AI comic dramas are attracting more and more viewers, yet ordinary creators are finding it harder and harder to make money.
This is not just your imagination. DataEye estimates show that in 2025, the domestic comic drama user base was about 120 million, and by the first half of 2026, the user base had exceeded 600 million, multiplying several times over.
Competition has also grown fiercer. In the first half of 2026, 221,900 AI comic dramas were released on Douyin alone, yet only 1,055 surpassed 100 million views, putting the hit rate as low as 0.48%.
On average, out of every 210 new dramas, only 1 can break through。
AI has leveled the production threshold for short drama comic dramas, while also erecting even more insurmountable walls for ordinary creators:themes are becoming increasingly homogenized, paid traffic distribution keeps raising creative costs, and regulation of AI comic dramas is gradually becoming stricter…
After the short drama red ocean, is there still a way out for ordinary creators?
Yes, but you must change your approach.
If you merely mechanically complete one video after another, competing on stamina and gambling on probability, being eliminated is only a matter of time; the real way out lies in accumulating reusable creative methods, possessing stable production capacity, and commercial landing opportunities。
At this year's WAIC, SenseTime released Seko 3.0, which directly forms a closed loop of professional production, creator growth, and commercial landing.
Director Li Rang used Seko to turn an ordinary classroom assignment, "Farewell," into hit content with over 10 million views.
Chen Ke Studio used Seko to create the comic drama series "The Treasure-Gathering Immortal Basin: The Mixed Spiritual Root Is the Real Boss," which repeatedly topped the Hongguo Comic Drama Chart at No. 1.
Even more impressive, Seko 3.0 packages these top creators' hit-making methodologies into one-click reusable Skills, allowing ordinary people to directly inherit the logic and taste of masters and create premium content。
Add to that the full support in computing power, training, and commercial orders from the Seko industrial base in Xuhui, Shanghai, further completing the key links from content creation to commercial landing。
What are the actual results of packaging masters' methods into Skills? From content production to commercialization, can ordinary people also make it through? Today let's do a hands-on test together and see.
01. Upgrade of Premium Short Comic Drama Creation
We open Seko 3.0 and select the Creative Agent mode. Click below the input box onMore Skills。
Here, Seko 3.0 directly packages the creative methodologies of top directors and screenwriters into out-of-the-box professional Skills。
Popular Short Drama Skill
We randomly click a popular Skill, such as BJD Ancient Costume Sweet Romance Drama, and can directly view its use cases, usage method, output information, and sample video.
Each Skill is the creative soul of a master. We click to create with the Skill, and Seko 3.0 generates an infinite canvas, guiding you step by step to complete the creation.
We do not need to study complex prompts at all; we simply input the story outline in plain language:
[Sickly Prince × Daughter of a Rich Merchant], she marries into the prince's household for the position of imperial merchant, while he uses her trade routes to secretly investigate an old case; a marriage contract where each takes what they need leads two people each harboring secrets to fake it for real amid joint business dealings and mutual testing, and to uncover a military pay conspiracy that shakes the court.
Professional Skills automatically inject mature methodologies into the script, characters, and camera language. Seko 3.0 breaks down tasks according to our creative goals, automatically organizes the workflow, and guides us step by step while helping us confirm the story outline, character images, and scene assets.
If there's anything you're unsatisfied with during the process, you can revise it anytime in the chat box in plain language, with zero communication pressure.
We only need to confirm the information, and Seko 3.0 will gradually generate content and present it in an orderly manner on the same infinite canvas.
Turn our story ideas into finished films using a mature production plan.
Let's take a look at the generated results together:
Ancient costume sweet romance dramas are currently the absolute traffic code on short video platforms, but they have extremely high requirements for micro-expressions, stability of character appearance, and the dynamics of highlight scenes.
Through this Skill, we can directly inherit the market-validated BJD material texture and aesthetic standards. Whether it's the morbid refinement of a frail prince or the liveliness of a wealthy merchant's legitimate daughter, the character texture and consistency are maintained very well.
We only need to focus on plot conflicts and storyboard arrangement. What originally required a miniature film and television team several weeks to complete as a motion comic drama can now be rendered and delivered in high quality by an individual within a few hours.
What Seko 3.0 lowers is not just the generation threshold, but also the organizational cost of the entire film and television production process。
Top Creator Skill
In addition to popular drama genres, Seko 3.0 also introduces exclusive Skills from top creators. When we use them,we can also learn the working methods of mature creators through osmosis, shortening the growth path from beginner to professional。
In the past, making biographies of historical figures had very high barriers, from literature retrieval, storyboard design, and shot type planning to unifying the style of clothing and appearance.
But in Seko 3.0, top AI director Li Rang in the industry has already summarized and shared an excellent creative process—the Celebrity Biography Short Film Skill.
We select the Skill and enter one sentence:
Create a biographical short film about Li Qingzhao.
