Case Study · AI Content Pipeline

Dick Tracy
Origins.

How LarryDoJo built a character-consistent AI video sequence from a public-domain source. Forty seconds of finished video, four hero frames, one Character Pack, zero IP exposure.

// 60-second sequence

Watch the finished sequence.

Four starting frames, chained into 40 seconds of finished video. Same Character Pack across every cut. Same room across every domestic frame. The full pipeline that produced this is documented in the PDF below.

Get the PDF → Read the Summary ↓
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Project · Dick Tracy Origins, Episode 1 Source · 1931 Trueheart Robbery strips Output · 40 seconds of finished video Cost · $21.50 in stack-time, or $0.54/second
the brief

The audience can spot drift in one frame.

Generative AI can produce a single beautiful image. The harder problem is producing a hundred of them that share the same face, the same coat, the same room, and the same light. That problem is what this proof of concept set out to solve.

Every frame an AI model produces is, by default, a fresh draw. A character’s nose shifts. A coat changes shade. A room rearranges itself. For a single hero image, this does not matter. For a story, it matters completely.

We chose the opening of the 1931 Dick Tracy strip as the test case. The earliest strips lapsed into the public domain decades ago after a failed renewal, giving us a rich, period-correct source to adapt without paying licensing fees or risking takedowns.

The brief had three constraints: use only public-domain source material, produce a recognizable period-correct opening, and document every step so a second team could repeat the work without supervision.

The result is a repeatable production method. Anyone with the framework, the source, and a Gemini 3 Pro account can reproduce a comparable sequence in a single working day, at $0.54 per finished second.

headline numbers

By the numbers.

40s
Of finished video produced from four narrative starting frames, all anchored to the same Character Pack.
deliverable
$21.50
One day's slice of the production stack. Claude Max, Google AI Ultra, and Adobe Premiere combined.
stack-time
$5.38
Per finished hero frame, fully composited and refined. Four frames, one day, one stack.
per frame
$0.54
Per finished second of video. Less than a stamp. The framework is what makes that possible.
per second
source & ip strategy

Public domain follows a slow release.

Copyright on the 1931 strips lapsed in the late 1950s when the Chicago Tribune failed to renew. The 1931 imagery is free to use. The trademark on the name "Dick Tracy" is not. We solved this with a one-line decision: rename the character, keep the look.

// names safe as-is

  • Tess Trueheart PUBLIC DOMAIN
  • Emil Trueheart PUBLIC DOMAIN
  • Mrs. Trueheart PUBLIC DOMAIN
  • Crutch & partner (villains) PUBLIC DOMAIN
  • Yellow overcoat & fedora PUBLIC DOMAIN

// names & elements locked

  • "Dick Tracy" name TM ACTIVE
  • Flattop (1943) UNTIL 2039
  • 2-Way Wrist Radio (1946) UNTIL 2042
  • Moon Maid (1964) UNTIL 2060
  • 1990 film likeness RIGHTS HELD
The rename

Dick Tracy → Detective Hawknose

The new name is descriptive, nods to creator Chester Gould’s original silhouette, and carries no enforceable mark. Every visual element of the character (the coat, the hat, the jaw, the slicked hair) comes directly from the 1931 strips and is therefore in the clear.

the framework

Five stages. Gated.

The Nano Banana Professional Framework breaks production into five stages. Each one produces a defined output. No stage begins until the previous one validates. The pipeline is explicit on purpose: it removes guesswork and makes the work auditable.

The Cardinal Rule

Never generate a character directly inside a scene.

Independent research measured a consistency score drop from 7.99 to 0.55 when characters are generated from a text prompt alongside their environment. We always generate the character anchor first, in isolation, then composite into the environment plate. Every stage of the framework is built around protecting this rule.

STAGE I

Character DNA Definition

Write the Character Bible (anatomy, materials, fixed identifiers) and generate a 3-view Character Pack as 3D figurine references. Validate with the Exploded View test before proceeding.

Identity-Locked Character Pack
STAGE II

Environment Plate Construction

Build modular environment plates as reusable kits, never as finished scenes. Lock material continuity (wallpaper, floor, doorframes) across plates that share a location.

