For designers, art directors, content creators, filmmakers and marketers who want to think like a strategist and produce like a full studio. Three weeks of creative, brand and campaign strategy, then seven weeks of making: image, posters, film, animation, sound, music and post-production, all on one brand. Week twelve is Demo Day, where you show the live campaign you built.
When anyone can generate a thousand options, the value moves to knowing which one is any good. That has always been yours.
We remove the production ceiling entirely, so your judgement, not your output speed, becomes the only limit on what you make.
weeks of strategy before a single asset: creative, brand and campaign. You learn what makes work worth making, so everything you produce afterwards has a reason to exist.
weeks of pure content creation. Image craft, posters and flat creative, scripts, film direction, animation, sound design, music, voice, and a full post-production pipeline: edit, colour, mix and delivery.
brand, carried from its first insight to a published campaign with a finished brand film at its centre. You present it at Demo Day in week twelve.
The Promise
Anyone can type a prompt now. What clients and employers pay for is knowing what to make, why it will work, and making it well. This programme teaches the thinking first, then spends seven weeks on the making, image, film, sound and post, then puts it in front of real people.
Creative strategy, brand strategy, campaign strategy and visual language. You learn how to find an insight, what makes an idea worthy, how brands are built and how they change, so every frame you make later has a reason to exist.
Image craft and image-to-image, posters and flat creative, scripts, then film: directing, generating, animating. Then sound design, music and voice, and a real post-production pipeline: edit, colour, clean-up, mix and delivery.
You plan the campaign, publish it and read the results. Then at Demo Day you present the whole thing, from first insight to finished film to live campaign. A case study, not a folder of experiments.
Who This Is For
Designers who want to own the thinking, not just the pixels. Marketers who want to make the work, not just brief it. Anyone whose job is to make people notice, feel and act.
Where It Comes From
AI for Creatives started as a bespoke programme for the Derana Macroentertainment teams in Colombo in early 2026, run over several weeks by Ammar Ahamed and Lishan Peiris.
The sessions were built around the teams' own workflows rather than a fixed deck: practical generative-AI work, and the judgement to know when to reach for it. This 12-week cohort takes what worked in that room and adds the depth a full campaign needs: strategy first, then film, sound and post-production.
See how it ran with Derana →What You Leave With
Not a certificate of attendance. A complete brand campaign with a finished film at its centre, built layer by layer, from the strategy that justifies it to the post-production that makes it look real.
Evidence-backed insights, a creative brief, a brand platform and voice guide, and a one-page campaign strategy with the big idea every asset answers to. Weeks 1 to 3.
A campaign image library in one consistent look: product scenes made image-to-image from real photos, recurring characters and worlds, and the prompt system that produces them.
A key visual, a print-ready poster series finished in Photoshop or Affinity, and a static ad and carousel set in every size the campaign needs.
A 60–90 second film taken from treatment and storyboard through generation, animation and a full post-production pass: edited, graded, cleaned up and mastered, plus cut-downs for every feed.
An original score, a sonic logo, a sound-design pass and voiceovers, mixed to the right loudness for every platform. The half of the film most people forget.
A content calendar, the campaign published (or fully launch-ready if your brand can't go live yet), the results read back, and a Demo Day case study that shows the whole journey. The centrepiece of your portfolio.
The Creative AI Toolkit
You'll work hands-on with the best creative AI tools in the world, but the real skill is chaining them into one workflow. We teach you to move an idea across tools end to end, not just play with each one in isolation.
Claude helps you research the audience and pressure-test the strategy and brief → Midjourney and Gemini build the key visual and turn a real product photo into campaign scenes → Photoshop or Affinity set the type and finish the posters → Higgsfield and Runway animate it into a film, with ElevenLabs and Suno on sound → Canva resizes everything and it ships. One idea, one pipeline, a live campaign.
AI cinematic video and visual effects, dynamic camera moves, stylised shots, and motion from text or stills. Turn a Claude-written shot list into film-grade footage in minutes.
A suite of experimental AI research tools from Google, including generative art, music, and creative experiments. Cutting-edge tools for adventurous creators exploring the frontier.
AI video creation and editing platform. Convert text, images, or audio into polished videos. Perfect for content creators, marketers, and filmmakers working at scale.
The world's most powerful image generator for creative work. Logos, brand assets, illustrations, concept art, all driven by your prompts.
Commercially safe generative AI built into the Adobe ecosystem. Seamless for designers working in Photoshop, Illustrator, and Express.
A pro-grade, one-time-purchase alternative to Adobe for photo editing, vector design, and layout. Where you composite, retouch, and brand AI-generated assets into a finished deliverable.
Edit and transform real photos with words: place a product in a new scene, relight it, swap backgrounds, keep faces and packaging consistent across a whole set.
Original scores, jingles and sonic logos from a text prompt. The music bed under your hero film and every cut-down, in the mood your campaign needs.
Realistic voiceovers, character voices, audio branding, and narration. Indistinguishable from human recording at a fraction of the cost and time.
Text-to-video, video editing, and AI VFX. The industry standard for AI filmmakers. Used by studios worldwide for real production work.
