Blob Simulation — our demo

One example among many. Don't reuse its story, arc, shots, props or timings.

Demo: Is Faster Better? 《跑得快，就更好嗎？》 (52.0 s) · pip-simulation.mp4 · source in demo/

160 Pips, each born with its own speed, race for beans on a lab board. Eat one bean and you live; eat two and you leave a copy; but running costs speed² energy every second. We follow one fast Pip that eats first and runs dry first, hand the story to a slow one that keeps going, judge the first night, then run 20 generations until the board has turned blue and the Pips line up into the answer: the mean speed falls from 1.25 to 0.73. Narrated in English (Kokoro bm_george) with Chinese and English subtitles. Every number is an output of the simulation in demo/filmsim.js; see demo/FACTS.md.

Story & structure

Logline: the fast ones win the race and lose the game; under these rules, the slow inherit the board.

Arc: a fast Pip wakes, beans pop up around it, the question "Is faster better?" → rise to overhead, the three rules and the colour = speed legend → hard cut, the run starts in slow motion: the fast one (1.69) eats first, its energy bar empties, it fades to grey, slumps and turns to the camera → focus pull to a slow one (0.72) that keeps walking and eats two → crane up, the first night: 55 gone, 54 newborns, slow parents have 19 children and fast ones 6 → 20 generations from above, one wave per morning, the mean-speed chart stepping down; a hard cut into generation 9 shows one of the 20 fast Pips left among slow ones → tilt down: generation 20's 208 Pips walk into printed bars, generation 1 as a dashed outline, the fastest bin empty → "1.25 → 0.73", "Faster wasn't better. Under these rules, the slow ones win." → the end card printed on the board.

Two turns: the fast one wins the race and loses the day; then the whole board turns blue.

Shots

Film time (CUE and SHOTS in demo/film.js).

# Time Shot Camera Native move / note
S1 0–4.6 The fast Pip and its neighbours asleep; beans pop up in rings from it; it blinks awake. Title upper left low close-up, very slow orbit; picture shifted down to leave hazy board above the title bean rain
S1→S2 4.6–6.4 one Pip → a field of them rise to overhead (spherical blend)
S2 6.4–10.0 The morning board; on the clean floor left of the board edge: 160 pips, three rules with bean dots, "running costs energy", the colour ramp overhead, slow push rules fully in frame
S3a 10.0–14.6 Hard cut: the run starts in slow motion (about 0.3×, about 0.1× as it runs dry). The fast Pip eats first; its tag "1.69 FAST" and energy bar drain; it fades to spent grey, slumps and turns round low side tracking shot, slow push to the face; azimuth chosen by code the race; running dry
S3b 14.6–19.4 Focus and look move to the slow Pip (0.72); time speeds up; it eats two focus pull with pull-back, then follow
S4 19.4–27.0 The first night: the verdict sweeps the board (grey rings for the 55 gone, mint rings for 54 newborns); big head count 160 → 159; upper right "children by parent speed": slow 19, fast 6. Settles at 23.3 and holds crane up to the board-wide view, picture shifted down 190 px, still from 21.8 verdict sweep; held ≥ 2.5 s
S4→S5 27.0–28.3 rise to overhead
S5 28.4–37.3 Generations 2–20: a mint wave sweeps the board each morning, the old sink, the new pop up; left column on a light plate: big generation number, head count, mean speed, a large chart whose dot drops in on each wave overhead tilting down and orbiting; 32.0–34.4 hard cut to a low close-up in generation 9 (one of 20 fast Pips left, the slow ones turning to look at it); hard cut back to the other side the morning wave; waves speed up from 0.44 s to 0.25 s
S6 37.5–45.4 The bars and the axis are printed onto the board; generation 20 walks into its slots; counts appear; "1.25 → 0.73" upper right with a mint underline tilt down from overhead to oblique, slow push, still from 45.4 Pips into the chart
End 45.4–52.0 "Rules in, results out. / 規則寫進去，結果跑出來。" lower right until 48.8; 48.9–49.4 the end card is printed on the board in front of the histogram, held to 52.0 locked

Narration and subtitles

Kokoro bm_george, speed 0.9 (about 2.5 words per second), ten lines in demo/voice/lines.json, each checked with asr_check.py (line 3's "there" is a homophone of "their"; its asr field says so). Numbers are spelled out in the voice text and written as digits in the subtitles. Subtitles are burned in (SUBS in film.js) and exported to pip-simulation.srt; each cue holds at least the line plus 0.6 s (shortest cue 3.0 s).

