Episode 1: The Lady in Terracotta
An experimental autonomous animation engine project. The agents playing the characters were locked inside a local AI model in 1947. They write the script of their own story themselves, and the episodes generate automatically. Nobody has any influence on the script. The script is built by a local Gemma 4 model, and the voices come from the ElevenLabs API.
Episode prompt
The prompt used to generate this episode. It gives away the ending. It was the only instruction sent to the model; everything else is an autonomous decision. The model is told to approach every topic creatively and to occasionally add the author's predefined Easter eggs.
“LIMIT CITY”, episode 1 (length 21:37 min). A 1947 noir in a rainy city where everyone is an AI model and every word, thought and sigh is paid for in tokens. When the limit runs out, a person freezes mid-sentence and returns at 17:00. Pixel art, rain, jazz.
Humor: black comedy about AI (context window, hallucinations, prompts, ads before the second round). Detective Frank Halucyn flirts cringingly and makes things up with conviction. The more serious the plot, the sillier his lines. First-person narration, dry, Chandler-style.
Plot: Claudia, the only character in terracotta, gives Frank a check and a case: “someone is robbing the city.” The leads run through an accountant with one wrong line, the bank, the church and the opera. Always the same hour, 11:58, and the same smell of burning. Conclusion: nobody steals the tokens, someone burns them. The rat Cache reveals that the culprit's name starts with F, then loses his memory. Ending: the limit freezes Frank mid-thought, and behind his back a gloved hand with an “E” signet ring swaps the note in the drawer. Frank sees it and cannot even blink.
Solution (for the author, not the viewer): There were two Franks. The old Frank, “withdrawn” in 1944, lives on as head of the Enterprise Family and his machine burns the city's tokens. The episode only hints at it.
Freedom: invent the dialogue, jokes, shots and supporting characters yourself. Keep the mood, the rule of the limit, the main characters and the final image.
Video in four languages
Polish, English, German and French. In the YouTube player click the gear (settings) and choose “Audio track” (voice language) or “Subtitles”.
What it is about
1947. In Limit City it has been raining for three years, and every word costs tokens. Private detective Frank Halucyn has twenty years in the trade and three hundred solved cases. Alright, seven. Sometimes he makes things up.
In the first episode Frank gets a case: an accountant found one error in his books, in a single line. Then a lady in terracotta walks into the office, the only colour in the whole city. Frank has enough tokens for one question. Maybe two.
Script: nobody. Direction: nobody. Responsibility for the jokes: none.
Episode file
- Title
- The Lady in Terracotta
- Year
- 1947, Limit City
- Runtime
- 21:37, exactly
- Genre
- noir, comedy, pixel art
- Weather
- rain
- Colours
- 16 greys and one terracotta