Generate and edit cinematic video from text and images. Perfect for music videos, short films, branded content, and visual storytelling at scale.
Generates cinematic shots with sound already in them, dialogue, ambience and effects. Strong camera control for directed, shot-by-shot filmmaking.
The professional post-production suite, with a free version. Where AI footage gets cut, colour-matched, graded and mixed into something that looks shot, not generated.
Upscales, sharpens and de-noises AI images and video, and smooths frame rates. The finishing step that takes generated footage to broadcast and print quality.
The world's best AI writing collaborator. Long-form copy, scripts, story development, brand voice, it matches your tone and elevates your ideas.
Brainstorming, ideation, rapid drafting, and editing. The most versatile creative AI, useful at every stage of the creative process.
AI-generated decks, pitch documents, and visual presentations. From brief to beautiful deck in minutes. Essential for client work.
Magic Studio, AI image generation, and one-click brand kit application. The fastest way to produce polished creative assets at volume.
We introduce you to the ecosystem. You pick the tools that match your vision. Your creative stack. Your rules.
Want to explore the full AI tools ecosystem? Browse 1,000+ tools across 40 categories, constantly updated as new creative AI launches.
Curriculum
Three weeks of strategy. Seven weeks of making: image, posters, story, film, motion, sound and post-production. One week to launch, then Demo Day. Every week writes a chapter of your Brand Book, and every session is a Teach, a Studio or a Crit, so you are making and getting feedback all the way through.
Before any tool, the thinking. You learn how strategy works, from diagnosing the situation to finding a true insight and turning it into an idea worth making. AI comes in as your researcher and sparring partner, never your author. You also choose the one brand you carry for twelve weeks, start your swipe file and meet your pod.
THE QUESTIONWhy does some work move people while the rest gets scrolled past?
A teardown of three campaigns in your category, each traced from insight to idea to execution.
Three insight statements for your brand, each with an evidence log.
Your strongest insight and three idea territories, critiqued by your pod.
A brand is what people remember and feel when they meet you. Week 2 builds that on purpose: who the brand is for, where it sits, what it promises, how it sounds and the assets that make it recognisable in a second. Then the hard part: how brands evolve without losing themselves, and how to stay consistent when AI can make a thousand variations a day.
THE QUESTIONWhat should people remember about this brand, and why would they care?
A positioning statement and a category map showing where your brand can win.
A brand platform, a voice guide and a distinctive-asset audit.
A brand evolution memo: what stays, what changes, and what AI is never allowed to touch.
Week 3 turns brand into action. You design the campaign: the objective, the two-speed plan, the big idea and the role every channel plays. Then you write the brief everything else in the programme answers to. The week ends with Brief in a Day, a real brief cracked and pitched in a single session, and Brief Lock.
THE QUESTIONWhat is the one idea that can run everywhere, and can you say it in a sentence?
A one-page campaign strategy: objective, audience, two-speed plan, big idea, channels, measures.
Your campaign brief, written on the house template.
A Brief in a Day pitch from your pod, and your own brief, locked.
The making starts with still images, because every poster, post and film frame grows from them. You define your campaign's visual language, learn to see and direct like a photographer, and climb the control ladder from a text prompt to image-to-image. The week ends by locking your visual bible: the references every later image and shot must cite.
THE QUESTIONCan you make an image that looks shot, not generated, and make it again on purpose?
A visual language board for your campaign.
Six campaign scenes made from one real product photograph.
Your visual bible, locked: characters, locations, products and style references.
Graphic design with AI as the image engine and you as the designer. You design the key visual the whole campaign grows from, finish a poster series to print standard, and adapt it into flat creative for every platform. AI makes the image. You set the type, the hierarchy and the standard. The week closes with a silent gallery walk.
THE QUESTIONCan one image carry the whole campaign at a glance?
Your key visual and a series of three posters.
Your poster series finished to print standard.
A full flat-creative set in every size, revised after the gallery walk.
Before a single frame of film, the words. People share feelings, not information, so you choose the emotion, build the story, write the copy and script the film you will direct for the next four weeks. The week ends with a table read and Mentor Day: back-to-back sessions with guest practitioners at the halfway mark.
THE QUESTIONWhat should people feel, and what story gets them there?
An emotional brief and a beat sheet for your hero film.
A copy deck and a shooting script for your hero film.
A revised script and your reset plan.
Four weeks of film start here. Great AI films are directed, not prompted, so this is pre-production. You write the treatment, stage a shared scene to learn coverage, board every beat as an approved still before any video is generated, and write camera direction a model will follow. The week ends with an animatic screening.
THE QUESTIONWhat is each shot for, and how will you get the model to make it?
A director's treatment for your film, and your version of the shared scene.
A full storyboard and a timed animatic.
A shot-prompt bible: one tested prompt and keyframe for every shot.
Production week. You generate your film shot by shot with proper coverage, keep every character and product consistent, animate the brand itself and handle people on screen. Every learner logs the iterations on one hard shot, and puts at least one real phone shot into the film. The week ends with the Braintrust: a panel reviews your rough assembly.
THE QUESTIONDoes it still feel like one film, and one brand, once it moves?
All the footage for your film, with coverage, plus one iteration log.
