Googly-eye still life

How to use it

Run most of the clip as a sunlit shelf of objects with googly eyes reacting to the story, cutting back to the speaker once or twice so the deadpan line lands.

Where the speaker sits

Full sceneSuits itSmallSuits itSplitSuits itSideWorksDrawn overAvoid

Full scene: the scene fills the frame. Stock speaker from Pexels.

Palette

THIS IS A MOODBOARD, NOT A TEMPLATE. The style below is inspiration for the look and feel. Keep its materials, colours, textures and the way it moves, but invent your own scenes, characters and objects for this clip. You are not limited to anything shown in the preview, and nothing in it has to appear. Use illustration and animation to help tell the clip's story.

STORY FIRST. Read the whole clip before you design anything.
1. Write the clip's arc in one line: setup, tension, turn, pay-off. Name the one line that is the reveal.
2. Tag every sentence with its job: setup, context, tension, turn, reveal, example, number, contrast, list, quote, feeling, metaphor, callback, pay-off, aside.
3. The visuals carry the whole clip. If the clip shows the speaker's face, open on them (the first scene keeps them on screen) unless the person says otherwise. After that, never cut back to the speaker full-frame unless the person asks for it; if they do, only on the ending, never in the middle of an explanation. The speaker can still sit inside a scene (a corner, a split or drawn in) when the person wants to be seen.
4. Build one flowing visual story, not a new picture per sentence. Each scene covers a whole thought (one to three sentences), holds 3 to 8 seconds and turns into the next.
5. Start each scene on the first word of its sentence, or up to half a second before. Never cut mid-sentence.
6. Inside a scene, bring small details in on the words they show (an item, a tag, a tick). Earlier details stay.
7. Choose one or two recurring objects or characters in the first scene and bring them back changed. Callbacks beat new pictures.
8. Build up the same picture where you can (add to it, move the camera across it) instead of replacing it.
9. Energy: about 80 percent still, drifting or gentle. Allow one big move in the whole clip, on the reveal, for 1 to 2 seconds, then settle and hold.
10. Numbers sit on a scale (gauge, bar, table, timeline) and hold long enough to read. Contrasts are a still split or the same layout twice.
11. Feelings get a quiet image, or one of the cuts back to the speaker; never effects.
12. On-screen text names, labels or quotes; it never repeats the caption. Five words or fewer per label.
13. End every scene by settling or thinning out, or by turning into the next scene. No exit effects.
14. The style sets the look. These rules set when, how long and how calmly. If the style's own motion rules ask for more energy than this, use less.

PICTURES: this style uses photo cut-outs. Before you start, ask the person one short question: use stills from their own clip, Slice's stock search, their own uploads, or (only if you can make images) images you generate. If they don't mind, use stills from the clip, then stock.

VISUAL STYLE: Googly-eye still life
Slice style ref: sref-03FS33
A real photographed still life on a wooden shelf, with stuck-on plastic googly eyes. Ground: warm plaster wall (#EEE4D1 to #C9B898) with soft mottling, a walnut shelf (#B7814E top, #6B4425 front lip with fine grain). Light: one low window off frame, a soft warm patch (#FFE2A8) across the wall with the blurred shadow of a glazing bar; objects are shaded darker on the side away from the window and cast soft leaning shadows on the wall plus a dark contact shadow on the shelf. Objects: real cut-out photos of ordinary old things, colour graded warm to sit in the same light. Eyes: glossy white domes with a grey rim, a fixed specular highlight top right, a black pupil that is loose inside and settles with gravity, and each eye throws a small shadow. Camera: locked, like a product shot, light film grain and a soft warm vignette. Motion: the objects never move; only the pupils do, swinging to look at things and wobbling as they settle (a damped overshoot); reactions ripple from one object to the next a beat apart; one shared glance at the camera is the peak. The one rule: everything stays still and real except the eyes. DON'T: mouths, faces drawn on, talking, bouncing objects, cartoon props, mascot characters, flat vector shelves.
Accent: as in the palette.
Frame shape: ask me before you start (9:16 vertical, 4:5 portrait, 1:1 square or 16:9 wide).
Energy: normal.

TECH: one HTML file, one GSAP 3 timeline created paused as window.__timelines.main, duration = the scene's length, transforms and opacity only.

Look rules

• A real photographed still life on a wooden shelf, with stuck-on plastic googly eyes.
• Ground: warm plaster wall (#EEE4D1 to #C9B898) with soft mottling, a walnut shelf (#B7814E top, #6B4425 front lip with fine grain).
• Light: one low window off frame, a soft warm patch (#FFE2A8) across the wall with the blurred shadow of a glazing bar; objects are shaded darker on the side away from the window and cast soft leaning shadows on the wall plus a dark contact shadow on the shelf.
• Objects: real cut-out photos of ordinary old things, colour graded warm to sit in the same light.
• Eyes: glossy white domes with a grey rim, a fixed specular highlight top right, a black pupil that is loose inside and settles with gravity, and each eye throws a small shadow.
• Camera: locked, like a product shot, light film grain and a soft warm vignette.
• Motion: the objects never move; only the pupils do, swinging to look at things and wobbling as they settle (a damped overshoot); reactions ripple from one object to the next a beat apart; one shared glance at the camera is the peak.
• The one rule: everything stays still and real except the eyes.
• DON'T: mouths, faces drawn on, talking, bouncing objects, cartoon props, mascot characters, flat vector shelves.

What it suits

Best for

deadpan confessions and small domestic stories where a reaction shot lands the joke

Avoid for

grief, faith and serious news; anything that needs the viewer to take it straight

Content

Comedy, Personal story, Nostalgia, Opinion

Tone

Deadpan, Warm, Playful, Dry

Pace

Slow

Topics

googly eyes, still life, window light, shelf, found objects, reaction, tabletop photo

Colours

#EEE4D1 #B7814E #6B4425 #FFE2A8 #151311

For AIs: this style as plain text.