Case Study · Complex
24 Hours
to Live.
An AI-Driven Social Series
A performance-driven social series for Complex, designed for TikTok and Instagram. My role focused on execution, creative direction, and building the workflow that made the series possible at a high level and at scale.
Role
The original concept existed, but there was no clear path to producing it at a high level or at scale.
I led the visual execution across the series — including logo, graphics package, motion, pacing, and overall visual identity — while also developing a custom AI-assisted image-to-video workflow that could integrate into a professional post-production pipeline.
- Key Contributions
- Led visual execution and creative direction across the series
- Designed and implemented the graphics package and motion language
- Built a repeatable AI-assisted workflow for episodic production
- Solved technical and creative challenges across episodes in real time
- Ensured consistency in character likeness, lighting, and visual tone
- Helped elevate the final output beyond early internal attempts
Process
This series was built before tools like Seedance were widely available, requiring a custom approach to AI-assisted production.
The core challenge was not just generating visuals, but building a workflow that could deliver consistent, high-quality results under real production timelines.
I developed and refined a pipeline that combined AI-generated imagery with traditional post-production techniques — allowing us to iterate quickly while maintaining control over quality, continuity, and brand safety.
The result was a system that could move at the speed of social while still delivering cinematic, cohesive episodes.
Episodes
Results
Social-native by design. Built and edited for vertical, sound-on, mobile-first viewing — pacing, hook structure, and graphic language tuned to platform behavior, not adapted from horizontal formats.
Performance-driven. Each new episode incorporated learnings from the last — what hooked, what held, what got shared — turning the series into a continuously optimized format rather than a fixed package.
Portfolio significance. One of the first publisher-led series at this scale to operationalize an AI image-to-video pipeline as the core production method — proving creative direction and AI workflows can ship a consistent, brand-safe show on a social-native cadence.