Wakey Bean
An 8-second vertical social ad for a fabricated coffee brand. AI built the clay world and animated the mascot. I directed the character and the packaging, and finished it by hand.
The idea
An empty, sleepy mug slumps on the counter at sunrise. Coffee pours in, it wakes up so happy the coffee jumps out with it, and it lands without spilling a drop. Then: the bag. Built for a muted, scrolling feed, so the story works without sound or captions.
Finding the character
The first mascot was a clay coffee bean. Two rounds in, a small brown oval with legs wasn’t working, however I styled it. So I changed the character instead of fighting the shape.
Style frames
I locked one kitchen first, then reused it for every shot so the set, the light and the camera never changed. These stills are what Runway animated.
How I made it
- Step 1
Concept
Claude helped shape the story, the beats and every prompt, and kept the budget on cheap stills instead of video.
Claude - Step 2
Design
Character sheet, expressions and three style frames, all made in one ChatGPT thread so the mug stayed the same.
ChatGPT - Step 3
Animate
Runway turned each frame into motion. A first-and-last-frame bridge stitched the clips into one continuous shot.
Runway - Step 4
Finish
12 fps stop-motion timing, a circle-wipe into the product and an end card built around the redesigned bag.
After Effects
What went wrong, and how I fixed it
Same rule as every AI project: it's fast, but it doesn't follow directions. Here's where it drifted and how I steered it back.
The wake-up went backwards
In the pour clip, the mug's eyes closed blissfully, opened, then drooped back to sleepy before finally waking up. Fix: I cut the step backwards, so the face goes straight from smelling the coffee to sparkly-eyed.
The jump started mid-air
The second clip began with the mug already in the air, so the cut from the sitting mug popped. Fix: a bridge clip. I gave Runway the exact last frame of clip 1 and the exact first frame of clip 2, and it animated the stand-up and launch in between.
The clay bag didn't say "coffee"
AI's clay version looked like a toy, not something you'd find on a shelf. Fix: I redirected it toward a realistic shelf product, with bold marker lettering in the brand colors, and did a draw-over in Photoshop to guide ChatGPT's final version. The world around it stays playful.
AI motion felt too smooth
Runway's movement was floaty and digital, with small morphs between frames. Fix: I conformed every clip to 12 frames per second, the rhythm of real stop-motion. The stepped motion reads as handmade and hides the morphing.
Why clay? I picked the style on purpose. Handmade clay is supposed to wobble a little, so the frame-to-frame drift that ruins photoreal AI reads as charm here.
What I learned
Test the silhouette first
If a shape reads wrong at thumbnail size, no amount of detail will save it.
Pick a style that forgives AI
Clay's handmade wobble hides AI's frame-to-frame drift.
Plan the cuts, not just the shots
First and last frames make separate generations play as one shot.
Real product, playful world
The story can be clay. The thing people buy should look real.
Social posts
Two Instagram posts to carry the spot onto the brand’s feed: a product still and a looping wave from the mascot. Runway only animated the mug; the logo and type were added in After Effects so the text stays sharp.