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Three fixed reference images. Five frozen blocks. Only the scene and the light change per shot. This is the recipe behind all 36 frames. Blocks A, C2, C3, D and E never change a word.
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The same three style reference images go in first, in the same order, on every frame. They carry the paint. On this film they were three paintings from our moodboard by Seung Uk Hong and Alex Cho, all adult faces in warm interior light. Their work is not reproduced here; see the credits on the main page.
After the three pins, attach one identity anchor per named character: a registered Reference Element, or an approved frame from the film passed by its job id.
Use the reference images ONLY for painting style, brushwork, character rendering, edge quality and paint handling. Do not copy their characters, costumes, poses or settings.
When identity anchors are attached, give each one its job in words:
Use the first three reference images ONLY for painting style, brushwork and paint handling.
The fourth reference image is an approved frame from this same film: take from it ONLY this man's identity, do NOT copy its composition, framing, background or lighting.
SCENE: [shot size and angle], in [CITY, COUNTRY], [year], [where]. [Who is in frame: the element name and nothing else, or EVERY identifying feature verbatim.] [Where the subject sits and how big the face is.] [Where they look.] [Two or three real period objects.] Nothing modern.
THE LIGHT: [where the light comes from, from outside the frame], [what it does], [what falls away into shadow or black]. A true white in [the brightest area], a true black in [the darkest area].
THE COLOUR: one committed colour idea only, [named hue], with a single [accent hue] accent in [an object, never skin]. No other colours.
THE CAMERA: the subject sits off centre, never in the middle of the frame, and looks out of frame rather than at the camera. Something in the near foreground is thrown fully out of focus and breaks one edge of the frame. The light source is OUTSIDE the frame and rakes across the subject from the side. Visible air between the camera and the subject: haze, dust, smoke or bokeh. The frame contains a true white and a true black. The subject is caught in a moment of thought, not performing an action.
Why this block exists. Two frames with identical paint: one we loved, one that looked like slop. Everything that differed was camera. The face was a quarter of frame height against an eighth. The subject sat in the right third looking out of frame against dead centre. Light came from outside the frame against a bulb in the middle. And the man was deciding something, not stirring a pot. The medium block only ever controlled the paint, so the model made every camera decision for us. That is what slop is.
THE WORLD: European storybook, in the tradition of hand painted European animation. Tall shuttered windows and warm painted plaster. Wooden floors, beams and panelling. Lamps with real glass and a visible filament. Narrow streets, stone and stucco, wrought iron, painted shopfronts, tiled floors. Everything is worn and lived in, never new and never modern. Warm, generous and storybook, never gritty and never documentary.
For Bangkok, we did not paint Vienna. We used the European derived architecture that genuinely exists there: Sino Portuguese shophouses, tall louvred shutters, colonnaded walkways and patterned tile. And every prompt names the city, because this block is a style, not a place. The one prompt that said only “a quayside, 1978” came back as a European harbour.
THE MEDIUM: a single frame from a hand painted 2D animated feature. The character is PAINTED, not drawn: no outline, no lineart, no ink contour, form held by paint edges alone. Simplified stylised features, small mouth, minimal nose, strong brow. A soft dry brush blush on the cheek running slightly past the jaw line. Background loose abstract paint with visible bristle texture. The face is the only fully resolved area. Paper tooth over everything.