Ame: a toy and a frog share an umbrella as the rain freezes

Make a 50-second painted anime short, AME · 雨 - Frozen Rain, entirely in code, from this one prompt. three.js in the browser, every frame rendered by code, every sound synthesized. No video model, no image model, no stock art, no audio samples, no hand-drawn frames, no fonts beyond the system ones. You are the director, the animator, the lighter and the composer. Build the look first, then the set, the characters, the rain, the sound, and check your own frames before you call anything done.

WHAT TO DELIVER

1. Ame.mp4: 1920×1080, 24 fps CFR, 50.0 s = 1200 frames, H.264 High yuv420p BT.709 (tagged, tv range), AAC 192k 48 kHz, faststart.
2. A single offline HTML player (dist/ame.html): one file with three.js, the look kit, the film, the mascot model and the soundtrack inlined. It plays the film live in WebGL2 from file:// with sound, no network.
3. A public-ready repo: index.html (one frame per URL: ?f=432, ?t=36.6, ?render=1 for the tools), audio.html (the synth), src/ (the film + the anime look kit + the mascot), tools/ (stills, resumable render, sound, master, encode + QC, player build, keyframes, collision check, spectrum, contact sheets), BRIEF.md (production brief), README.md, MIT LICENSE, three.js r160 vendored (no CDN). npm run build = audio → film → player → mp4.

STYLE REFERENCE

A painted anime short in the spirit of Ghibli and Shinkai rain scenes: a narrow Tokyo backstreet at night, wet asphalt that mirrors everything, pink and cyan neon you could paint, warm lanterns, steam. Cel-shaded characters with ink over gouache painted backgrounds. Quiet, tender, wordless. Night, but readable: never murky, never black.

LENGTH, SHOTS, CHARACTERS

50 s, 7 shots + an end card, 24 fps, wordless (no dialogue, no subtitles). Cast: Clawd and a tiny tree frog. No people anywhere.

Clawd: a 20 cm terracotta vinyl toy (body width = 1 unit), color #D97757 (hue 12-15, never orange, never pink). One wide rounded block is his head and body (soft bevel); a flat face with two big glossy black eyes with white highlights and a small mouth; two round side nubs as arms; four short stubby legs. All acting is in the face (an expression library: neutral, curious, surprised, squint, happy, starry, gentle, determined) and the body (squash, lean, nub gestures). On model in every shot.

The frog: a small round tree frog built from soft ellipsoids. Light green with a cream belly, a teal-green cel shadow (never black), big white eyes with dark pupils and two crisp catchlights, a wide smile, a little blush, four suction-cup toes per foot. A soft-pink tapering tongue that shoots out in 3 frames. Cute first: it must read as a frog in every shot, never as a tube or a blob.

The umbrella: a clear vinyl umbrella built in code. A dome of 8 slightly sagging milky-transparent panels that bend the neon behind them, 8 thin ribs, stretchers, a runner, a straight shaft and a white J-handle. Drops bead on the canopy and slide off the rim. The handle sits fixed in Clawd's nub: place the whole umbrella every frame from his nub's world position, so it moves with him and can never float or bend.

The alley: a narrow wet backstreet (x -7.2 to 7.2), buildings from z +42 to -150 so the camera can also look back down the street. Two- and three-storey shopfronts, rolled-down shutters, bicycles, cables and wires, a steam vent, paper lanterns, a hero lantern 灯 at a shop door. Neon signs in made-up katakana only (ホノカ ルミナ ネココ ソラヤ ポコポコ キララ モモ ユメノ ミルル ハルカ ヨゾラ), no Latin letters, no real brands. A real 3D vending machine (made-up brand ポカリン): a body, three rows of cans behind glass, lit buttons, a coin slot and a warm light pool on the wet ground; it is the warm fill on Clawd. A wet stone step beside it where the frog sits. Puddles that mirror everything.

ART DIRECTION (take literally)

- Night, but readable: rain shots around mean luma 85, frozen shots 85-95 (0-255). Deep blue-violet shadows, pink and cyan neon, warm lantern and vending-machine pools.
- Cel anime: three hard tone bands with a brush-broken terminator, a 3 px ink hull, a small shaped highlight on the lit bevels only. Neon spill falls on the characters in two hard cel bands, not as a smooth gradient.
- Palette lock: Clawd stays terracotta (hue 12-15) under any neon. Give him his own anime key light, independent of the signs.
- Wet vinyl: when rain hits Clawd, beads and short anime highlight dashes on his body. No big white specular squares.
- Gouache backgrounds: a Kuwahara-type brush filter on background pixels only. Characters, umbrella, rain, drops and lettering stay clean.
- Timing: characters on twos (12 drawings/s), camera and FX (rain, drops, glints, neon flicker) on ones. Anticipation, overshoot, settle, blinks. No cuts on the action.
- Every shot has one readable action. The viewer always understands what Clawd is doing and why.

