# Specimen plate (sref-6V0A1Q) Slice style ref: sref-6V0A1Q Page: https://tryslicemedia.com/styles/sref-6V0A1Q Slug: specimen-plate > 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. ## At a glance - Feel: Engraved plants and insects taped to a museum card, numbered, labelled and studied under a glass. - Group: Collage & photo - Energy: calm; mood: curious, careful, scholarly - Pictures: uses photo cut-outs - Palette: #EFE7D6, #2B2A26, #8C2F23, #3D4A3F, #C9B48A - Preview shape: 4:5 (the look works in any shape: 9:16, 4:5, 1:1 or 16:9) ## The look LOOK: a natural-history specimen card. Engraved botanical and natural-history plates (plants, flowers, insects, birds, shells) cut out along their outlines, in their own printed colours, laid on a cream museum card #EFE7D6 with a fine double hairline border in ink #2B2A26. The card sits on a dark museum green #3D4A3F. PICTURES: engraved or hand-coloured plates from old botany and natural-history books, herbarium sheets, pressed flowers, pinned insects. Where to get them: public-domain and CC0 collections (The Met Open Access, Smithsonian Open Access, Biodiversity Heritage Library plates, NASA, Wikimedia Commons files marked public domain or CC0), Slice's stock search, or the person's own photos. Cut every object out cleanly; never use a picture with a real brand or logo on it. LINE AND FILL: hairline rules only. Specimens are held down with small strips of gummed manila tape #C9B48A and the odd pin with a red head #8C2F23. A soft paper shadow under each specimen, never a hard drop shadow. CAMERA: flat and frontal. The one peak is a round reading glass that slides over one detail and enlarges it for a beat, then moves away. MOTION: each specimen is laid down by an invisible hand (travels, settles, stays); tape and numbers arrive just after. Labels type themselves letter by letter. Everything else is still. TYPE: a fine old-style serif in small capitals for plate titles, italic for names and numbers, a plain typewriter face for catalogue numbers. Labels five words or fewer. THE RULE: everything is arranged like a careful museum record: numbered, labelled, evenly spaced. DON'T: no photos of people, no bright modern colours, no clutter, no fast moves, no purple. Treat these as the look, never a template: choose fresh objects, words and compositions from what this clip says. ## What it suits - Content: explainer, how-to, wellbeing, nostalgia, advice - Tone: curious, calm, precise - Pace: slow - Best for: breaking one idea into named parts, slowly and carefully - Avoid for: hype, comedy, breaking news - Keywords: botanical, specimen, museum, label, magnifier, study - Suits (from the library): Teaching, Explainers, Nature, Wellbeing ## How to use it Lay most of the clip out as a museum card, pinning and labelling each named part of the idea one by one, cutting back to the speaker once or twice for the conclusion. ## Where the speaker sits Suits Full scene, Side, Small; avoid Drawn over. (save_scene speaker: {"mode":"hidden"}, {"mode":"side","where":"left"}, {"mode":"corner","where":"lower-left"}) ## Story first 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. TECH: one HTML file, one GSAP 3 timeline created paused as window.__timelines.main, duration = the scene's length, transforms and opacity only. ## Sample frames - Frame 1: https://ripttgmjfyhtufiygtbe.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/style-frames/sref-6V0A1Q/f1-af8d391f.webp - Frame 2: https://ripttgmjfyhtufiygtbe.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/style-frames/sref-6V0A1Q/f2-fe0c31a8.webp - Frame 3: https://ripttgmjfyhtufiygtbe.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/style-frames/sref-6V0A1Q/f3-89a41756.webp - Frame 4: https://ripttgmjfyhtufiygtbe.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/style-frames/sref-6V0A1Q/f4-627c101a.webp ## More - Every style: https://tryslicemedia.com/styles - All styles as plain text: https://tryslicemedia.com/styles.txt - Make it in Slice: https://tryslicemedia.com/shorts