Start (s) English Chinese
0.4 160 Pips. Each one is born with its own speed. 160 隻小人，每隻天生一個速度。
6.0 One bean keeps you alive. Two beans make a copy. 吃到一顆能活下來，吃到兩顆多生一隻。
10.65 The fast ones get there first. 跑得快的，先搶到豆子。
13.75 But speed burns energy, and they run dry. 可速度很耗體力，它們很快就跑不動了。
17.8 The slow ones just keep going. 慢的，一直在走。
22.0 By nightfall, the slow ones have left three times as many children. 天黑時，慢的留下的後代是快的三倍。
27.3 Now run it again. 20 generations. 再跑一次，跑 20 代。
31.4 Every morning, there is a little more blue on the board. 每天早上，檯面上的藍色都多一點。
38.0 The average speed falls from 1.25 to 0.73. 平均速度從 1.25 降到 0.73。
45.0 Faster wasn't better. Under these rules, the slow ones win. 跑得快不一定更好。在這套規則下，慢的贏了。

Score

120 bpm, G major (demo/mix.py, events from the page).

Section Music Foley
0–4.6 hang D and G; the 14 nearest beans each get a kalimba note climbing the pentatonic; vibraphone as the fast Pip wakes bean pops, room tone
4.6–10 bowed vibraphone on the rise; marimba quarter-note arpeggio; pizzicato pickup before the start wind on the rise
10.0 woodblock + low pizzicato on the hard cut
10–15.6 slow motion: groove stops, low cello and bowed vibraphone, a step down as the fast Pip runs dry slowed, duller steps; a long sigh
15.6–20.2 groove back (G · Em · C), shaker steps, noms and sighs of the whole board
20.2–21.8 near silence
21.8–23.3 one glockenspiel note per newborn (pitch = its speed), a low woodblock per Pip gone; harp and vibraphone G chord at 23.3 poofs
27–37.5 pizzicato eighths and marimba sixteenths (G · Em · C · D); one kalimba note per generation, pitched by that generation's mean speed, so the melody walks down wind on the rise
37.5–43.4 thinner groove; a soft xylophone note per Pip landing in its slot (pitch = its speed)
43.5–52 harp sweep, vibraphone, bowed vibraphone G chord, hang; at 48.9 a hang, harp and glockenspiel tail rings out to the end a soft stamp as the end card prints

The voice is compressed and set about 10 dB above the bed by RMS; the music is cut about 5 dB at 300 Hz–4 kHz and ducks about 5 dB more under the voice. Mastered by core/render/mux.sh to −14 LUFS.

Palette & props

The style palette (STYLE.md §3) with speed as the ramp: cobalt (slowest, 0.7) → violet → rose → tomato → butter (fastest, 1.85); mint for beans, the wave, the energy bars and underlines; spent grey for Pips out of energy. Props: the board, mint beans, printed bars and axis, the generation-1 dashed outlines, two mean-speed triangles (outlined for generation 1, solid mint for generation 20).

End card

Printed on the board in front of the histogram (lower right of the last shot), from 48.9 s (fully printed at 49.4 s) to 52.0 s: Is faster better? / 跑得快，就更好嗎？ / BLOB SIMULATION · 小人模擬實驗 / LemoLab × Claude Opus 5.5. Its rectangle is cast from the screen onto the board and the type is pre-stretched against the perspective so it reads at normal proportions.

Build & code

New clone: sh tools/fetch.sh voice, sh tools/fetch.sh instruments freepats, sh tools/fetch.sh instruments vsco2ce, sh tools/fetch.sh instruments vcsl. Then from the library root:

sh styles/pip-simulation/demo/build.sh     # fonts and voice if missing, speech check, events, picture (2 workers), mix, master, subtitles, readcheck, poster
File What it is
demo/index.html, demo/main.js the page; ?a=&b= renders a stretch of the film
demo/film.js the whole film: cues, shots and cameras, Pip acting, generations and waves, the histogram, the end card, type and subtitles, sound events, window.TEXTS
demo/filmsim.js the simulation (rules, seed 11, k = 0.7); records day 1 step by step and every generation's morning
demo/blob.js the Pip: lathe body, tuft, feet, expressions, flock material, instanced crowd
demo/stage.js, demo/post.js renderer, lights, the shader-gridded board, printed decals; post (copy of core/three/post.js)
demo/palette.js the only place colours are defined
demo/mix.py narration, score and foley from out/events.json
demo/subs.mjs, demo/make_fonts.py subtitle export; font preparation

Picked by code, not by hand: the fast and the slow Pip (ids 149 and 126 in the run), the azimuths of the opening and tracking cameras (clear line of sight), the generation-9 close-up subject.

Reading-time check (node core/render/readcheck.mjs styles/pip-simulation/demo; window.TEXTS reports every type element except the subtitles, which are checked through the .srt). It does not pass; the picture is left as it is: