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Experiment 01 · Image

One character, five styles

The studio’s mascot redrawn from the same references in shōnen, pixel, cartoon, cyberpunk and clay. Five takes, one each, landed in under four minutes for $0.366455 in all.

The takes

The studio’s tin-toy mascot, redrawn in the Shōnen style
Take 1 of 5 · Shōnen

The bill

Every paid generation of the run, as its record has it: the amount the provider billed, to the last digit. The total is added in billionths of a dollar, so it never drifts.

ItemSettingsBilled
ShōnenGPT Image 2.5 Sunburst · high · 1:1 · transparent · 11:14:32$0.09324
PixelGPT Image 2.5 Sunburst · high · 16:9 · 11:15:42$0.065211
CartoonGPT Image 2.5 Sunburst · high · 16:9 · 11:16:14$0.065306
CyberpunkGPT Image 2.5 Sunburst · high · 16:9 · 11:16:48$0.065286
ClayGPT Image 2.5 Sunburst · high · 1:1 · 11:18:15$0.077412

Total$0.366455

The total rounded up to the cent, as Kiju’s buttons round it$0.37, the billed amount rounded up to the cent

Prompt and settings

The shared opening, as sent
Character reference of the studio mascot, the small wind-up tin toy monster of the reference images, with exactly the same design, redrawn in this style. The first reference image is the real tin toy (its exact design, colors and proportions); the second shows it from four sides. Squat barrel body of red lithographed tin, riveted seams, cream belly plate, square cream jaw with two blunt upward fangs, two small curved cream horns, round amber eyes, mitten-stub arms and legs with no fingers and no claws, short riveted tail with a rounded tip, big brass butterfly key in the middle of the back. Stiff wind-up poses. No dorsal spikes, no long snout, no whip tail, no reptile stance, no human hand, body, sleeve, or hand-shaped shadow, no letters, no numerals, no cracks. Full body, three-quarter view toward the viewer, standing alone, the brass butterfly key clearly visible sticking out of the middle of its back, the square jaw slightly open on its two blunt fangs.
The 5 endings, one per style
Shōnen: its ending
Drawn as a 2D anime character: the rivets and seams of the tin become clean inked details. The last 2 reference image(s) are style plates: use them only for the drawing style (line, shading, palette, texture, light); do not copy their characters, objects or composition. Full-body character illustration for a 2D Japanese anime series, crisp confident ink contours, two-tone cel shading, vivid flat colors, whole body visible from head to shoes, centered, three-quarter view toward the viewer, transparent background, no scenery, no floor, no ground shadow, single character only unless stated, no text, no letters, no logos, no watermark.
Pixel: its ending
Drawn as a large 16-bit boss sprite standing alone in the center of a simple dark tiled street of a pixel-art city at night; the limited palette keeps the mascot's red, cream, amber and brass. The last 1 reference image(s) are style plates: use them only for the drawing style (line, shading, palette, texture, light); do not copy their characters, objects or composition. Single 16:9 frame from a 16-bit pixel-art video game cutscene: everything drawn in crisp square pixels at low resolution (about 320 pixels wide), limited palette of about 32 colors, characters as chunky sprites about four heads tall with big readable silhouettes, dithering for gradients, no anti-aliasing, no blur, tile-based background. Characters keep the identity of their reference images (hairstyle, signature outfit, colors and accessories) but are redrawn as pixel sprites; do not copy the reference's drawing style. No user interface, no health bars. No text, no letters, no numbers, no logos, no watermark. No extra characters unless described.
Cartoon: its ending
Rebuilt as a stylized 3D cartoon character, rounder and softer with slightly bigger eyes, but still a riveted red tin toy with its seams, cream belly plate and jaw, two fangs, two horns and the brass key; standing alone in a simple sunny street of a 3D cartoon town. The last 1 reference image(s) are style plates: use them only for the drawing style (line, shading, palette, texture, light); do not copy their characters, objects or composition. Single 16:9 frame from a high-end stylized 3D animated feature film: soft rounded appealing shapes, characters redesigned with exaggerated proportions (large head, big expressive eyes, small hands), soft subsurface skin, tactile materials (fabric weave, brushed metal, glossy plastic), warm soft global illumination with gentle bounce light, shallow depth of field, rich but harmonious colors. Characters keep the identity of their reference images (hairstyle, signature outfit, colors and accessories) but are fully rebuilt as stylized 3D characters; do not copy the reference's drawing style. No text, no letters, no numbers, no logos, no watermark. No extra characters unless described.
Cyberpunk: its ending
Standing alone in a rainy neon street at night. The mascot keeps its own colors against the city: red tin, cream belly plate and jaw, amber eyes, brass key; the cyan and magenta neon only reflects on its wet tin and never recolors it. The last 1 reference image(s) are style plates: use them only for the drawing style (line, shading, palette, texture, light); do not copy their characters, objects or composition. Single 16:9 frame in a bold graphic-novel style set in a cyberpunk megacity at night: thick confident black ink lines, large areas of solid black shadow, flat colors limited to black, electric cyan, hot magenta and acid yellow, halftone dot shading in the midtones, slight misregistration of the printed colors, fine paper texture, strong graphic composition with dramatic perspective. Characters keep the identity of their reference images (face, hairstyle, signature outfit, colors and accessories) but are redrawn entirely in this style. Signs and screens are abstract flat shapes: no text, no letters, no numbers, no logos, no speech bubbles, no panels, no watermark. No extra characters unless described.
Clay: its ending
Sculpted by hand as a real plasticine puppet, clearly soft modeling clay and not metal: slightly lumpy red plasticine with softly rounded edges, visible thumbprints and sculpting-tool marks, rivets made of small pressed balls of dark plasticine, seams scored with a tool, a cream plasticine belly plate and jaw with fingerprints, glossy amber bead eyes, a key made of bent brass-painted wire and card. Not painted metal, not resin, not a vinyl toy. Photograph of a real handmade stop-motion puppet standing on a tabletop against a plain grey card backdrop: a small physical figure about 25 cm tall, shot with a macro lens in soft studio light, with a real contact shadow under its feet and the shallow depth of field of a close-up photo of a small object. Everything, including hair and clothes, is sculpted by hand. Not computer graphics: no smooth 3D render look, no subsurface skin, no realistic hair strands, no fabric clothes, no animated-film character look. Whole figure visible, centered; no text, no logos, no watermark.

Settings

Model
openai/gpt-image-2.5-sunburst
Provider
openrouter
Quality
high
Aspect ratio
1:1 · 16:9
Background
transparent · opaque
References
2
Takes
5
Day
2026-09-26

How it was made

One prompt with five endings. Each record lists the same two references of the toy — a three-quarter view and its four-view sheet — and each prompt closes on a paragraph of style: ink outlines and two-tone cel shading for shōnen, a 16-bit palette for pixel, and so on. GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst at high quality; 16:9 for three of them, square for clay and shōnen, the shōnen one on a transparent background.

What was kept, and why

The record keeps all five: each style became one of the mascot’s anchors in the studio’s series file, the picture a new shot in that style starts from. No person’s choice between them is recorded, so nothing on this page is marked Kept.

What stays open

  • One take per style. A style that held once may not hold twice: this run says nothing about a rate.
  • The four-view sheet sent as the second reference draws the back wrong — the tail hangs and the key lies flat. The takes follow the three-quarter view; the sheet itself is not shown here.
  • The five bills differ, from $0.065211 for pixel to $0.09324 for shōnen. The record gives the amount, not the reason.