1930s Rubber Hose Cartoon — our demo

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

Demo: Coffee Cup Chase (50 s) · rubber-hose.mp4 · source in demo/

Story & structure

A just-woken diner mug tastes itself: bitter! It chases a runaway sugar cube around the kitchen (counter, china cabinet, sink). When the cube is about to be sucked down the drain, the mug stretches its rubber-hose arm around the whirlpool and fishes it out, then sadly lets it go; the cube jumps into the mug by itself. The coffee turns sweet and the whole kitchen dances with the band. A 1930s radio sports announcer calls the chase like a horse race ("And they're off!").

Arc (40–55 s): hook on frame 1 (bouncing title letters, band hit) → a small want → a chase in 3 escalating set pieces, one visual gag each → danger → the stretch → dead silence → a quiet, kind turn → release: the whole world dances → iris out with a gag. One hero, one goal, one turn.

The demo's shape: the strongest native power at the peak, and a chase or a performance inside one lively location (a kitchen, an office, a toy shop, a factory) with a supporting cast of 5–8 living objects. That is one way to adapt a topic, not a rule of the style.

Native moves spent: - Everything breathes on the beat: the kitchen is a character; at the climax the whole world dances in sync, walls included (the payoff shot). - Mickey-mousing: a stair of plates is a xylophone; the small character climbs it on rising xylophone eighths, the big one on tuba quarters. - Rubber-hose stretch: the turning point; the mug's arm stretches around a whirlpool and down a drain in one unbroken shot. - The film is a physical object: the title card rolls up like a window shade; a character's glove pulls the iris shut.

Shots

Beat	Camera
Opening	Title card with rotating sunburst; letters hop in a wave each beat; the card rolls up like a window shade to reveal the set
Establishing	Stage-wide, locked off, eye level. The set reads like a proscenium; props lined along the counter
Reaction gag	Hard cut to a close-up of the face (the only big face shot early on)
Chase	Trucking pan alongside the runners, eased start and stop; the destination prop enters frame before the gag
Vertical set piece	Not the whole set piece far away: each climber followed in a medium shot (character ≈ 1/4–1/3 of frame height) so each musical step and the plate's bounce reads; cut between climbers; then tilt down with the fall
Danger	Slightly high angle so the hazard reads at a glance; one unbroken shot through the big stretch
Quiet turn	Medium two-shot, then the hero's back walking away small in the background while the other character is big in the foreground (on a foreground counter piece)
Climax	Pull back from a close-up to a medium-full shot (not a far wide: faces must read): hero in the middle, living props on the counter behind, and a foreground row of bigger dancers on a nearer counter piece. 2–3 steps by bar (sway → kicks → group squat-and-spring), then everyone freezes in a ta-da pose on the last beat and holds into the iris
Ending	Iris closes on the heroes; a character's glove pulls it shut

The hesitation beat before the leap, as held-frame acting: crouch (hold) → eyes to the other character's back (hold) → eyes up to the goal (hold) → back → up + grin → small hop → leap. Each glance on an eighth note, with a woodblock tick, while the camera slowly pushes in. The music stops for a "lock eyes" beat and everything freezes, background breathing included.

Score structure

Original big-band score (demo/music/score.py, VSCO 2 CE / VCSL samples via core/audio/sampler.py, banjo via pluck.py). 144 BPM, 4/4 → 1 beat = 10 frames, 1 bar = 1.667 s, 28 bars. One original 4-bar syncopated theme, stated for the title, the chase, a slow solo-clarinet version for the tender beat, and a key-change full-band out-chorus for the climax.

Stops (hard silence including reverb tails) on the lock-eyes beat, on the suspense before a gag, and a full 2 beats of silence right after the stretch; stingers on every gag; slide whistle for every stretch / slide / fall; the xylophone is the plates. The projector clatter is the only sound inside the silence.

Foley specific to this film (all synthesised): porcelain = hard inharmonic partials (~2.7 / 4.2 / 6.3 kHz) + tiny transient; thick mug = lower, duller partials; sugar = high woodblock + sparse crunch; clock = 18 Hz hammer on two bells; toaster = click, eighth-note ticks, bell + spring "boing"; water = filtered noise + rising blips, drain slurp, bubble bed; rubber = sawtooth creak through a band-pass.

Voice: an old radio announcer calling the action like a horse race (Kokoro bm_lewis, speed 1.0), 7 short lines ("Seven a.m., folks!" … "Good night, folks!"). Chain: HP 260 Hz / LP 4.6 kHz, tanh saturation, a short room, compression. Music ducked ~8 dB under the voice. Optical pass: band-limit 110 Hz–6.2 kHz, wow 0.6 Hz, flutter 7 Hz.

