How a two-person character studio builds with Claude.

01

One character bible, every pipeline

Everything starts from a single, versioned document that describes our world: who each character is, how they move and speak in each language, what they would never do, and the visual rules of a relief print (limited palette, mirrored carving, visible grain).

Why: the hardest part of growing a character brand across languages is staying recognisably us. Putting the voice in one place makes every new channel cheaper and more consistent.

02

Multilingual commerce

Oct–Dec 2026 · first deadline: Taipei SIF Illustration Fair, Oct 23–26

1. Export the catalog Claude Code

   A small script pulls our 50+ listings into one structured file (name, materials, size, price, photos).

2. Translate in brand voice Claude API

   Listings and booth cards go to EN / JA / zh-TW with the bible as a cached prompt; bulk runs use Message Batches.

3. Draft from photos Claude vision

   For new items, Claude reads product photos plus our spec notes and returns title, description, size table and alt text as structured output.

4. Approve CEO

   Heeseung reviews a side-by-side sheet and approves or edits each text. Nothing is published without it.

5. Publish & print Claude Code

   Approved text flows into the store, the website and print-ready booth cards.

03

Print animation & animated emoticons

Short, wordless films (15–30 seconds) in which our characters move the way a print is made: layer by layer, with the grain of the paper showing. Wordless means one film works in every country; only captions and titles change. The same pipeline produces an animated KakaoTalk emoticon set from our existing 42 expressions.

1. Ideas Claude API CEO picks

   Each week Claude proposes 10 loglines from the bible and the seasonal calendar (fairs, holidays, new products). Heeseung picks two.

2. Beat sheet & shot list Claude API

   Claude turns a logline into beats and a shot list in structured form: shot, seconds, framing, action, layers, sound.

3. Key art Heeseung

   Heeseung carves and prints the key frames and separate layers (character, props, background). The art is always hand-made.

4. Motion assembly Claude Code

   Our own tool, built with Claude Code, rigs the scanned print layers as cut-outs and animates them on the shot list’s timing (limited animation, 12 fps), then renders with ffmpeg. We do not use generative video for our characters.

5. Frame check Claude vision

   Claude compares sampled frames with the shot list and bible: missing layers, wrong colours, continuity, caption safe areas. Issues come back as a checklist.

6. Captions & release Claude API Approve

   Titles, captions and descriptions in KO / JA / EN / zh-TW; we approve and publish to Shorts, Reels and our site.

Shot list format

// one shot from a 20-second film, produced by Claude, read by our assembly tool
{ "shot": 3, "seconds": 2.5, "framing": "medium, eye level",
  "action": "the dog lifts the book with its nose; pages flutter",
  "layers": ["bg_bookshelf", "dog_body", "dog_head", "book_open"],
  "motion": { "dog_head": "tilt +8deg ease-out", "book_open": "rise 40px" },
  "sound": "paper rustle" }

Why this way: our value is the hand-made print. Claude takes over the writing, planning, tooling and checking around the art, so a two-person team can publish animation weekly without outsourcing and without imitating our own style with a generator.

04

Game: “Print & Stroll” (working title)

A cozy puzzle game for phones and the web, built on how relief printing actually works: what you carve comes out mirrored on paper. Players stroll through a small neighbourhood with our characters, find scenes with something missing, and carve a block so that the print fills the gap.

Core loop (3–5 minute sessions)

Where Claude comes in

Level format

// a level proposed by Claude; kept only if the solver finds exactly one solution
{ "id": "walk-012", "grid": [6, 6], "layers": 2,
  "target": "bird_nest_on_branch", "pieces": ["L3", "T4", "dot", "dot", "bar2"],
  "rules": { "mirror": true, "max_moves": 9 },
  "difficulty": 3, "unlock": "sticker_nest" }

05

Customer & wholesale inquiries

Claude reads an incoming question in any language, looks up stock, shipping rules and stockist information through tools, and drafts a reply in the customer’s language. A person reads, edits and sends every reply; nothing is answered automatically. We collect only what a reply needs.

06

Roadmap & metrics

Expected usage at full run is roughly ten million tokens a month, most of it level generation and frame checks. Program credits would let us build and test these pipelines on real volume before overseas sales and the game pay for them.

07

Guardrails