This month’s reward is about desire, attraction, and surrender. Like the moth drawn to the glow of the ruby, unable to resist its pull, we are drawn to beauty, sensuality and power. We surround ourselves with them, ornament ourselves with them, and sometimes desire more power than we can hold. But what happens when we cover our eyes and let the darkness guide us?
Available On Patreon
The five character loops depict the veiled woman in different states, accompanied by a Moth loop and a Ruby Gem loop. All loops have transparent backgrounds, making it easy to layer the elements together, as I did in the bonus Resolume project, which expands the base loops into ready-to-use compositions, saving you time and taking you directly to showtime.
Seven VJ loops + a Resolume project, arranged into columns and ready for mixing. Available in FHD (1080p) and 4K (2160p) until October 31, 2026.
Creation Process
Halloween is upon us, and that’s a great excuse to go darker than usual.
I started by generating a figure completely covered in cloth in Nano Banana Pro, and then ran a few video generations in Seedance 2.0 to see if the cloth could be looped. And it did(!).
I wanted a dark, disturbing look that would also be attractive and sensual, so I started with a black moth and ornamented it with blood-red rubies. A totally absurd image (who would ornament a moth with rubies??). As I often do, I lit the scene with a red rim light so that the elements would blend well with a red central element coming from behind.
I then tried to come up with an element that could serve as the (fake) source of light at the back. I tried occult symbols, abstract symbols and red crystals, and finally settled on a rounded ruby gem, lit from behind so that the light would break inside it in interesting shapes.
I then realized that the character, all veiled up in cloth, wasn’t interesting enough for viewers to connect with. So I opted to reveal part of her face in a closeup, while concealing her eyes behind a one-piece black fabric ornamented with red rubies too.
The lips are red and sensual, so to contrast that, I thought a black moth coming out of her mouth could be mildly horrifying. And that’s what I did.
I created a reference image with the moth just starting to emerge, then gave Seedance a start frame with a closed mouth, a moth reference image, and the image of the moth emerging from her mouth. I prompted it to animate the moth exiting her mouth, walking across her veil, and disappearing behind her head.
I then had the idea of hands pulling the character backwards. I generated a medium shot from the closeup I had, with three pairs of hands reaching out from behind the woman and resting on her. One pair looked like they belonged to the character herself, and I liked the result, so I kept it.
I generated the animation in Seedance, prompting for hands that glide gently along the hood’s fabric, then close and claw into it, drawing the figure gently backward while the character resists. Her two hands lift off her chest and stretch forward.
I now needed loops that would visualize the drop in the music, so I removed the hands, leaving the character under the cloth, and asked Seedance to make the character become possessed by the music, her body led by the sound rather than dancing to it.
Finally, I generated a wings-spreading animation for the black moth element and soft light drifts inside the ruby gem element. Seedance had difficulties with the light drifts and realistic light optics, so I turned to Kling 3.0, which was more successful. I still had to stitch several video generations together in post-production to create an interesting loop.
The Seedance 2.0 animations were generated in 720p, 24fps, and the Kling 3.0 animations in 1080p, 24fps. As I did with the Athra VJ loops, I started with a start frame and asked the AI to loop the animation within the prompt, so that at around second 12-13 the animation would return to the same frame. I then looped it in post-production and exported in 30fps.
The animations were upscaled to 4K in Topaz Astra Web and slowed down 2x in the Topaz Video desktop app, before being time-remapped in After Effects to fit 120 BPM at 30fps. I removed the chroma key from the character and elements in After Effects using Keylight 1.2.
Resolume Arena Project
I started by laying the four character loops and one moth loop over the ruby gem element as a background. I then scaled down and duplicated the characters to create a main character in front, with two smaller characters further back.
This time, I created two versions for most of the compositions: one calm version that you can play during the quiet parts, and one active version that you can trigger on the drop. I’ve marked the columns to show the different states: calm is blue, and full-on is red.
I used the Transform effect to scale the loops up and down for impact, sometimes adding a minor random rotation to make things more hectic, along with the Twitch effect using the Light, RGB Shift and Blur parameters.
I also created radial character and moth arrays with the Radial Cloner effect, and used the Linear Cloner effect, using only its time-delay feature, to create echoes of the character.
An interesting mix came up when I placed the ruby gem in front of the character, so that the character is only vaguely visible behind it.
Closing the deck are some colorizing options to give you inspiration and remind you that the loops are raw material that can be changed and adapted to whatever you need.
Final Thoughts
I believe I struck a balance between dark and disturbing and attractive and sensual. That tension between the two is what draws the audience into DarkDesire.
What's Next?
More characters!
Let me know if you have any feedback or insights via email at [email protected] or DM me on Patreon / Facebook / Instagram.
Join as a superfan to support the creation of more VJ loops and tutorials, and to keep adding fresh visuals to your performance to amaze your crowds.
