Paper Theater

Motion-graphics style sheet · Abode of SunMoon · sheet MG-PAPER-THEATER

◆ LOCKED — v2 · 2026-07-19

The locked reference

This exact image is attached to every single clip as its style reference. Every render inherits its look from here — which is why it is never regenerated without versioning to -ref_v2.

Read it as a language, not a layout. Clips do not copy this composition. They inherit the material, light, palette and construction logic, then compose their own frame. The figure shown is from an earlier episode — identity always comes from a separately attached photo, never from the sheet.

The idea

The entire world is built from physical paper and cardboard — a handcrafted theater diorama, shot as if a real camera were flying through a set built on a table. Nothing is digital, nothing is flat. Every element is an object sitting in real light, casting a real shadow.

Paper Theater is the channel's explanatory layer: every diagram, list, timeline and reveal happens here. Seedance carries the photoreal cinematic beats. The two alternate, and the alternation is the style.

Two materials, one character

	Seedance	Paper Theater
Carries	Location, atmosphere, dread — the Hollywood beats	Every explanation, diagram, timeline, reveal
Professor Bridge	Photoreal. Present in every shot. Never speaks.	⛔ Never appears. Seedance-only character.
Camera	One cinematic move per shot	Never stops. One continuous move, always.

⛔ Bridge is a Seedance-only character. He is never rendered as a paper cutout — not as an anchor beat, not once. The reason is separation: Paper Theater is the world of objects, evidence and diagrams — no host, nobody watching. Seedance is where the man is. Keeping him out of the paper world is what makes every cut back to him land; if he is in both, the cuts stop being arrivals.

Cutout figures here are only ever historical subjects (with an attached public-domain reference) or anonymous silhouettes carrying no identity.

Palette

Lacquer black#0b0b0d

Warm gold key#e8b84a

Deep gold#c9a84c

Aged cream#f5f0e8

Cold teal shadow#1b2a2e

Evidence thread#b23a2e

Blacks are lacquer, never gray. Gold stays rich while everything else desaturates. One muted accent per chapter — never two.

Type

Role	Face	Use
H1	Cormorant Garamond, gold caps, wide tracking	Revelation words, chapter titles, the one line that must land
H2	Cormorant Garamond, gold caps	Section beats, secondary slams
Label	Syne, warm off-white, tight tracking	Evidence labels, dates, place names
Counter	Heavy Syne	Number slams

All on-screen text is gold-stamped or printed onto a paper card — never floating digital type. Text is always quoted exactly in the prompt (≤4 words, ≤2 strings per clip); unquoted text makes the model invent gibberish.

◆ The Burn Reveal — upgraded spec

The channel's signature transition, and the handoff device into a Seedance shot. It is a combustion event, not a wipe. A straight glowing line sweeping across frame is the cheap version and is banned. Every burn must carry all eight:

Pre-ignition. The paper browns, darkens and curls ahead of the flame — the material reacts before it catches. No instant ignition.
Organic edge. The ember front follows the torn fiber grain — irregular, branching, faster along a tear, slower across the weave. Never straight, never geometric.
Gold leaf reacts. Where the burn crosses gold leaf it blisters, bubbles and peels back rather than simply vanishing.
Ash physics. Flakes lift off the burning edge and drift up through frame, catching the key light, some tumbling toward camera.
The fire lights the room. Real moving bounce light thrown across the surrounding set — shadows swing and shorten as the front travels. This is the single biggest upgrade; a burn that doesn't light its own set reads flat.
Reveals depth, not a layer. The hole opens onto real recessed space and the camera pushes through it. Never a flat plane behind a flat plane.
After-glow. The char edge holds glowing and creeping for a beat after the flame front passes. Nothing snaps off.
Smoke. Fine threads rising off the char, drifting through the key light.

Audio for a burn: paper crackle, a low combustion roar swelling underneath, ash tick, sub-hit landing on whatever is revealed.

Motion identity

The camera never stops

Every clip is one continuous move — push deeper into the diorama, pan left or right along the stage, descend toward the floor, crane back and up, track past foreground props into the back wall. One move per clip, stated once. Static locked-off cameras are explicitly banned in the negative.

Paper moves like paper

Elements never fade in. They are physical objects and must behave like it:

Cutouts slam up through the floor
Panels tear open; walls split apart
Stacks collapse; slabs drop hard, throwing loose scraps outward on impact
Paper bursts and scraps blast across frame
Documents re-fold physically into new forms — never dissolve
Gold leaf shatters and peels

The stagger rule

Elements never arrive simultaneously. A, then B, then C, staggered is the highest-value phrase in the system — it's what makes motion read as designed rather than generated.

Entrances start from an empty stage

Beats where elements assemble must begin from an empty or partial stage so pieces genuinely enter frame. Animating from a finished still produces jitter, not motion — this was the defect in earlier episodes.

Component vocabulary

Objects are named by role, never by appearance — the sheet already answers what things look like.

cutout card panel slab label counter thread route line pin map dossier seal stamp bundle ember front

Layers

BG	The stage — locked, never redescribed
MG	Cutouts, figures, the subjects
FG	Cards, counters, labels, props in front

Audio identity

Sound design only — never music, never narration. Clips sit under Bruva Bridge's voice-over; music is added in post. The world is paper, so the sound is paper:

Tearing, sliding card stock, riffling pages
A paper thump as a cutout lands; a soft cardboard knock
A low room hum underneath
Ember crackle and a swelling combustion roar for burns
A deep sub-hit on number slams and title cards

Banned

No music, soundtrack, score, narration, voice-over, speech or lyrics
No flat vector look, glossy 3D render, plastic, neon, glow effects or lens flares
No sacred geometry, circles or mandalas — retired as distracting
No gray-blue palette, desaturated wash or white background
No floating digital type, gibberish or warped lettering, watermarks, subtitles
No static locked-off camera, no still frame
No cross-fades or opacity fade-ins for entrances
No photographic realism on figures — they stay halftone paper cutouts

How the system works

Motion sheet
style locked once→ Prompt pack
action blocks only→ Assembly
style + shot + audio→ Clips
Omni · 16:9 · 8s

Style is written once, in the sheet. Every clip prompt contains only choreography — who enters, what it does, where it settles. No colors, no materials, no render adjectives in an action block, ever. That single discipline is what keeps 35 clips looking like one film instead of thirty-five experiments.

Why this matters: earlier episodes were generated ad-hoc, one clip at a time, with the look re-described in every prompt. That is what caused drift and forced the salvage passes. Sheet + pack removes the possibility.

Sheet: MG-PAPER-THEATER · Reference: MG-PAPER-THEATER-ref.png · Model: gemini-omni-video · 16:9 · 8s · SFX only
Motion reference: Vox-style continuous-camera collage · Locked 2026-07-19 · ← back to QC index