Giant still life

How to use it

Carry most of the clip as one enormous everyday object in a tiny sand-coloured world, the object standing for the big idea, cutting back to the speaker once or twice for the hook and the turn.

Where the speaker sits

Full sceneSuits itSmallSuits itSplitWorksSideSuits itDrawn 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: Giant still life
Slice style ref: sref-DXFQ46
LOOK: surreal still life. Real photographed objects in their own natural colours, cut out cleanly, placed at impossible scale against each other: a fruit bigger than a house, an egg like a boulder, a pear like a tower. The ground is two dead-flat colours: a pale sand sky #E9DCC6 over a terracotta plain #C8643B with one straight horizon line, and one flat peach sun disc #F2C9A0.
PICTURES: everyday objects and food photographed on plain backgrounds (fruit, eggs, cups, bread, tools), plus small buildings or house fronts and the odd cloud. 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: no outlines. Every object casts one long, hard, flat shadow #8E3F22 across the ground plane, all in the same direction. No gradients except a faint film grain.
CAMERA: locked and frontal. The one big move is a slow pull-back (about 2 seconds) that reveals how big the object really is.
MOTION: objects are lowered into place by an invisible hand: they travel slowly, settle with the smallest squash, and then stay. Clouds drift. About 80 percent of the time nothing moves.
TYPE: at most one short line in a fine old-style serif, like a museum caption, small in a corner.
THE RULE: the joke is the scale; the objects stay perfectly real and photographic.
DON'T: no people or faces, no cartoon drawing over the photos, no bouncing, no more than four objects in a frame, no purple.
Treat these as the look, never a template: choose fresh objects, 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: surreal still life. Real photographed objects in their own natural colours, cut out cleanly, placed at impossible scale against each other: a fruit bigger than a house, an egg like a boulder, a pear like a tower. The ground is two dead-flat colours: a pale sand sky #E9DCC6 over a terracotta plain #C8643B with one straight horizon line, and one flat peach sun disc #F2C9A0.
• PICTURES: everyday objects and food photographed on plain backgrounds (fruit, eggs, cups, bread, tools), plus small buildings or house fronts and the odd cloud. 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: no outlines. Every object casts one long, hard, flat shadow #8E3F22 across the ground plane, all in the same direction. No gradients except a faint film grain.
• CAMERA: locked and frontal. The one big move is a slow pull-back (about 2 seconds) that reveals how big the object really is.
• MOTION: objects are lowered into place by an invisible hand: they travel slowly, settle with the smallest squash, and then stay. Clouds drift. About 80 percent of the time nothing moves.
• TYPE: at most one short line in a fine old-style serif, like a museum caption, small in a corner.
• THE RULE: the joke is the scale; the objects stay perfectly real and photographic.
• DON'T: no people or faces, no cartoon drawing over the photos, no bouncing, no more than four objects in a frame, no purple.
• Treat these as the look, never a template: choose fresh objects, words and compositions from what this clip says.

What it suits

Best for

one big idea that feels bigger than everything around it

Avoid for

lists, data, grief

Content

Opinion, Explainer, Personal story, Comedy, Advice

Tone

Witty, Dreamy, Curious

Pace

Slow

Topics

scale, surreal, still life, fruit, tiny house, metaphor

Colours

#E9DCC6 #C8643B #F2C9A0 #8E3F22 #2F4A3A

For AIs: this style as plain text.