One ink on footage

How to use it

Draw single-colour lines over the speaker's own footage through most of the clip, tracing the people and places they talk about, and leave the footage clean once or twice for the biggest feeling.

Where the speaker sits

Full sceneSuits itSmallWorksSplitSuits itSideAvoidDrawn overSuits it

Drawn over: marks and type drawn over the full speaker. 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: One ink on footage
Slice style ref: sref-1SSDZT
LOOK: real footage turned to a soft, light black and white (so the ink is the only colour, and nothing purple ever shows), with line drawings in ONE ink only: #2747E8 cobalt (with #F7F5EF cream as its only fill partner) or #FFFFFF chalk white. Pick the ink that reads against the footage and keep it for the whole piece.
LINE AND FILL: an even, single-weight line (about 3 px at 1080 wide). Fills only in the one ink or its partner. No black outlines.
TEXTURE: white lines break up slightly like chalk (a second faint stroke 1 px off); cobalt stays clean.
LIGHT: none.
CAMERA: the footage camera. Lines can wrap round real people and objects, and travel to lead the eye from one point to the next.
MOTION: lines draw on along their length, then boil gently; drawn things sway at 12 fps. Each drawing lands on its word and stays. Lines can draw back off at the end of a thought.
TYPE: a chunky rounded sans for titles (white on a cobalt tag, or cobalt on white for chalk), and a small handwritten line in the same ink.
THE RULE: one ink only, on top of the real world.
DON'T: no second ink, no shading, no black outlines, no stylising filters on the footage beyond the soft black and white, no drawing over faces.
Treat these as the look, never a template: invent fresh pictures, words and compositions from what this clip says.
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

• LOOK: real footage turned to a soft, light black and white (so the ink is the only colour, and nothing purple ever shows), with line drawings in ONE ink only: #2747E8 cobalt (with #F7F5EF cream as its only fill partner) or #FFFFFF chalk white. Pick the ink that reads against the footage and keep it for the whole piece.
• LINE AND FILL: an even, single-weight line (about 3 px at 1080 wide). Fills only in the one ink or its partner. No black outlines.
• TEXTURE: white lines break up slightly like chalk (a second faint stroke 1 px off); cobalt stays clean.
• LIGHT: none.
• CAMERA: the footage camera. Lines can wrap round real people and objects, and travel to lead the eye from one point to the next.
• MOTION: lines draw on along their length, then boil gently; drawn things sway at 12 fps. Each drawing lands on its word and stays. Lines can draw back off at the end of a thought.
• TYPE: a chunky rounded sans for titles (white on a cobalt tag, or cobalt on white for chalk), and a small handwritten line in the same ink.
• THE RULE: one ink only, on top of the real world.
• DON'T: no second ink, no shading, no black outlines, no stylising filters on the footage beyond the soft black and white, no drawing over faces.
• Treat these as the look, never a template: invent fresh pictures, words and compositions from what this clip says.

What it suits

Best for

Tender personal stories, family memories and faith moments drawn over real footage.

Avoid for

Data-heavy explainers or hype.

Content

Personal story, Faith, Something emotional, Wellbeing

Tone

Tender, Warm, Calm

Pace

Slow

Topics

family, faith, hope, journey, love, memory, children, grateful, home, prayer

Colours

#2747E8 #F7F5EF #FFFFFF

For AIs: this style as plain text.