Mascot pose and expression library

Generate the turnaround (Lock a character sheet). Create > Images, GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst, the key visual in Reference Images, 2048x1152, quality high, 34 seconds. Describe the shape, every color and the four views:

Character turnaround sheet for an original brand mascot of a breakfast cereal
brand. The mascot is Barley, the red panda cub from the reference image: a
small, round, plush red panda cub standing upright on two short legs.
Russet-orange fur with a soft cream belly, a cream-white face mask with cream
patches above the eyes and on the cheeks, cream-rimmed rounded ears, a small
dark brown nose, large warm amber-brown eyes with two white highlights each, a
happy closed-mouth smile, dark chocolate-brown arms and legs ending in rounded
mitten paws with no fingers, a long fluffy tail with four cream rings. A chunky
teal knitted scarf wrapped once around the neck, its knot and both fringed ends
hanging on the character's left side. Four full-body views in one row, evenly
spaced, same size, same height, standing on one baseline, neutral friendly pose
with arms relaxed and empty paws: front view, three-quarter view facing left,
side view facing left, back view (tail and scarf ends visible, no face). Plain
warm off-white background (#FAF6EE), even soft studio light with a gentle warm
key, a small soft contact shadow under each view. Style: premium
animated-feature character render, soft individually groomed fur, warm morning
light, appealing shapes that read at small size. No text, no labels, no
numbers, no logos, no cereal box, no other characters.

Write the rules sheet in code (Write a keep-list). Sample the palette from the approved image, not the prompt: six swatches from the front view, from russet fur (#C35E2F) to scarf teal (#3D767E). Then list keep (scarf knot and fringed ends on his left, two highlights per eye, mitten paws with no fingers, cream tail rings and ear rims, head about two fifths of his height) and avoid (teeth, fingers or claws, clothes other than the scarf, ground shadow, text or logo).

Turn the rules into a template (Batch from a template): one fixed block, one slot. The turnaround in Reference Images, 1024x1024, quality high, background transparent (the model setting this run used). The wave pose:

Draw Barley, the character from the reference turnaround sheet. Keep exactly:
small round plush red panda cub, russet-orange fur, soft cream belly,
cream-white face mask with cream patches above the eyes and on the cheeks,
cream-rimmed rounded ears, small dark brown nose, large amber-brown eyes with
two white highlights each, dark chocolate-brown arms and legs with rounded
mitten paws, long fluffy tail with cream rings, chunky teal knitted scarf with
its knot and fringed ends on the character's left side. No fingers, no visible
teeth, no clothes other than the scarf. Premium animated-feature render with
soft groomed fur and warm morning light. One character, full body, centered,
no ground shadow, no text.

Pose: waving hello. Front view, his right mitten paw raised high and waving,
the other arm relaxed, a big closed-mouth smile.

Pilot the hardest pose three ways (Pilot the hardest case). Fingers sneak in where mitten paws hold a prop, so the pilot is Barley hugging a cereal spoon as tall as he is. Sunburst took 45 seconds; Nano Banana 2.1 took 29 seconds and was cheaper; the Emotion Sheet App (one character reference in, a 3x3 sheet out, run through the Scenario MCP) took 58 seconds.

Run the batch (Quote before you run). Fourteen jobs, one slot each: eight expressions (happy, laughing, surprised, thinking, sad, proud, confused, sleepy) and six poses (wave, jump, eating, presenting, cheer, running), 37 to 42 seconds each, in parallel.

Check every pose against the sheet (Review with a score). One contact sheet, one line per pose against the keep and avoid lists. Twelve passed. Two went back with one added sentence each, about 45 seconds:

• Jump: a wide gray halo around him in mid-air. Added "Crisp cutout edges: no glow, no halo, no motion blur, no dust or particles around him."
• Presenting: facing right, which put the scarf ends on his right. Re-run facing left, as in the turnaround, with "The scarf knot and fringed ends hang on the side nearest the camera."

Then snap alpha of 250 and above to 255, so the opaque pixels are fully opaque.

Preview one loop, then run the rest (Loop a clip). Put the pose on the flat off-white background at 1280x720. Wan 3.0, the first recommendation, flagged the job for possible intellectual property twice: once with a prompt that named Barley and an animated-feature look, then with a neutral prompt, when the input image itself was flagged. Both failed in under 30 seconds. Move to the next recommendation rather than rewording a third time.

Create > Videos, Seedance 2.5, that frame as first and last frame, 5 seconds, audio off. Preview in draft mode at 480p (1 minute 50 seconds) against Minimax H3 at 768P (2 minutes 30 seconds), then three finals on Seedance 2.5 at 720p (2 minutes 29 seconds to 3 minutes 25 seconds, in parallel).

Seamless loop. The camera is locked. The small cartoon mascot in the image
waves its raised paw side to side twice, its body bobs gently, its tail sways
and it blinks once, then it returns to the starting pose. It keeps its exact
design, colors and scarf in every frame, with mitten paws and no fingers. The
plain warm off-white background stays flat the whole time. Ends exactly as it
starts. No new objects, no shadow, no text, no camera move.

The presenting and jump loops change only the motion sentence.

Measure the loops (Check by measurement). First-to-last-frame RMSE for the seam, against the average change between two frames: a seam below that is an invisible restart. Then count teal pixels in every frame: a frame with no teal means the scarf vanished. Watch the tail too: in the H3 preview it jumped to the other side mid-clip.

Drop Barley into the layouts (Cut out and key, Typeset text, never generate it). Key the flat background from the loop frames by distance to its color, remove the background tint from the soft edges, then place Barley in layouts drawn in code: a 4:5 ad with the jump loop, a 16:9 web hero with the presenting loop.

alpha = np.clip((np.abs(frame - BG).sum(2) - 20) / 40, 0, 1)   # BG = (250, 246, 238)
color = (frame - (1 - alpha) * BG) / alpha                      # removes the cream fringe

The jump loop adds a soft floor shadow on landing; drop pale, unsaturated pixels near the feet from the key.