Palette & props

Grey ramp: paper #F1EEE6 · light #C8C5BC · mid #9A978F · dark-mid #6B6963 · dark #3B3A37 · ink #0E0D0C · character white #FCFBF7.
Contrast (the grey ramp alone reads too flat): walls #8C8981, tiles #A29F97, cabinets #66635D–#7C7972; contrast(1.14) in the final composite.
Ink outline 6 px in screen space; limbs 13 px on a 280 px character; film damage: gate weave ±1.2 px with a rare 3–6 px jump, vignette 0 → 62 % black at the corners, 3 px vertical jump on every cut, 0.55 px blur; walk bob 10 px (sad walk: steps 34, bob 4), run lean 0.24 rad.
The Mug (hero): a squat diner mug, white porcelain, two thin black rings at the rim, full of black coffee (black ellipse + a white crescent highlight); face on the body, pie eyes, small black nose, big mouth; handle at the back like a little tail. Its steam carries the mood: lazy waves / bitter zigzag / straight-up alarm / wilted droop / heart.
The Sugar Cube: a real projected 3D cube with a slight top-down view (elevation ≈ 0.26 rad), face mapped onto the front face with an affine transform.
Kitchen cast (living props, all taking a breath phase): pots, a clock, a toaster, plates, curtains. Background motifs: striped wallpaper with small diamonds, square tiles, panelled cabinets, black-and-white checker floor, hanging lamp. Two cached backgrounds: kitchen; cupboard + sink.
Deliberately not learnt from the references: no existing character (cat, girl, clown), no title-card or theme copy, no period racial caricature; the mug's whole body is the mug (no human torso, no straw, no shorts), unlike Cuphead's design.

Titles & subtitles

Subtitles: "the announcer's title card": plate rgba(12,11,10,.92), white double-rule border, dot-and-ring corner ornaments and a tiny 1930s ribbon-microphone icon; IM Fell English SC 36 px, paper white; bottom at y ≈ 986 by default, top when the action is low. Each card ≥ speech + 0.6 s.
Title: Shrikhand, white face, 14 % ink outline, ink drop shadow down-right, letters hopping in a travelling wave on the beat over a rotating sunburst; sub-line in Limelight caps.

End card

Same sunburst, a wavy-edged sign with "The End", the style name, LemoLab × Claude Opus 5.5, small credit lines at the bottom; it opens with an iris from black. The "LemoLab × Claude Opus 5.5" sign-off belongs to this library's demo only; a user's film carries no LemoLab credit and no copy of this card.

Build notes

styles/rubber-hose/demo/
  toon.js    constant-width ink + line boil + affine stack      film.js   4:3 gate, weave, flicker, scratches, vignette
  chars.js   mug & cube rigs, pie eyes, gloves, shoes, steam     cast.js   living kitchen props (all take a breath phase)
  bg.js      cached watercolor backgrounds (kitchen, cupboard+sink)
  story.js   144 BPM bar grid, VO times, subtitle cards, shots, key moments, music cues  (single source of truth)
  scenes.js  every shot: camera, props, acting            events.js  foley event list → events.json
  ui.js      title lettering, announcer title card        sheet.js   model sheets (?mode=sheet / ?mode=kitchen)
  music/score.py  original big-band score (VSCO 2 CE / VCSL samples via core/audio/sampler.py, banjo via pluck.py)
  mix.py     foley synthesis + radio-voice chain + ducking + optical-track aging
  build.sh   one-command rebuild (≈9 min, mostly TTS/whisper/sample loading; frames render in ~50 s)

Write the bar grid first (story.js), then the cue map; score to it (a forked sub-agent can write music/score.py in parallel from story.js + the cue list).
Model sheets: node demo/tools/still.mjs demo 0 --q 'mode=sheet&w=2880&h=1620' --w 2880 --h 1620.
core/tts/tts.py lines.json voices → core/tts/asr_check.py.
Review: core/render/still.mjs demo --range a:b:1 + core/render/sheet.py (two full passes), and frame strips at 1/12 s on key acting beats.
node core/render/events.mjs demo → python music/score.py → python mix.py.
node core/render/video.mjs demo --fps 24 --workers 3 → sh core/render/mux.sh out/video24.mp4 mix.wav rubber-hose.mp4 24 3 → python demo/tools/final_asr.py rubber-hose.mp4.

Or simply sh styles/rubber-hose/demo/build.sh.

Pitfalls tied to this demo: - Kokoro's "bitter" is heard as "better" after an ellipsis (is... bitter!). "And boy, is this coffee bitter!" passes. Check every line with whisper; also check the final mp4 (whisper writes "7am" / "they're": normalise before comparing). - The cube reads as a tall box in pure front view: use elevation ~0.26 and a slight 3/4 turn for expressions. - A far shot of the plate-xylophone and of the dance climax kills both gags: shoot them medium / medium-full. - A kicking leg drawn behind the mug body is hidden by the handle: kick outward past the silhouette. - A prop can "grow" out of a character's head at one camera position (a pot out of the mug's head): check every shot's final frame. - A leap arc that is too high leaves the frame; keep arcs inside the gate at the camera's zoom. - sfx-style clips of different lengths → numpy broadcast errors. Place clips into a fixed-length buffer (seq() in mix.py). - zsh: echo ===== fails (=word expansion) and timeout doesn't exist on macOS. - JS: -x ** 6 is a syntax error; write -(x ** 6).