Good Evening, and welcome to the second issue of Playground.
I’m Salil, co-founder of Third Studios, I lead everything AI at THIRD, and I’ll be writing and editing this newsletter every month.
Playground is where we play around with AI, test what’s possible, and show you what actually works. This newsletter is where we share the tools, experiments, ideas and workflows we discover along the way, so you can play with them too.
If you’ve got any AI ideas that we could crack for you, feel free to email me at salil@third.group.
Step 1: Creative Concept
We wanted to create an animated video as a way to explore the fundamentals of character creation and animated storytelling. The treatment was inspired by a video we came across on Higgsfield, which served as a creative reference for the approach.
Everything from character and image creation to prompt development, animation, and the final output was created independently from scratch. While the initial treatment provided inspiration, the creative execution, experimentation, and final video were entirely our own.
Step 2: Character Styles
Three styles were thought out
Variation 1: Bold Comic-Book Character. Think Richie Rich comic books
Style: 2D comic-book illustration with heavy black outlines.
Features: Exaggerated facial expressions, large eyes, spiky hair, and angular features.
Colours: High-contrast, saturated colours with dramatic lighting and shadows.
Feel: Expressive, energetic, slightly exaggerated, and cinematic.
Variation 2: Stylised Cartoon Character
Style: Hand-drawn, animated cartoon with a loose, illustrative finish.
Features: Elongated face, exaggerated proportions, thin limbs, and expressive eyes.
Colours: Warm, pastel-like colours with soft lighting and textured backgrounds.
Feel: Quirky, humorous, relatable, and slightly absurd.
Variation 3: Low-Poly 3D Character
Style: 3D animation with a low-poly, video-game-inspired aesthetic.
Features: Angular facial structures, simplified geometry, and realistic body proportions.
Colours: Muted, earthy tones with cinematic lighting, depth of field, and realistic shadows.
Feel: Grounded, immersive, dramatic, and emotionally realistic.
We went ahead with third because it creates a more immersive and emotionally grounded storytelling experience.
Here’s the prompt for the above
Cinematic 3D render, stylized low-poly faceted character with a paper-craft, hand-sculpted look, a young man with short dark curly hair sitting hunched on the edge of a bed just after waking up, elbows resting on his knees, head tilted down with a tired, pensive, slightly melancholic expression. He wears an olive-green sleeveless tank top. Angular, flat-shaded polygon planes on his skin, arms, and clothes, with a matte paper-like texture and visible geometric facets. Warm golden morning sunlight rakes in from the right window, creating a strong rim light on his shoulder and arm and a bright patch across his face, with deep soft shadows elsewhere. Dusty atmospheric haze with floating dust particles in the light beams. Cozy lived-in bedroom: crumpled white bedsheets in the foreground, a wooden nightstand with a drawer on the right, a dark wall shelf with small objects, faded black-and-white posters on the walls, a window with bright light at the edge of the frame. Low camera angle, medium shot, shallow depth of field with a softly blurred foreground and background, 35mm lens, subtle film grain, warm amber and beige color palette with muted greens, moody and intimate, high-end animated short film look, 16:9.
Step 3: Character & Prop Sheet
Watch
Prompt:
Prop design sheet, cinematic stylized low-poly 3D render, a slightly futuristic wristwatch shown in multiple views on a plain neutral dark warm-gray background: front view, side profile, back view, three-quarter angle, a close-up detail of the dial, and a view worn on a wrist. The watch keeps a classic round shape but with a near-future twist: a matte graphite-steel case with sharp angular beveled edges, a thin dark glass face, and a minimalist dial with no numbers, only a ring of fine tick markers and two slim hands in a soft amber glow. A thin curved segment of subtle amber light runs along the bezel like a quiet display strip, and a small recessed sensor window sits on the back. The strap is a segmented, interlocking band made of dark olive and charcoal polygon plates with a hidden magnetic clasp, still showing small scuffs and wear so it feels lived-in rather than pristine. Every surface is built from angular, flat-shaded polygon facets with visible geometric planes and a matte, hand-sculpted paper-craft texture, no smooth gradients. Warm golden key light from one side creates a strong amber rim glow along the metal edges, with soft deep shadows on the opposite side, and the faint internal glow of the dial adds a gentle secondary light. Subtle dust particles in the light, shallow depth of field on the close-up, fine film grain, warm amber, graphite, and muted olive color palette, moody and intimate. Clean layout with even spacing, consistent scale across all views, small callout lines pointing to the bezel light strip, crown, and clasp, high-end animated short film production art, 16:9.
Main Character
Prompt:
Character design model sheet, white background, multiple views of a lean South Asian man with short curly black hair, dark brown eyes, strong jawline, and tan skin: Left: Close-up front view of face with a neutral, intense expression. Center: Side profile portrait showing angular facial features and jaw. Right: Full-body wide shot, front-facing standing pose, wearing an olive-green sleeveless tank top, fitted black trousers, casual shoes, and a black digital wristwatch; small auxiliary turnaround sketches showing him in a navy-blue blazer. Clean cell-shaded 2D digital animation style, stylized graphic novel aesthetic, sharp line art, flat lighting with subtle planar shading.