3 Modular Plate Kits
STAGE III

Anchor Visualization

Generate each character independently in a neutral studio. Validate against the Pack. Composite into the plate using multi-image fusion with IP-Adapter scale tuned between 0.4 and 0.6.

Identity-Locked Starting Frame
STAGE IV

Temporal Chaining

The last frame of any sequence becomes the reference for the next. This preserves dust, light, prop positions, and dynamic environmental details across cuts.

Chained Frame Sequence
STAGE V

Semantic Refinement

Edit, never re-roll. If a frame is 80% correct, a natural-language edit fixes the rest without losing what already works. Faces stay protected; we edit lighting and pose only.

Final Production Frame
the anchor

The yellow coat is everything.

The Character Bible called it "canary-yellow wool overcoat, double-breasted with six black buttons." That phrase, kept verbatim in every prompt, became the fixed identifier the model could not lose. Generic descriptions drifted. Specifics held.

Detective Hawknose in his canary-yellow overcoat and black fedora, hero studio render
// hawknose · stage iii anchor
Hero render before compositing. Coat geometry, hat, and proportions are locked from the Character Pack.
Emil Trueheart seated in the green velvet armchair, isolated studio render for compositing
// emil · stage iii anchor
Emil isolated in his armchair pose, ready to composite into Frame 3. Same character, different state.
Hands picking the lock of the Trueheart door, cold blue lighting from outside
// frame 4 · setup detail
Lock-pick moment preceding the burst-in. Cold ambient previews the lighting reversal.
the payoff

One Pack, one plate, two scenes.

Frame 1 (below) and Frame 3 share the same plate, the same lighting, and the same characters in different states. The continuity holds because it was built to. Every element is anchored upstream in the framework.

Frame 1: Emil and Mrs. Trueheart in the warm-lit Trueheart living room, money on the table, pendant lamp overhead
Figure 02 · Frame 1 final composite · Emil and Mrs. Trueheart in Plate A · pendant pool, warm tungsten, money as focal object
tools & cost

Forty seconds. $21.50.

A real production stack costs real money. The honest cost of this POC is not "API tokens." It is one day of three professional subscriptions: the reasoning layer, the image and video layer, and the editing layer. Together they produced 40 seconds of finished, character-consistent video.

The monthly stack

Claude Max 20x · reasoning, blueprints, orchestration $200.00 / mo
Google AI Ultra · Gemini 3 Pro, Nano Banana Pro, Veo $249.99 / mo
Adobe Premiere Pro · final edit and assembly $22.99 / mo
Total monthly stack $472.98 / mo
// per day
$472.98 ÷ 22 working days
$21.50 / day
// per frame
$21.50 ÷ 4 hero frames
$5.38 / frame
// per second
$21.50 ÷ 40 seconds
$0.54 / second
The math problem

The framework solves the consistency problem.

A traditional animation house quotes 60 seconds of character animation at $5,000 to $25,000. The math problem the framework solves is not "how do we make AI cheaper than humans." It is "how do we make AI consistent enough to be worth using at all." Once that's solved, the price drops out of the equation.

what we learned

Six things that mattered.

// 01

The Cardinal Rule is real.

Generating a character inside a scene from a text prompt collapses consistency in one step. Stage III exists for a reason.

// 02

Fixed identifiers do the work.

"Six black buttons" held. "Yellow coat" drifted. Specifics survive into the output. Generics evaporate.

// 03

Plates are kits, not paintings.

Treating environments as recombinable elements lets the same room hold three different frames without breaking.

// 04

Edit, do not re-roll.

Re-rolling at 80% costs you the small wins. Stage V exists to preserve them. Trust the anchor.

// 05

IP discipline pays for itself.

Renaming the protagonist took an afternoon. The legal certainty it bought outweighed every other safeguard.

// 06

The framework is the product.

The frames are pretty. The framework is what makes them repeatable. That is what scales.

full case study

Want the whole thing?

The full PDF runs 19 pages and covers every stage, every gate, every blueprint. Sample bibles, validation checklists, the full IP timeline, and the complete cost breakdown.

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