How to make Oni videos with AI

Oni are the horned demons of Japanese folklore: red-skinned and blue-skinned, fanged, sometimes one-horned and sometimes three, swinging the heavy iron-studded kanabo club. They live in the mountains, raid villages, devour the unwary, and are driven out every February with thrown beans.

They are the most-staged villains in Japan and an iconography that shows up in everything from kabuki to konbini.

Oni are the horned demons of Japanese folklore: red and blue, fanged, club in hand, the figures driven out at Setsubun and the villains a thousand stories try to tame. Morphic lets you direct them in the browser. Pick a figure, a scene, or a workflow below and start now.

red oni emerging from mist on a mountain pass, storm lightCreate now

Oni you can create

Oni scenes you can direct

Red oni at the mountain pass

On a fog-shrouded pass at dusk, a red oni rises out of the mist, kanabo club lifted, storm light catching the horns and the tiger-skin loincloth.

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Red oni at the mountain pass

Shuten-doji’s mountain palace

Inside the demon king’s wooden palace on Mount Ooe. Lanterns burning, sake on the floor, Shuten-doji enthroned, the four travelling yamabushi seated below.

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Shuten-doji’s mountain palace

Ibaraki-doji at the Rashomon gate

Night at the abandoned Rashomon. Ibaraki-doji’s pale figure stands above the gate as the warrior Watanabe no Tsuna draws his sword below.

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Ibaraki-doji at the Rashomon gate

Setsubun bean-throw

At a temple gate at dusk on Setsubun, a priest casts handfuls of beans. A figure in a red oni mask flees down the steps. Lanterns and a small crowd watching.

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Setsubun bean-throw

Namahage New Year visit

Snow falling in an Oga village. A pair of straw-caped namahage knock at a wooden door, mask blank, bucket in one hand, knife in the other.

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Namahage New Year visit

Oni vs samurai duel

A clearing of bamboo at noon. A red oni swings the kanabo club. A samurai parries with a katana, the strike sending dust into the slanted light.

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Oni vs samurai duel

How to make it on Morphic

  1. 01

    Open the Video tool on Morphic

    Sign in to Morphic in your browser and head straight to the entry point below. No installs, no setup, and any device with a connection picks up where you left off.

    Open Video
  2. 02

    Set the scene in your own words

    Write the oni scene you want to see in your own words. Be specific about the moment, the lighting, the figure in frame, and the camera direction. The more concrete the description, the closer the result lands to what you pictured.

    A red oni at a fog-shrouded mountain pass at dusk, kanabo club lifted, storm light cutting across the horns, slow low-angle push-in.
  3. 03

    Generate, refine, and publish

    Morphic returns a clip to your canvas. Refine the prompt for variations, regenerate to fix what missed, or remix into a longer sequence. Download or share when the shot lands.

Related workflows

See all workflows →
Cinematic Storyboarding

Cinematic Storyboarding

Plan a multi-scene Oni episode shot-by-shot, then generate each frame and stitch the sequence together.

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Next Scene in Sequence

Next Scene in Sequence

Continue your Oni story scene by scene with continuity preserved across shots.

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Video Style Transfer

Video Style Transfer

Apply a unified painterly or cinematic look across every clip in your Oni series.

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Character Lineup

Character Lineup

Lock in consistent character designs across Oni scenes before you generate video.

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Cinematic Scene

Cinematic Scene

Compose dramatic single-shot Oni scenes with depth of field, lighting, and camera direction baked in.

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Expressions

Expressions

Iterate on facial expressions and emotion for any Oni character without re-rolling the whole scene.

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A short guide to Oni for video creators

The classical oni descends from the Buddhist demon-guardians of hell and the older Shinto idea of malevolent kami. Red oni and blue oni are the two most-rendered colours, but folklore knows green, black, and yellow oni as well. The body is human-shaped but heavier, the head is horned and tusked, the loincloth is tiger-skin (a memory of Buddhist demon iconography), and the weapon is the kanabo, a black iron club studded with spikes that can crush stone.

The most famous oni story is Shuten-doji, the demon king of Mount Ooe, who in the late Heian period was said to keep a mountain palace where he kidnapped young women of Kyoto. The hero Minamoto no Yorimitsu (Raiko) and his four loyal warriors disguised themselves as travelling yamabushi, were welcomed in, drank with him, and beheaded him in his sleep. The severed head, in some tellings, flew through the air and bit Raiko’s helmet before falling. The Shuten-doji handscroll is one of the most-copied bodies of work in Japanese painting and a foundational text for kabuki and Noh.

Folk practice still drives oni out every year at Setsubun, the day before the start of spring. Beans are thrown at the door and inside the house with the cry "oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi": demons out, fortune in. For video, the iconography of the oni is unusually photogenic: the silhouette of horns at a mountain pass, the kanabo club lifted, the storm-lit charge, the bean-throw ritual at the temple gate. Anchor each oni scene to a specific moment, a specific composition, and a specific quality of light.

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Frequently asked questions

Where can I make oni videos with AI?
You can create oni scenes directly in your browser on Morphic. Open the Text to Video tool, describe the scene you want, and Morphic produces the clip. No installs and no specialist software needed.
What kinds of oni scenes work best with AI video?
Single-shot moments with strong composition tend to work best: the red oni at the mountain pass, Shuten-doji enthroned in his palace, Ibaraki-doji at Rashomon, the Setsubun bean-throw, and the oni-versus-samurai duel. Anchor each oni scene to a specific moment, location, time of day, and mood.
How do I keep my oni consistent across scenes?
Use the Character Lineup workflow to lock each oni’s look, then reference those character cards in every prompt. Morphic preserves the horn count, skin colour, kanabo silhouette, and tiger-skin loincloth from scene to scene.
How do I write a good prompt for an oni scene?
Name the moment, the location, the time of day, the lighting, and the camera direction. Lean on the folklore palette: vermillion or indigo skin, black iron kanabo, tiger-skin, lantern light. For example: "A red oni rising from mist on a mountain pass at dusk, kanabo club lifted, storm light cutting across the horns, slow low-angle push-in." The more specific your imagery, the closer the output matches your imagination.
Can I add narration and music to my oni videos?
Yes. The Speech tool generates a voiceover from your script in the voice you choose, and the Music tool produces an original soundtrack to score the scene. Taiko-led scoring sits hard under oni footage.
What visual style works best for an oni video?
Ukiyo-e woodblock in the Yoshitoshi tradition is the iconic choice. Painterly photoreal in the storm-and-lantern palette lands hardest for the mountain and palace scenes. Cinematic anime film-still works for the duel beats. Name the style in the prompt.