Girlfriend
Prompt:
Character design model sheet, white background, multiple turnaround views of an elegant woman with wavy dark blue-gray bob hair, brown skin, dark eyes, and arched eyebrows": Left: Close-up front facial view with a wide-eyed, surprised, or concerned expression- Center: Side profile portrait showing the sculpted facial profile, nose, jawline, and wavy hairstyle. Right: Full-body wide shot, front-facing standing pose wearing a tailored light gray skirt suit (blazer jacket, matching knee-length pencil skirt, neutral gray inner top), black low-heel pumps, and a round black wristwatch; with smaller auxiliary sketches demonstrating layered detail. Clean cell-shaded 2D digital animation style, stylized graphic novel aesthetic, sharp line art, flat lighting with subtle planar facet shading.
Step 4: Locations
Use pictures below as location references 👇
First Scene: Room
Desert Scene
Street view
Final Scene: Cafe
Step 5: Video
Key Points:
Input your character references, location references and describe the scene
Connect all of them with @ tags
Use seedance.
Click Generate
Note: Make sure to generate in low resolution first to see how its coming out.
First Scene
Prompt:
@image1 is the character reference AND visual style reference — a young man drawn in a bold anime/illustration style: clean flat cel-shading, thick confident outlines, with watch on his left hand @image2 limited color palette with warm amber and muted tones, loose casual posture. Short dark brown hair, slight build. The entire video must match this exact 2D anime illustration aesthetic. Maintain consistent 2D anime illustration style throughout all frames.
Opening frame (0–4s): The young man jolts awake in his bedroom — he overslept. Warm golden light floods his anime-style room covered in posters on the walls, speakers on shelves. He shoots upright in bed, eyes wide, instantly panicked — classic anime shock expression: wide eyes, sweat drop, hair sticking up. His @image2 watch buzzes — a glowing holographic notification pops up from the watch in a stylized 2D UI panel: a dating app with a girl’s name “Anna” and the message “I’ll be at the café in 10 minutes.” His face: pure anime panic expression — open mouth, eyebrows raised high. He throws off the covers and leaps out of bed. Handheld-style shaky pan, fast cuts, warm amber cel-shaded tones.
Street Scene
Prompt:
Starting from the front-facing shot of the young man with short dark curly hair sitting in the middle of a cracked, muddy pothole on a small-town road at dusk, his navy blazer and collared shirt streaked with thick brown mud, the road receding behind him. Cinematic stylized low-poly 3D render, flat-shaded angular polygon facets, matte paper-craft texture. The camera is low and nearly locked for the whole clip, with no cuts. A single low-poly car approaches from behind the camera and drives toward him and then away down the road, so its headlights face him the whole time and only its taillights are visible after it passes him. At the start, a harsh white-gold headlight beam from the camera side washes over his face, brightly lighting it so every facet and expression is clear, and his long shadow stretches behind him. A horn blasts. He sees the car coming straight at him and is terrified: eyes huge and shaking, mouth wide open in a scream, brows pinched, his whole body recoiling, shoulders and hands trembling as he scrambles backward in the mud. He thrusts his left wrist up, showing the faceted graphite wristwatch with amber-gold rings, and jabs his right index finger onto the glowing bezel. The watch flares amber, a bold-outlined white shockwave ring bursts from his wrist, and a flash of blue-white portal light engulfs him. His body breaks into flat faceted amber shards that spiral into the watch and vanish. A split second later, the car enters from the foreground edge and roars through the empty pothole, throwing a spray of muddy water and dust and scattering the last shards, then continues down the road away from the camera until only its small red taillights remain in the distance. Wet tarmac reflecting headlight glow, small-town shopfronts and power lines behind, amber dusk horizon, shallow depth of field, heavy fine film grain, charcoal, muddy brown, and navy palette with amber, electric blue and white only from the watch and portal, high-end animated short film look, 16:9.
Final Scene
Prompt:
Older version (that was not picked)
Prompt:
Using the input video for all character performance and timing, and the reference image as the new location. Replace the entire interior café background with the exterior café storefront from the reference image: the red-brown wooden front, the large window with CAFÉ lettering and orange paper lanterns, the green door with the scalloped awning, the potted plant, the stone sidewalk, and the blurred customers and barista inside. Place the two characters standing on the sidewalk in front of the café, between the door and the window, with their feet on the pavement. Remove the interior table, the two coffee cups, the chairs, and the old window and wall. Keep both characters exactly as they are: the young man in the navy blazer and shirt with a few mud marks, Anna in the light jacket and skirt with a few mud marks, and both faceted amber-ring watches. Keep all of their movement and expressions unchanged: tumbling out, noticing each other, freezing, then laughing, along with the slow push-in at the end. Keep the two blue-white portal flashes at the start, now opening on the sidewalk in front of the café on either side of the door. Match the lighting to the reference image: warm golden-hour sun from the side, amber rim light on their faces and clothes, long soft shadows on the sidewalk, glowing lanterns behind them. Scale the characters so they fill about half the frame height. Stylized low-poly paper-craft 3D, flat-shaded angular facets, fine film grain, 16:9.
Final Video
Want to check out the final output? Click here.
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