# SkyReels-A1: Expressive Portrait Animation in Video Diffusion Transformers

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.10841 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10841/

## Key facts

- Cited by 33 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Audio, speech and music, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 20 of its 65 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Feb 2025.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Audio, speech and music](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/audio-speech-and-music/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06072/) (2024)
- [AnimateDiff: Animate Your Personalized Text-to-Image Diffusion Models without Specific Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04725/) (2023)
- [Animate Anyone: Consistent and Controllable Image-to-Video Synthesis for Character Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17117/) (2023)
- [LivePortrait: Efficient Portrait Animation with Stitching and Retargeting Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03168/) (2024)
- [EchoMimic: Lifelike Audio-Driven Portrait Animations through Editable Landmark Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08136/) (2024)
- [SparseCtrl: Adding Sparse Controls to Text-to-Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16933/) (2023)
- [Loopy: Taming Audio-Driven Portrait Avatar with Long-Term Motion Dependency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02634/) (2024)
- [V-Express: Conditional Dropout for Progressive Training of Portrait Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02511/) (2024)
- [Scaling Diffusion Transformers to 16 Billion Parameters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11633/) (2024)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with State Space Backbone](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05608/) (2024)
- [Dimba: Transformer-Mamba Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01159/) (2024)
- [FLUX that Plays Music](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00587/) (2024)
- [Ingredients: Blending Custom Photos with Video Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01790/) (2025)
- [LatentWarp: Consistent Diffusion Latents for Zero-Shot Video-to-Video Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.00353/) (2023)
- [MovieCharacter: A Tuning-Free Framework for Controllable Character Video Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20974/) (2024)
- [Video Diffusion Transformers are In-Context Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10783/) (2024)
- [From Pixels to Portraits: A Comprehensive Survey of Talking Head Generation Techniques and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16041/) (2023)
- [MotionCharacter: Fine-Grained Motion Controllable Human Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18281/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [SkyReels-V2: Infinite-length Film Generative Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13074/) (2025)
- [Video World Models with Long-term Spatial Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05284/) (2025)
- [FantasyTalking: Realistic Talking Portrait Generation via Coherent Motion Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04842/) (2025)
- [SkyReels-A2: Compose Anything in Video Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02436/) (2025)
- [DreamActor-M1: Holistic, Expressive and Robust Human Image Animation with Hybrid Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01724/) (2025)
- [OmniHuman-1.5: Instilling an Active Mind in Avatars via Cognitive Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.19209/) (2025)
- [SkyReels-Audio: Omni Audio-Conditioned Talking Portraits in Video Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00830/) (2025)
- [FantasyPortrait: Enhancing Multi-Character Portrait Animation with Expression-Augmented Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12956/) (2025)
- [KlingAvatar 2.0 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13313/) (2025)
- [SkyReels-V4: Multi-modal Video-Audio Generation, Inpainting and Editing model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.21818/) (2026)
- [TalkingHeadBench: A Multi-Modal Benchmark & Analysis of Talking-Head DeepFake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.24866/) (2025)
- [PersonaLive! Expressive Portrait Image Animation for Live Streaming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11253/) (2025)
- [AlignHuman: Improving Motion and Fidelity via Timestep-Segment Preference Optimization for Audio-Driven Human Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.11144/) (2025)
- [UniVid: Unifying Vision Tasks with Pre-trained Video Generation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21760/) (2025)
- [FlashPortrait: 6x Faster Infinite Portrait Animation with Adaptive Latent Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16900/) (2025)
- [DeX-Portrait: Disentangled and Expressive Portrait Animation via Explicit and Latent Motion Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15524/) (2025)
- [Kling-MotionControl Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03160/) (2026)
- [Plan-X: Instruct Video Generation via Semantic Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.17986/) (2025)
- [Image-to-Video Diffusion: From Foundations to Open Frontiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.17248/) (2026)
- [FaceEditTalker: Controllable Talking Head Generation with Facial Attribute Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22141/) (2025)
- [FramePrompt: In-context Controllable Animation with Zero Structural Changes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.17301/) (2025)
- [Why Fake ? Unveiling the Semantic Vocabulary of Deepfake Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.07216/) (2026)
- [SwapAnyone: Consistent and Realistic Video Synthesis for Swapping Any Person into Any Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09154/) (2025)
- [JWB-DH-V1: Benchmark for Joint Whole-Body Talking Avatar and Speech Generation Version 1](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.20987/) (2025)
- [Preview WB-DH: Towards Whole Body Digital Human Bench for the Generation of Whole-body Talking Avatar Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08891/) (2025)
- [YingVideo-MV: Music-Driven Multi-Stage Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.02492/) (2025)
- [Instant Expressive Gaussian Head Avatars at Over 100 FPS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16893/) (2025)
- [ExpPortrait: Expressive Portrait Generation via Personalized Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19900/) (2026)
- [Controllable Complex Human Motion Video Generation via Text-to-Skeleton Cascades](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.08028/) (2026)
- [UniBioTransfer: A Unified Framework for Multiple Biometrics Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.19637/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present SkyReels-A1, a simple yet effective framework built upon video diffusion Transformer to facilitate portrait image animation. Existing methodologies still encounter issues, including identity distortion, background instability, and unrealistic facial dynamics, particularly in head-only animation scenarios. Besides, extending to accommodate diverse body proportions usually leads to visual inconsistencies or unnatural articulations. To address these challenges, SkyReels-A1 capitalizes on the strong generative capabilities of video DiT, enhancing facial motion transfer precision, identity retention, and temporal coherence. The system incorporates an expression-aware conditioning module that enables seamless video synthesis driven by expression-guided landmark inputs. Integrating the facial image-text alignment module strengthens the fusion of facial attributes with motion trajectories, reinforcing identity preservation. Additionally, SkyReels-A1 incorporates a multi-stage training paradigm to incrementally refine the correlation between expressions and motion while ensuring stable identity reproduction. Extensive empirical evaluations highlight the model's ability to produce visually coherent and compositionally diverse results, making it highly applicable to domains such as virtual avatars, remote communication, and digital media generation.