A motion pack and one finished hybrid shot.
A rough cut, Braintrust notes and your kill list.
Sound is half of every film and the half most AI work gets wrong. You build the soundtrack in layers the way post houses do: dialogue, backgrounds, effects and Foley, then music. You score to picture through a temp track and a spotting session, create a sonic logo, cast and direct voices, and licence-check everything.
THE QUESTIONWhat does your brand sound like?
A full sound-design pass on your film.
An original score, a cue sheet and a sonic logo.
The finished voiceover, a second-language version and music and effects stems.
Where generated clips become a finished film. You cut what the Braintrust told you to cut, lock picture, match and grade shots from different models into one look, fix artefacts, mix to platform loudness and deliver every format the campaign needs, with its provenance dossier. This is the week that makes AI work look professional.
THE QUESTIONWould anyone guess this was made with AI, and does it matter if they did?
A picture-locked edit.
Your film graded, cleaned up and finished.
The master film, three cut-downs, every delivery file and the provenance dossier.
The campaign goes out. You build the launch plan around your two-speed strategy, check every video against the ABCDs, publish to real channels and read the early results honestly. Then you turn twelve weeks of work into a case study and run it at Rehearsal Day, where the first draft is expected to get cut hard.
THE QUESTIONWhat happened when it met real people, and what would you change?
A launch plan with a four-week calendar and a complete asset matrix.
Your campaign live, or fully launch-ready, with a first results read-out.
Your Demo Day presentation, rehearsed and rewritten.
Twelve weeks, one room. Each creative presents their brand from first insight to finished film to live campaign, the way a creative director presents to a client. The brand film plays early and on the big screen. The room includes the trainers, your cohort and invited guests.
THE QUESTIONCan you take a brand from a blank page to a finished film and a campaign people saw?
Live feedback from the panel, your cohort and invited guests.
A portfolio-ready case study and showreel you can send the next morning.
Your Cocoon AI for Creatives certificate, awarded on the day.
How It Works
Benchmarked against the best ad schools, film schools and cohort programmes in the world. One brand, one Brand Book, one rubric (insight, idea, brand, craft, effect) used from week one to Demo Day, and real critique every single week.
Every week, session, capstone, rubric and reading list on one printable page, free. We follow up personally with the next cohort's dates, format and price.
Or skip ahead and book a discovery call. Maximum 20 participants per cohort.
Check your inbox in a minute, and we will be in touch with dates and price for the next cohort. You can open the syllabus right now too, it prints neatly to PDF.
Open the syllabus →Programme Format
No hidden extras. No upsells. Everything you need to go from a blank page to a live, presented campaign is inside the cohort.
One cohort, eleven weeks of live building and a Demo Day, and everything you need to leave with a real campaign and the thinking behind it.
From the Trainers
Ran the original AI for Creatives programme with the Derana teams. Leads growth and AI adoption work across the region.
LinkedIn →
Co-facilitated the Derana programme. Brand strategy, AI for brands and tech marketing, creative lead and product marketer.
LinkedIn →"These aren't just programmes and modules for us. These are skills we use on the daily. All trainers are experts in their own creative fields, using AI every day and actively seeing returns on their craft."Cocoon Creative Trainers
Questions
Three live sessions a week for eleven weeks, then Demo Day. Every session ends with a capstone, so plan for some making time between sessions as well. How much depends on how far you push your work. Session times are set per cohort and confirmed before you enrol.
Cohorts can run online, in person in Colombo, or both. The format for each cohort is confirmed before you commit to anything.
The price depends on the format and on whether you join a public cohort or bring a team. Get the syllabus and we follow up with the current price, or book a call and ask.
Some of the tools have free tiers and some do not, and you do not need every subscription. Before the making weeks start we tell you where a free tier is enough and which one or two paid plans are worth it for your kind of work, so there are no surprises.
No. You need to be comfortable on a computer and willing to make something every week. Designers and editors move faster in the making weeks, marketers move faster in the strategy weeks. The programme is built so each group stretches the other.
Most of the tools run in the browser, so a reasonably modern laptop handles almost everything. Week 10 (post-production) uses an editor such as DaVinci Resolve or CapCut, which runs better on a stronger machine. Tell us what you have and we will tell you if it will struggle.
Your choice: your own brand, a client's, your employer's (with their permission), or a brief we give you. You pick it in Week 1 and carry it all the way to Demo Day.
Publishing to real channels is the goal, but a client under NDA or a brand that has not launched does not have to. A fully scheduled, launch-ready campaign counts, and at Demo Day you present the plan and the work in place of live results.
Every session is recorded and stays available to you, so you can catch up and bring your capstone to the next critique.
You do. Cocoon claims nothing over it. Commercial use of AI-generated work also depends on each tool's own terms, which we cover in the programme, along with copyright, likeness and disclosure.
Yes. The programme started as a bespoke version for the Derana creative teams, built around their own workflows. A team version can be shaped around your brand and your briefs. See bespoke programmes.
AI for Creatives is twelve weeks of strategy, image, film, sound, post-production and publishing, built on one brand and shown at Demo Day. Your thinking. Your craft. Amplified.