Harness test · imgapi
Dreams and short stories, storyboarded end to end by an autonomous harness on a local image model: character and set sheets first, keyframes built by editing with those sheets as references, and ghost frames wherever one frame needs more than a single change to become the next.
ALA dream of the first Indian team in a Major grand final: a hostile stadium, a lost match, a standing ovation from the best player alive, and a trophy lifted anyway. Dream by Amiyanshu.
Neon flat-vector arena poster (thick black outlines, flat saturated RGB colour on blue-black)
AKA hostel that is also an ancient megastructure: from their high window, the dreamer and two friends ride future boards down its face like a mountain, and at the bottom they look up at something too big to end. (A dream shared anonymously.)
1970s French science-fiction bande dessinée, ligne claire
AJOn a night train she can't find her compartment; a faceless conductor hands her a watch with no hands, and she wades into a warm flooded field as the lanterns go out, wanting only to fix it.
Dark-blue night gouache illustration: matte painted shapes in indigo, navy and teal, amber only for lanterns and the watch (the silkscreen wording did not take; the model paints)
AIA man runs through old Bangalore with his baby on his chest, trying to get to a school. At the door the baby vanishes, he is in school uniform, and the whole scene collapses. Dream by Abhishek.
Flat grey graphic novel (1980s black-and-white printed comic: ink line and four flat greys)
AHEvery New Year, Grandma cooks a carp. This year her grandson makes friends with it, and when she comes with the pot he looks exactly like the lucky picture on the wall.
Chinese New Year woodblock print (Yangliuqing nianhua)
AGIn the long night, a girl lets her grandmother's lamp burn too high, a raven steals the flame, and the fire he cannot hold becomes the northern lights.
Inuit stonecut print (Cape Dorset)
AFOn his last night, a strict hotel lift operator meets a small girl with a red balloon who wants floor thirteen, the floor that isn't there.
1950s UPA limited animation
AESpring will not let the garden rest, so Winter waits outside the gate — and Jan's bulb, the one his mother left him, never flowers.
Art Nouveau poster (Alphonse Mucha)
ADTwo proud foremen race to build the higher half of a bridge, and the halves miss by a storey, until a storm and a child's red skipping rope make them build the one thing that joins them.
Soviet constructivist poster
ACAn old temple drummer will not let his granddaughter play her own beat, until his drum splits on festival day and the temple elephant refuses to move for anyone else's rhythm.
Kerala mural painting
ZIn a village with no oil for its lamps, a boy asks the Firebird for a single feather — and lights every window, one by one.
Palekh lacquer miniature
YAn architect promised his wife a house by the sea. They never built it — so on her birthdays, he kept revising the drawing.
Architectural blueprint (white linework on Prussian blue)
XFor three thousand years everyone in the tomb painting has faced sideways. Then the cat turns round to look at us.
Ancient Egyptian tomb painting
WIn a town where it always rains, a girl's red umbrella makes the rain fall up — and the storm shrinks to a small cloud that follows her home.
Two-colour linocut
VAn old man and a young woman live on either side of one wall, each alone — until one night he knocks, and the wall knocks back.
Azulejo (Portuguese blue-and-white painted tiles)
UA rooster who can't wait for morning crows at midnight — and the sun, still in its nightcap, gets up.
Persian miniature (Safavid)
TA girl in a yellow raincoat walks to her grandmother's house at the end of the street — and on the way the year turns, and so does her whole life.
16-bit pixel art (side-scroller)
SEvery night the fat cat by the pond stares at the moon in the water. One night it pounces — and comes up with the real one.
Kalighat pat painting
RA paper girl rows across the sea of a pop-up book — until the house cat reaches in.
Papercut (kirigami) inside a photograph
QAt closing time, a tired barber stops sweeping — and his reflection doesn't. It steps out of the mirror and finishes the job for him.
Ligne claire comic
PIn a village stitched on cloth, a sparrow pulls a loose thread and the sky begins to unravel — until an old embroiderer climbs the church spire with the only thread she has, which is red.
Cross-stitch embroidery
OA tiger sleeps so deeply that his stripes get bored and wander off into the night. Raju finds them tangled above the trees — and puts them back.
Gond painting (Pardhan Gond)
NDada naps on his charpai every afternoon. One afternoon his enormous moustache sprouts, then grows into a flowering garden — and Tara waters it.
Madhubani (Mithila) folk painting
MEvery winter morning, Hana looks at the mountain through her round window. One morning the window is empty — the mountain is at her door.
Sumi-e ink wash
LAn old calligrapher's brushstroke becomes a heron and flies away; he follows it through hills of wet ink to the edge of the paper.
Sumi-e ink wash
KWaiting for a late train, a woman steps into the travel poster on the platform wall — and nearly stays there.
1950s travel-poster screenprint
JOne full-moon night the village river gets up on a hundred little legs and walks away. Sai follows its trail of fish across the fields, dances with it under the moon, and carries it home in her pot.
Warli painting (white rice paste on mud)
IIn a city made of glass, the sun breaks in half. A boy in the west and a girl in the east each find a half, follow the other's glow across the dark city, and meet under the empty frame.
Stained glass
HFor twenty-two years Ravi has never missed a day of work. One morning he oversleeps, and his shadow goes without him — and does his whole job by lunch. Then it takes him to the sea.
Andhra leather shadow puppets (Tholu Bommalata)
GEvery summer Dadi sets her jars out on the terrace — not pickles, seasons. She tells Kabir not to open them. He opens the monsoon, and the whole town gets rain in May, until Dadi sings the cloud back home.
Pahari miniature painting (Kangra) · narrated in Hindi
FWhen the moon — a giant lightbulb — burns out, an old lamplighter rides his rubber lamppost into the sky and screws in the only spare he has: his own lantern.
1930s black-and-white rubber-hose cartoon
EEvery night, Nani knits the night for Asha's window. One night she dozes off with a thread left loose, the cat pulls it, and morning comes at midnight — so Asha carries the whole night up a ladder and throws it back into the sky.
Gouache picture-book illustration (mid-century)
DOne night a young man's teeth pack tiny suitcases, ride the toothbrush cup — now a bus — down the plughole, and move into a town made of sugar cubes. He follows them. In the morning they are all back. One of them has a door.
Two-colour risograph (fluorescent pink and teal)
C
BAn old postman waiting on a fire-watch tower is swallowed by a whale that is a post office — and one letter inside is for him, from the boy he used to be.
Ukiyo-e woodblock print
AA girl in a yellow raincoat buys a loaf of time from an owl baker and takes one bite. Time runs for everything in the world except her.
Claymation stop-motion miniature