SCENE (times in seconds, frame = round(t × 24))

- S1 · 0.0–8.0 (f0–191) · Slow crane down from the neon signs high on the buildings, through heavy rain, to Clawd standing under his clear umbrella. Steam from a vent, puddle reflections, the vending machine glows, one sign flickers. Rain bed + a soft lo-fi piano.
- S2 · 8.0–17.0 (f192–407) · Medium two-shot. Clawd under his umbrella; the frog sits on the wet step by the vending machine, getting soaked. 10.2 he notices it. 11.3–12.8 he tilts the umbrella over the frog. 13.0, 13.55, 14.1 drops hit his head (squint, squash, wet sheen). 14.7 a big smile. 15.3 the frog's happy hop. 16.2 it spots a drop growing on the canopy rim.
- S3 · 17.0–20.0 (f408–479) · Macro at the frog's eye level. The drop falls from the rim in front of its mouth; the tongue shoots out and TOUCHES it at exactly 18.00 s (f432). The freeze: a wave runs out from that drop, every drop in the street stops with a tiny overshoot and flashes as the wave passes, splashes and ripples freeze mid-air. The tongue pulls back; the drop stays hanging. A beat of stillness. Sound: one glass "tink", then digital silence 18.33–20.0.
- S4 · 20.0–26.0 (f480–623) · Slow push-in. Clawd's eyes go wide (20.2 surprised), he looks around at the hanging drops, starry eyes at 21.6. He steps out into the frozen rain; at 23.6 the frog hops down after him. A shimmer pad comes in at 20.4.
- S5 · 26.0–34.5 (f624–827) · A slow orbit around Clawd walking through millions of hanging drops under his umbrella, the frog hopping one body-width beside him. With his right nub he taps drops at 27.4, 29.0, 30.5, 32.0, 33.5: each one rings like a glass bell and glints run through the field.
- S6 · 34.5–42.0 (f828–1007) · One big foreground drop holds the whole street, with Clawd upside down inside it. He walks toward the camera tapping drops (35.6, 36.5, 37.3, 38.1, 39.0). At 40.6 the last tap turns the drop gold. At 41.0 the thaw: a second wave runs out from the gold drop and the rain starts to fall again, warm and golden.
- S7 · 42.0–45.0 (f1008–1079) · Gold rain, the neon softens. Clawd and the frog together under the umbrella, happy. The camera eases back and up. Warm piano + pad, soft gold rain.
- END · 44.5–50.0 (f1068–1199) · A 0.5 s dissolve to the end card: "Fable 5.5" drawn with a brush, a red 寓話 seal, then the title "Ame — 雨" under it from ~47.8 s, held. A soft tap for the seal, a quiet ending.

Keep the timeline in one table in code (shot id, frames, camera, events). Picture, sound and QC all read this one clock.

THE RAIN (the heart of the film)

- One rain clock drives every streak, drop, splash, drip, ripple and puff of steam. Nothing has its own random timing.
- The freeze is a wave from the drop the tongue touches (t0 = 18.00 s, 12 units/s). Each drop stops with tau 45 ms plus a small overshoot and flashes as the wave passes. The thaw is a second wave from the gold drop (41.0 s, 4.5 units/s); the gold rain falls at 0.6 speed.
- Drops by screen size. Near drops (radius over ~6 px) are real lenses: a flipped, compressed capture of the street inside (soft-clamped so windows never blow out), a caustic crescent at the bottom, a thin dark edge, a crisp highlight and neon catchlights. Mid drops are tiny teardrop glints tinted by the nearest neon (a 4-point star only on the brightest). Far drops behind focus are soft coloured bokeh.
- The air should feel full of glass, never snow: few white specks, most glints in neon colours.
- The drops part around Clawd, and a clear cone keeps the camera's view of his face open.
- The street stays wet: puddle reflections are sharp, the asphalt reflection is smeared and rippled.

