animate,” and within seconds, your static image begins to move. It’s like going from Photoshop to Pixar with almost no learning curve.
My first experiment? A fantasy forest scene I had made the week before. In “Auto” mode, the leaves began to rustle, sunbeams shimmered across the forest floor, and the whole image gently pulsed with life. Then I tried “Manual” mode, typing in: “a deer slowly walks across the forest path.” Sure enough, a spectral, AI-generated deer appeared and wandered into frame. It wasn’t perfect—but it felt magical.
For indie creatives like myself, this kind of tool is a game-changer. A friend of mine in Seattle, a freelance game designer, used Midjourney’s video feature to mock up a cinematic trailer scene for a project in just under an hour. “Before, I’d have to sketch storyboards, model scenes in Blender, then render them,” he told me. “Now I can produce 10 dynamic visuals in an afternoon.”
Compared to alternatives like OpenAI’s Sora ($20–$200/month) or Google’s Flow ($20/month or $249 for Ultra), Midjourney is surprisingly affordable. While each 5-second video costs roughly eight times the GPU of a still image, the total investment is still a fraction of what traditional video production would cost—especially for solo creators or small studios.
Of course, there are limitations. Videos max out at 21 seconds—you can extend your 5-second clip by four seconds up to four times. Resolution is currently capped at 480p. And in high-motion mode, the “camera movement” can sometimes feel shaky or surreal, as if it’s trying to run before it can walk.
There’s also the legal elephant in the room. Midjourney is currently facing a lawsuit from Disney and Universal over claims that it didn’t prevent users from generating copyrighted characters. The company hasn’t released a public statement, but the implications are serious—especially for commercial users. If you’re creating content for brand use, now’s the time to double down on originality and avoid anything derivative.
Despite all that, the opportunities are exciting. Imagine a future where a small business can generate product promo videos in minutes. A novelist could animate a scene from their book with just a few text prompts. A digital marketer could create eye-catching reels without ever opening After Effects. The entire content creation pipeline could shrink from weeks to hours.
In fact, a professor friend of mine in London has already started using it in his classroom. His students upload static concept art and bring it to life using Midjourney’s animation tool. “When they see their own work move, it clicks in a way that slideshows never could,” he told me.
At the moment, the video tool is only available on Midjourney’s website, and you’ll need to log in using “Continue with Discord.” The workflow is intuitive—choose your image, click “Animate,” and choose your motion type (auto or manual), and then low or high motion. Wait about a minute, and voilà: a miniature movie is born.
To me, this isn’t just a new feature—it’s a creative shift. Midjourney’s video tool may still be a version 1.0, but for storytellers, designers, educators, and brand-builders, it’s already a powerful spark. It reminds us that we don’t need perfect tools—we need possibilities.
So if you're an artist, marketer, educator, or just someone with a story to tell, click that “Animate” button. See where your image can go when it finally starts to move. You might just discover that the future of storytelling isn’t coming—it’s already here.