The person brings a brand's website and its product photos (packshots, front-on, full resolution; or the site's own product images). You deliver a 20–30 s ad in which the product is the character: it walks, shops, reacts and carries the story, its label exactly as printed, in 16:9 and 9:16, narrated, with the brand's titles and CTA.
Use this recipe when a recognizable product acting out its promise fits the approved
concept and brand direction. It is a 3D treatment of a conceptual product or brand
film (style-3d-animation); the steps below own its production sequence. Rounds and
deliverables follow the core skill.
Steps
- Brand, facts and the product (
guide-capture-a-brand, route A;guide-pull-product-highlights, website route). Collect the packshots: every flavour or variant that appears, front-on, at the largest size the site has. - Script and story world (
llm-write-an-ad-script, the generated-world shape;llm-write-a-hook;llm-pick-a-visual-metaphor): the product character gets a job in a place where its promise shows (cans doing the weekly shop, a bottle on a hike). A recurring cast of two variants works: each shot one action, 3–5 s. Gate: the script, the shot list, the world and the price, before any spend. - The product character (
nano-banana-character-sheet, product character; the look perstyle-3d-animation): one sheet per variant, the packshot as the label's reference, limbs, shoes and face placed off the label. Gate: a pick per variant, the label checked at full size. - The world and the stills (
guide-pick-a-stylized-look, Process): a world many shots share is designed once (guide-design-a-set); then a still per shot with the character's views and the packshot, the action in the middle third. Check every label at full size (guide-keep-small-details). Gate: areview_chooseper shot. - Vertical: each still redrawn as a native 9:16
(
nano-banana-restage-for-new-aspect;guide-pace-a-short-for-social). - One motion test, then the batch (
h3-max-image-to-video, 768P): Gate: the test's motion and the label through it; use the hardest label shot for this test, then every shot in both aspects at once. - Voice and bed, together (
guide-voice-a-script, A narrator for a short;elevenlabs-generate-music, Fit the bed to the cut). Gate: both in one turn. - Base cut per aspect (
ffmpeg-cut-clips-to-a-voiceover), −16 LUFS (−14 for the 9:16 posted to shorts platforms,guide-pace-a-short-for-social). - Titles (
hn4a-compositor-brand-ad-titles): the hook stack, chips on the benefits, the end card with the site's CTA. A software product's real screens go on as layers where a line needs proof (hn4a-compositor-make-product-ui-exciting). Gate: the live spec (hn4a-compositor, Live spec, then render), both aspects. - Deliver both aspects with and without titles; the note for a gift video
(
llm-draft-a-gift-video-note).
Choices this workflow makes
- The product is the hero, not a mascot beside it: the label is on screen in every shot, so the ad is a packshot that moves.
- The label is never redrawn by hand or prompt alone: the packshot goes into every sheet and still call, and the label is checked at full size on every still and across every clip.
- A real-looking world with 3D characters reads as the product walking into the viewer's own life; a fully 3D world reads as a cartoon. Pick with the person on the style frame.
- Software has no can: animate the one object the product is about (a ticket, a parcel, a calendar card) and put the real UI on top as layers, never generated.
Dead ends
- None recorded on this workflow yet; the traps it inherits are in
style-3d-animationandguide-pick-a-stylized-look. Record the job's own as it runs.
Worked example
The shape of the demo clip: Globex sparkling water, two flavours as two cans (mint and pink) with arms, legs and trainers, doing the weekly shop in a real-looking supermarket. 16:9, 24 fps.
| Shot | Picture | Route |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Both cans push trolleys down an aisle towards camera | product sheets, a supermarket set, 2.1 edit |
| 2 | The pink can drops a bag of crisps into the mint can's trolley | 2.1 edit, both sheets |
| 3 | The two meet over the trolley | 2.1 edit |
| 4 | The mint can at the produce stand, hugging a watermelon (its flavour) | 2.1 edit, label checked at full size |
At list prices for a job of this size (two product sheets on Pro edit, a set, about ten stills and their 9:16 redraws, about 60 s of H3 Max at 768P across both aspects, voice and a bed): about $8, the cut, titles and renders free.
No workflow-specific review rounds were recorded for this demo. The estimate above is for that proposed production shape, not a measured delivered job.