THE LOOK KIT (build this first, prove it on one lookdev frame)

One three.js r160 scene through a small multi-pass pipeline:
capture (the scene without the drops: colour for the lens interiors and bokeh tints, depth for the paint) → mirror (half-resolution planar reflection for the wet street) → main pass with MSAA, every material writing a paint mask in alpha (1 = painted background, 0 = clean cel layer) → paint (anisotropic Kuwahara gouache on the background only, pigment variation inside flat bands, brush texture anchored to the WORLD via the capture depth, so it never swims when the camera moves) → god rays from the practical lights → bloom on neon and lanterns → grade (halation, chromatic softness, tone knee, split tone, vignette, film grain) → end card.
Neon signs: canvas tube lettering (white-hot core, coloured tube, glow, halo) with cel-banded spill on everything nearby.
Every frame is a pure function of its index f (t = f / 24): no Math.random, no Date, no state carried between frames. Frames render in any order, so the headless render is resumable and deterministic. window.renderFrame(t) returns the frame for the tools.

SOUND (synthesized, no samples)

Web Audio on an OfflineAudioContext, driven by the film's own event list (window.__events() from the timeline → audio.html), rendered to WAV, deterministic. A rain bed and a soft lo-fi piano (Fmaj7 Em7 Dm7 Cmaj7, 75 bpm) from 0 to 18 s, drip plinks, an umbrella rustle at 11.4, a croak at 15.4. At the touch a tiny glass "tink", then the master is muted 18.33–20.0 s (true digital silence). A shimmer pad from 20.4 s. A glass bell for every tapped drop (inharmonic partials, C-major pentatonic), soft frog hops. A gold bell at 40.6 and a warm swell at the thaw. Warm piano, pad and soft gold rain to the end; a soft tap for the seal; a fade. Master to -14 LUFS integrated, true peak at most -1 dBTP, the limiter taking at most 2 dB. No single-sample clicks at bell onsets. You can't hear, so measure: loudness per section, spectrum per section, the silence at the freeze in the encoded AAC, cue onsets vs the timeline.

ANIME QUALITY STANDARD

- Clawd: ink outline visible, three hard bands + a small shaped highlight, terracotta hue 12-15 in every key (measure it on the rendered frame), face readable in every shot he is in.
- The frog and the umbrella get the same ink and cel as Clawd.
- Contact: the umbrella handle stays in his nub, the shaft straight; the frog sits on the step (never sinking, never floating), its feet touch what they stand on; Clawd's feet rest on the ground.
- Collisions: pose every second frame and test the umbrella against Clawd, the frog, the step, the vending machine, the walls and the ground; the frog against Clawd. Every count 0 before any render.
- Backgrounds painted, characters and lettering clean.
- Timing on twos for characters, ones for camera and FX. Holds on key poses.
- Luma: rain shots ~85, frozen shots 85-95; no frame-to-frame jump on a cut except the end-card dissolve; no blank frames, no identical frames (near-duplicates only in the static end card).
- Every frame should pass as a still from a theatrical anime film.

IT MUST NOT LOOK LIKE

- Smooth 3D plastic: a glossy Clawd with a big white square highlight on top, PBR reflections, gradient shading.
- Snow: white specks everywhere instead of glass drops.
- A glowing poster where the vending machine should be: it needs a body, cans, buttons, light on the ground.
- A broken or floating umbrella: a bent stick, a handle that leaves the nub, a canopy through his head.
- A weird creature: a tube, a blob, black shadow bands on the frog, eyes without white.
- Murk: a black night, grey fog, a bloom haze over everything.
- Real brands, Latin text on the signs, real logos.
- Screen-anchored paper or grain that slides over the moving image ("shower door").
- Particle mush for rain; 60 fps floaty characters; jitter.
- Anything passing through anything.

WHAT YOU ARE FREE TO CHANGE

Camera angles, lenses and compositions; exact timing inside a shot as long as the touch at 18.00 s and the thaw at 41.0 s hold; the shop signs, the number of drops, bicycles and lanterns; extra background life (a cat in a window, a moth at the lantern); extra expressions for Clawd; the arrangement of the score. Not free: the story order (shelter → touch → freeze → walk → gold thaw → together), the clear umbrella, the frog, no people, 50 s / 1200 frames / 24 fps / 1920×1080, the silence at the freeze, the end card.

THE LOOP: render → inspect frames → fix

Never report a shot as done from reading code. For every shot: render stills at full 1080p (first, middle and last frame, plus every cue), open them and look at them, make a labelled contact sheet of 12 keyframes with luma, saturation and Clawd's hue, run the collision check, and ask: would this pass as a frame from a theatrical anime film? Is the action readable? Is anything floating or clipping? Does the rain read as glass? If not, fix it and render again. Keep looping until every frame is right. After the full render, check every rendered frame (luma per frame, jumps on cuts, blank, identical, near-duplicate), look at the frames around the touch, the thaw and every cut, and compare the sound report with the timeline. Then ship: the MP4, the single-file player and the repo.