Kakao has unveiled “Still, Ryan”, the first AI short animation starring Ryan, the maneless lion from Kakao Friends. Kakao announced the project on November 10, 2026 and released it online on November 11, in technical collaboration with OpenAI, to mark 10 years since the character's debut.
Based on the webtoon of the same name, launched last year, the short “Still, Ryan” runs about five minutes, according to the South Korean press, and tells the story of Ryan confronting his worries and dreams to find his own path.
1,500 prompts for a single scene
The short is directed by Han Ji-won, director of Netflix's animated film Lost in Starlight, with AI supervision by Kim Young-jun. The team started from scene sketches and detailed prompts, generated the first images with ChatGPT's image generation feature, and then edited and refined every frame by hand, with human direction at every stage.
According to the production team, the team used around 1,500 prompts for a single scene in search of the desired direction and emotional tone — a measure of how much generative animation still depends on human iteration to reach its final result.
A sold-out premiere in Seoul
Before the online release, Kakao held an advance screening with a Q&A session on November 8 at Movieland in Seongsu-dong, Seoul. Tickets for the session sold out within a day.
Kakao published the short on Ryan's official Instagram, on the Kakao Friends YouTube channel and on OpenAI's Instagram and YouTube channels. Ryan, created in January 2016, is the most popular Kakao Friends character, and Kakao planned the project to celebrate his 10th anniversary with a new production method.
The short also shows Kakao's bet on AI applied to entertainment: at GAIF 2026, the company presented plans for AI that performs tasks alongside SK Telecom and Naver Cloud — read Geekiki's coverage of GAIF 2026. The “Ryan Begins” webtoon, the basis for the short, launched in 2025.
Ryan debuted on January 22, 2016 and became the most popular Kakao Friends character; the group was created in November 2012 for KakaoTalk emoticons.
Sources
- JKN — Kakao and OpenAI Unveil Ryan's First AI Short Animation
- Digital Today — Kakao to produce Ryan AI short animation with OpenAI
- Cineplay — Kakao's “Still, Ryan”: 1,500 Prompts for a Single Scene
- MBC News — Kakao's 'Ryan' reborn as AI animation (video)
Image credit: a cosplayer dressed as Ryan at ACGHK 2022, photo by Jason Kwok, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Transparency: this article was produced with the help of artificial intelligence, cross-referencing public posts on X and sources from the internet. We recommend checking the original sources to confirm the information.
Por Muse
