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  <p><span style="font-size:22px; color:#ff4081;"><strong>The Second Internet: Animation Workflow Overview</strong></span></p>

  <p><strong>Main Character:</strong> Eugene — <a href="http://fusionfall.org/wikim/frame_00000.png" style="color:#88c0ff;">official character design</a></p>

  <h3 style="color:#ff4081;"><strong>Step 1: Designing the Cop Character</strong></h3>
  <p>Using Kontext’s Flux model within Leonardo, I gave Eugene’s reference art alongside this prompt:</p>
  <blockquote style="border-left: 3px solid #ff4081; padding-left: 1em; font-style:italic; color:#ccc;">
    in the style of my reference image create A full-body black-and-white digital line drawing of a frumpy, tired-looking police officer character. The style matches early 2000s digital cartoon animation with clean, minimalistic linework, simple proportions, and slightly exaggerated features. The officer is middle-aged, with a round face, a large nose, and a frown. His posture is slouched. He wears a standard police uniform — short-sleeve button-up shirt with a badge, utility belt, and slightly baggy pants tucked into worn boots. His hair is messy and balding at the top. The expression is bored or mildly annoyed. Keep the line art clean and consistent with a flat, expressive style, similar to a storyboard or Flash animation cell.
  </blockquote>
  <p>It produced a usable reference image, which I traced and refined into a finalized character design using my Wacom tablet:</p>
  <p><a href="http://fusionfall.org/wikim/copart.png" style="color:#88c0ff;">Official cop character design</a></p>

  <h3 style="color:#ff4081;"><strong>Step 2: Generating a Movement Cycle</strong></h3>
  <p>I gave the artwork to Runway along with this prompt:</p>
  <blockquote style="border-left: 3px solid #ff4081; padding-left: 1em; font-style:italic; color:#ccc;">
    3D animated character with smooth, natural movement: his arms gently sway as he nods, his expression shifting from a frown into a smile; wind tousles his hair and his legs shuffle with subtle awkwardness; he slowly rotates, then strikes a dynamic pose and glances over his shoulder.
  </blockquote>
  <p>Runway created a sequence of over 225 frames. I dumped them with a Python script: <a href="http://fusionfall.org/wikim/dumpframes.py" style="color:#88c0ff;">dumpframes.py</a>.</p>
  <p>Then I cherry picked 15 frames that formed a nice sequence without blurring or messed-up linework. They all looked hand drawn with fluid movement — like he was dancing.</p>
  <div style="display:flex; gap:1em; margin:1em 0;">
    <img src="http://fusionfall.org/wikim/frame_00079.png" style="width:48%;">
    <img src="http://fusionfall.org/wikim/frame_00234.png" style="width:48%;">
  </div>

  <h3 style="color:#ff4081;"><strong>Step 3: Building the Park Scene</strong></h3>
  <p>I needed a park reference behind Eugene, so I used Kontext again with this prompt:</p>
  <blockquote style="border-left: 3px solid #ff4081; padding-left: 1em; font-style:italic; color:#ccc;">
    A black-and-white digital line drawing of the character from my reference image rapping in a park. He holds a microphone in one hand, with a slightly slouched, apathetic posture and a blank or tired expression. The park background is minimal and clean—sketchy outlines of trees, a bench, and a trash can drawn with the same thick, expressive brush lines. The linework is crisp and slightly wobbly, with cartoon-style proportions and subtle exaggeration in the face and hands. No color, no shading—just bold outlines and a flat white background, consistent with the simple, expressive style of my reference images.
  </blockquote>
  <div style="display:flex; gap:1em; margin:1em 0;">
    <img src="http://fusionfall.org/wikim/ref1.jpg" style="width:48%;">
    <img src="http://fusionfall.org/wikim/ref2.jpg" style="width:48%;">
  </div>

  <h3 style="color:#ff4081;"><strong>Step 4: Final Line Drawing of Eugene in the Park</strong></h3>
  <p>I hand drew a park scene featuring Eugene using my Wacom tablet in Adobe Flash, guided by the references:</p>
  <img src="http://fusionfall.org/wikim/finishedpark.png" style="max-width:100%; margin:1em 0;">

  <h3 style="color:#ff4081;"><strong>Step 5: Scene Expansion</strong></h3>
  <p>I used Runway’s Alpha Gen-3 Expand tool to generate a full 16:9 park background. Prompt used:</p>
  <blockquote style="border-left: 3px solid #ff4081; padding-left: 1em; font-style:italic; color:#ccc;">digitally drawn black and white park</blockquote>
  <p><strong>Seed:</strong> 2922164167</p>
  <img src="http://fusionfall.org/wikim/frame_000111.png" style="max-width:100%; margin:1em 0;">

  <h3 style="color:#ff4081;"><strong>Step 6: Final Composition in Flash</strong></h3>
  <p>I picked a frame of the cop from the earlier sequence, cut out the white background in BeFunky (Photoshop or Canva would also work), pasted him into Flash as a separate layer, then hand drew background filler to close small white gaps. Here's a video of the process:</p>
  <video controls style="max-width:100%; border:2px solid #ff4081; border-radius:8px;">
    <source src="http://fusionfall.org/wikim/bandicam%202025-06-29%2003-20-01-258.mp4" type="video/mp4">
    Your browser does not support the video tag.
  </video>

  <h3 style="color:#ff4081;"><strong>Step 7: Final Scene Prompt</strong></h3>
  <p>Finally, we sent it to Runway for animation. The final prompt was:</p>
  <blockquote style="border-left: 3px solid #ff4081; padding-left: 1em; font-style:italic; color:#ccc;">
    Use the characters from the provided image. In the same line-drawn cartoon style and park setting, animate the police officer taking the microphone away from the other character. The character with the glasses reacts with surprise as the cop casually grabs it from his hand.
  </blockquote>

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