Deepfake technology, or the process of digitally manipulating images to follow the movements of a video, is finally accessible to everyone and the memes keep coming. The Unravel Meme features a deepfaked video of a person singing the intro theme song from the popular 2014 Japanese anime Tokyo Ghoul.
In the popular series, Kaneki, the character who sings Unravel, tries to find his place in two different worlds. The song was originally recorded by the Japanese recording artist TK and became hugely popular online around March 2019.
The Unravel meme is similar to the viral Yakuza Baka Mitai deepfake meme that spread like wildfire across the web in 2020 and follows a similar process to create.
Making a deepfake video may look complicated, but you don't need coding experience to create the meme. In this article, we’ll walk you through the whole process of creating your own Unravel meme, with templates to help you along the way. Creating the meme involves adding a picture and a template video of someone singing Unravel into a Python code script that runs inside of many internet browsers. The code then uses AI to create the deepfake where it appears as if the subject of the photo is singing the song. To prepare files and touch them up after, we'll also be using a free online video editor called Kapwing.
Follow these 8 steps to create your own Unravel deepfake meme:
1. Resize your target image
2. Make a Google Drive folder
3. Add four files to the folder
4. Open code script
5. Add line to first code block
6. Run the script*
7. Save and speed up your deepfake
8. Add video to template + download your meme!
*Code script and tar files were sourced from the YouTube channel Homemade Memes!
1. Find an image to use and resize it
Find a photo of someone to turn into a deepfake for the Unravel meme. These are the photos the code is trained on, so if you want your deepfake to look more accurate, choose a picture where the subject is centered and a similar size.
Resize that photo to 256x256 pixels in Kapwing Studio. The photo must be these exact dimensions for the script to function later. Upload the photo to Kapwing Studio (sign in to remove the watermark for free!), then click "Custom Size" and enter 256x256. You can also crop the photo and make edits to center the subject of the photo on the canvas. To save your file, click the red "Export Image" button in the corner, then click "Download" after the image finishes processing.
2. Make a Google Drive folder
Create a Google Drive folder with this name: first-order-motion-model
Make sure this folder is created in the homepage of your "My Drive" and not in any other folders in Google Drive.
3. Add four files to your Google Drive folder
Upload these four files to that folder:
- The target image you resized, titled 02.png
- This template video of Unravel, titled 04.mp4
- Tar file 1
- Tar file 2
The target image and template video must have those exact titles for the code to work correctly later on. The template video for the Unravel meme has already been muted and resized to 256x256 pixels which are requirements for the code script.
4. Open the code script
Open this Python code script. The script runs on Google Colab, which is like Google Docs but for code. It runs in the browser and doesn't require any additional downloads. That said, this script won't work on every computer or mobile device as significant graphics processing capabilities are required to run it.
5. Add line to first code block
Copy and paste this exact line to the start of the first code block: !pip install PyYAML==5.3.1
This is required to install PyYAML, a YAML parser for Python code that helps read inputs and produce outputs.
6. Run the Deepfake script
It's time to run the code! Start at the top of your document and press the play button on the left side of each code block to execute that section of code. The button will show a spinning circle while it's loading and may print some lines of text. The button will stop spinning once that section has completely finished.
Press play on each of the code blocks in these sections (in total, you will press play on 6 code blocks):
- Clone repository (2 code blocks in this section)
- Mount your Google drive folder on Colab.
For this section, click the blue hyperlink and select the Google account where you created the folder from step 2. This connects your Google Drive to the script so it can access the files for the Unravel deepfake. Make sure you read about what access you are providing to Google Colab and potential risks involved. If you decide to continue, copy the authorization code and paste it into the text box back in the code block. Hit "Enter" on your keyboard and the script will continue to run.
- Load driving video and source image
- Create a model and load checkpoints
- Perform image animation
If the button turns red after pressing play, that means the code didn't successfully finish running. Scroll through the error messages printed in red text and try your best to read and decipher them. If you're not sure what the error message means, copy it and see if Google has answers for you or check out the pinned comment on our YouTube tutorial to see if it includes a solution to your issue. Make sure the Drive folder, image, and template video you uploaded are titled correctly and in the right places as covered in steps 2 and 3 above.
7. Save and speed up your deepfake
Once you've finished running the "Perform image animation" code block, you should see a preview of the created deepfake! To download it, click the files icon on the left side and double-click the file called "generated.mp4".
The deepfake now needs to be sped up 2.4x so it will play at the same speed as "Unravel". To do this, open a third party speed changing tool such as EZGif (Kapwing is adding more speed options in the near future and we'll update this step when they are ready). Upload the video and increase speed to 2.4x, then download the new sped up copy. Your deepfake should now be at the right speed.
8. Add video to template + download your Unravel meme!
You're almost done! The last step is to add your sped up video to this Unravel meme template.
This template already has the Tokyo Ghoul Unravel song loaded, so all you have to do is copy the URL from the video in the previous step, open the template, click "Upload" and paste the link. Feel free to add images or make other edits to your video. Once you're happy with it, click "Export Video". After your video processes, click "Download" to save the deepfake meme to your device.
And you're done, congratulations!
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