Theme 079 · Characters & mascots

Shadow Puppet Theatre

Cut-paper silhouettes against a tinted, backlit screen, after the silhouette films of the 1920s. Pulse is a heron standing perfectly still in the river of a metric — the first to see the water fall — while a small human figure reaches for a glowing coral lantern.

readability ●●○trust ●●●effort med

How many dashboards
did you check today?

1 · HOOK0:00–0:08

The camera drifts up the dashboard towers (slow multiplane parallax, towers at 3 depths) while the lit windows flicker; the headline fades in on the 0:04 snare and the tiny figure turns its head on the last beat.

Acme Pulse

2 · REVEAL0:08 (drop)

The tint shifts amber → teal on the drop; the moon (with the mark) rises and the heron snaps its wings open in 3 stepped poses on beats 1–2–3. ‘Acme Pulse’ fades up on beat 4.

Checkout conversion

−18%

since 09:42 · after deploy #2231

Roll back

3 · PROOF MOMENT0:12–0:32

The river line breaks on beat 1 and the coral glow blooms at the fall; the heron’s neck shoots forward on the next beat (the ‘noticing’ pose). The cartouche slides in from the right; the figure lifts the lantern on the bar downbeat.

Acme Pulse

Caught before
customers noticed.

Start free

4 · CTA0:36–0:45

The tint warms to dawn over one bar; the heron glides across the sun (3-pose flap cycle per beat) and the tagline and Start free fade up one beat apart.

COMPONENT KIT

Heron silhouette — Pulse: a still, patient watcher that moves only when it matters
Tinted backlight — amber = before, teal = Pulse is watching, dawn = resolved
Cut-paper towers — dashboards as a silhouette city with lit window-bars
River metric — the metric line as water; the anomaly is a waterfall
Cartouche — ornate black label for the anomaly readout
Coral lantern — the human’s action (Roll back) glowing in the dark

MOTION · MUSIC

Stepped cut-out poses — joints swap between 3 drawn poses at 12 fps, never tweened; pose changes land on quarter notes (0.5 s at 120 BPM)
Multiplane drift — 3 silhouette layers parallax at 0.3/0.6/1.0 speed, 8-bar loop, linear — the calm under the beat
Tint cross-fade — background gradient shifts hue over exactly 1 bar (2 s), starting on the drop and on the resolution

WHY / RISK · ADAPT IT

Why: Silhouettes read at any size and feel crafted and calm — the opposite of a noisy dashboard. A heron is a natural metaphor for patient watching: motionless for ages, then one precise strike. Risk: Silhouette-only frames hide UI detail and can feel slow or melancholy; keep the data in the cartouche large and crisp, and keep the tempo up with stepped poses.

Adapt to your product: Cut your product’s key screens into silhouettes (towers, rivers, paths), pick a watchful animal for your agent, and colour the backlight with your palette to mark each story beat.

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotte_Reiniger (the pioneer of silhouette animation; gesture instead of faces) · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Prince_Achmed (1926 feature: cut-outs under a camera, multiplane, colour tinting)