Seko 3.0 will automatically output a standardized story structure outline and historical basis.
All character settings, scenes, and key prop materials are laid out on the same canvas, allowing creation and modification to flow in one go.
Under the guidance of the Skill, we let the Agent help us create step by step in the manner of a professional director.
For example, before generating storyboard videos, Seko 3.0 will automatically recheck whether the materials are ready and provide revision suggestions, helping us fill in character, scene, and key prop images with one click.
We only need to verify whether the creative plan matches our ideas, and click confirm.
Let's take a look at the final generated results together:
Would you believe it? With one sentence, AI helped me reproduce the key trajectory of Li Qingzhao's life through video. The organization of key events is very precise, and the visual quality is also excellent.
Although the dubbing intonation of individual words still has room for fine-tuning, the shot narration and historical atmosphere of the entire short film are already far more complete than expected.
In Seko 3.0, there are many similar Skills.We can learn professional creative processes on demand, such as finished film workflows, viral content fission, script planning, storyboard planning, and art asset design, turning the expertise of masters into our own methodology。
02. Creators' New Business Landscape
Once you've created good content, how do you monetize it?
In the past, individual AI creators found it difficult to connect with commercial orders or carry out large-scale commercial distribution. Seko 3.0, relying on theSenseTime Seko OPC Baselocated at the West Bund in Xuhui, Shanghai, has built a clear growth and monetization path for individual creators.
Under the incubation of the Seko system, we can clearly choose the business growth curve that suits us.
Premium Short Comic Dramas
Nowadays, more and more people can use AI to mass-produce videos. If we want our work to stand out, we need to put more energy into improving the story and the visual quality of the shots, and carefully polish a premium short comic drama that keeps viewers following along.
Once a work proves successful, there are further opportunities to connect with platform projects, IP collaborations, or co-productions, turning a personal work into a truly deliverable commercial project.
IP-Based Creation
We can also keep updating around fixed characters and content directions, gradually building the account into our own virtual IP.
For example, 《老头们的快乐生活》, which focuses on a group portrait of elderly programmers, or the Asong series 《阿松的奋斗》. With down-to-earth stories, we can make the audience remember the characters, resonate with them, and be willing to keep following along.
Once the account has a certain level of influence, it can expand into brand collaborations, IP licensing, and even more commercial opportunities.
AI Short Comic Dramas Going Global
Overseas short dramas are also gaining strong momentum. In June 2025, there were 5000+ new releases in a single month; by June 2026, 38722, a 7-fold surge!
TikTok micro short dramas earned 82 million USD in revenue share in half a year, equivalent to over 550 million RMB, and AI short dramas have become the fastest-growing category.
Seko 3.0 provides complete support for going global, such as the overseas drama re-drawing Skill, which can help us continue adapting stories that have already proven successful domestically into versions with different languages, different characters, and different cultural backgrounds, completing all overseas content creation in Chinese.
If a work achieves good data overseas, creators can further connect with overseas platforms, cross-border settlement, and copyright compliance services. Outstanding projects also have the opportunity to receive investment or co-production support from Seko, gradually building their own overseas content label.
Let's talk about the usage cost that everyone cares about more.Currently during the anniversary celebration, non-members who log in can first try Seedance 2.0 Mini for free。
The Seko official website (seko.sensetime.com) now has a 50% discount for the first purchase of a monthly membership and a 60% discount for the first purchase of an annual membership, with Seedance 2.0 at a minimum of about 0.42 yuan/second. Everyone can run a few real projects and estimate the cost。
If it works smoothly for you and you truly have long-term needs, then it is not too late to consider a membership.
03. Some Sharing
A red ocean in short dramas does not mean ordinary creators have no opportunities; rather, it pushes us to abandon low-quality copying and the gacha-like betting on breakout hits.
The biggest pain point of AI tools is fragmentation: using tool A to generate images, software B to edit, and tool C to dub.
In Seko 3.0, the scattered creative process can continue progressing on one infinite canvas.
The Agent is responsible for organizing and scheduling the overall workflow; Skill provides professional methodologies packaged by top creators; the canvas preserves all materials, historical versions, and contextual relationships.
Creators always retain control over aesthetics and story, rather than handing creation entirely over to uncontrollable one-click generation.
A tool with true long-term value for creators should not just piece together a work for you by luck, but should help us build a creative methodology that can be used repeatedly,truly turning the breakout experience of experts into a production asset that ordinary people like us can use at any time。
The industry is moving from competition among single-point models toward the implementation of complete workflows. No matter how powerful a single model is, if it cannot seamlessly integrate into the workflow of storyboarding, face preservation, and audio-video synthesis, it is just a toy in the laboratory.
What gets squeezed out in the red ocean of short dramas is outdated, legacy capacity, while creators who master new workflows are ushering in a blue ocean that belongs to them.
Original link:Audiences are growing, but making money is getting harder and harder—the AI short comic drama business has changed.