alexlukman/looks

---

name: looks description: Makes a 6 s character scene for a reel in one of nine visual styles: hologram, cyberpunk neon, paper cutout stop motion, technical blueprint, thermal camera, Japanese TV anime, ASCII terminal, watercolour or claymation. A worker walks across an office carrying a stack of papers and the top sheet slips. Use when the user runs /looks, asks to show the same scene in different art styles, or names one of these styles for a short character animation.

/looks

┌──────────────────────┐
│ EMPLOYEE_042 DOCS: 6 │  labels depend on the look
│  ┌──┐    ▭           │
│  │  │   o   ▤        │  a worker carries a stack of papers
│  └──┘  /|▤▤  ┬─┬     │  the top sheet slips at 3 s
│        / \    ~      │
└──────────────────────┘

One scene, nine looks. Use it to show a style quickly, to compare looks side by side, or as a base for your own character beats.

First use

This skill's folder is the "Base directory" Claude Code shows when it loads it.

SKILL_DIR="<base directory of this skill>"
KIT=$(python3 -c 'import os,sys;print(os.path.realpath(os.path.join(sys.argv[1],"..","..","kit")))' "$SKILL_DIR")
[ -s "$KIT/node_modules/playwright/package.json" ] || bash "$KIT/setup.sh"

Needs Node, Python 3, ffmpeg and Chrome or Chromium (CHROME=/path/to/chrome if needed). It is a 2D canvas: the "3D" looks (claymation, hologram) are drawn to look that way, not modelled.

Steps

1. Ask which look (or several) and any words to change (name tag, sign, terminal command, temperature).
2. Spec. Write <name>.looks.json, e.g. { "look": "anime" }. For several looks, write one spec per look.
3. Check. python3 "$SKILL_DIR/build.py" <spec.json> --check writes stills at 0, 1, 3, 5 and 5.9 s and warns about text that does not fit.
4. Render. python3 "$SKILL_DIR/build.py" <spec.json> writes <name>.looks.mp4 (1080x1920, 30 fps, 180 frames, H.264 yuv420p, no audio). Most looks take under a minute; watercolour and claymation are slower because of blur.
5. Hand over the mp4 paths.

The looks

look	What it does	Words it uses
hologram	Translucent cyan shapes with glowing rims, additive light, wireframe hatching, moving scanlines, short glitches, a grid floor and a projector disc with turning rings. The sheet bursts into particles and re-forms on the stack.	name_tag, docs count
cyberpunk	Night office: pink and cyan neon tubes, rain and lit buildings behind the window, a neon sign that dips briefly, a pink rim light on one side and cyan on the other, a wet reflective floor, haze and bloom.	sign
paper	Craft paper with rough cut edges, fibre texture and drop shadows; brass split pins at the joints; animated on twos (12 fps) with a little jitter each step.	none
blueprint	White and cyan lines on a gridded blue sheet; the office draws itself; dimension lines for height, stack, speed and stride; the sheet's fall drawn as a dashed arc with a note; a title block.	title, dims, slip_note
thermal	Heat values mapped through an ironbow palette (face and hands hottest, the mug hot and steaming, the window cold), with blur and sensor noise; a crosshair with a temperature, a scale bar, a REC dot and a timestamp.	temp, timestamp
anime	Two-tone cel shading, thin dark outlines, spiky hair with a highlight, big eyes, a painted sky and light rays on a wooden floor. At the slip: a quick zoom on his face, speed lines, a sweat drop and a red !?.	exclaim
ascii	The scene converted to green characters on about 80 columns, with CRT scanlines and a vignette; a command types itself at the top with a blinking cursor; a warning line at the slip.	command, warn
watercolor	Soft washes with darker pooled edges, loose pencil lines slightly off the colour, paper grain and a white margin; the washes change every 6 frames so it shimmers.	none
clay	Plasticine shading with thumb-press marks, bead eyes, a soft contact shadow, a blurred background like a macro lens, animated on twos with a small wobble.	none

Spec

{ "look": "hologram", "docs": 6, "slip_at": 3.0, "caption": "",
  "name_tag": "EMPLOYEE_042", "sign": "OPEN 24/7", "temp": "36.8°C", "timestamp": "2026-11-11 21:04",
  "command": "user@office:~$ ./walk --docs 6", "warn": "!! WARN: sheet_01 detached",
  "title": "OFFICE WALK / STUDY", "slip_note": "SHEET 01 - DETACHED",
  "dims": ["H 1.78 m", "STACK 0.30 m", "v = 1.32 m/s", "STRIDE 1.39 m"], "exclaim": "!?" }

• look: one of the nine above. docs: sheets in the stack (2-10). slip_at: when the top sheet slips (0.5-4 s).
• caption (optional): a short line near the top, for any look.
• The other words only show up in the looks listed in the table.

Changing it

• The scene is a list of shapes with a material name (skin, shirt, paper, desk, ...). office() builds the room and worker(t) the person (walk cycle, 2-bone arms, the paper stack). Each look in LOOKS maps materials to its own colours or heat values and draws the list its own way, so a new prop is one line in office() plus a colour in each palette.
• To add a look, add a function to LOOKS and its name to LOOKS in build.py.
• The isometric office idea from the same prompt set is better done with /isometric.

Other screen sizes

Every skill renders 9:16 and can then fit the video into any frame. Add to the spec:

• size: "16:9", "1:1", "4:5", "4:3", "21:9" or any "WIDTHxHEIGHT" such as "1920x1080".
• fill (optional): "blur" (default, a blurred copy of the video fills the sides) or a colour like "#101010".
• zoom (optional, default 1): above 1 enlarges the picture and crops the quiet top and bottom margins; up to about 1.25 is safe in landscape. Check that nothing important at the very top or bottom is cut. The contact sheet is made from the 9:16 render. For a video you already have: python3 "$KIT/resize.py" <video.mp4> --size 1920x1080 [--fill blur] [--zoom 1.2].

Taste

• One small story beat (the slip) per clip. Let the style carry it.
• No strobing: the neon dip, the REC dot (1 Hz) and the glitches are short and spaced out.
• Text never below 40 px, inside 90 px at the sides and 220 px top and bottom.