hey hey hey 🔥 Introducing Mosaic Studio a little bespoke, web-based generative animation engine that helped Soleio put the cherry on top of the new First of Kind series more in thread:

Soleio reached out before launch to review the series work: a motion system carrying @oliverhamrin and @haris_chc’s timeless identity onto screens. Intros, promos, swipes, teasers, the website... how do you put such a thoughtful language in motion? and in a single weekend? I didn’t really have time for this. A full-time job, a 3yo to look after, an exhausted brain… but you know that feeling when a spark of creativity, driven by curiosity, opportunity, and pressure, touches your soul? we live in wild times, so I committed to doing this in low-effort mode, leaning on my technical knowledge for prompting, my love for graphic concepts, and, above all, my sense that the existing work was so top-notch that 80% of the heavy lifting was already done

the graphic work was already generative in nature. Each episode’s guest provided a flood of words, which were distilled and composed into brushstrokes painting a figurative portrait Chuck Close’s portraits, Seurat’s dots, Van Gogh… all kinds of references came to mind, and I fell in love. Every word is a brushstroke: meaningless alone, a face from a distance when I saw @rauchg there, my fellow Argentine and lifelong inspiration, with all his words... I knew what was missing and what to do (or, basically, what to prompt)

so what was missing? SHADERS, BRO, shaders! but also a deeper take on semantics it was all there, man, in the beautiful semantic realm. Each word reveals some sort of identity: I read Borges, Lanús, Argentina, and then I cry, and so I feel human then I read velocity, slop, prompt, JSON… and my mind locks in like a machine. The techie side of our brain switches on so what if each word could have a skin beyond its written form? what if you could just paint with motion? how do you write poetry with shaders? the end result wasn’t just satisfying; it felt like a real tribute to the art direction and graphic design language the whole system deserved to take the semantics to the next level while also meeting the motion requirements, so all the marketing collateral was in place for the @room3nyc studio to edit, tweak, and export

WebGL and the shader realm also helped improve the motion engine. Motion blur and similar techniques made a big difference to the overall feel of the transitions and movements, which felt so sleepy in the early versions shaders also feel right at home on the web: with the HTML structure plus shader post-processing, you basically get a website for free. So the engine isn’t just about exporting ProRes but making a whole brand identity to adapt to any format

so the stack this time was pretty simple: · WebGL + GLSL shaders for the skins · @Paper for the tile layouts. They’re parsed on the html canvas and imported from there, and portraits can be sent back to it too vía MCP. Most of the skins also come from the Paper Shaders lib <3 thanks to @uuuuuulala brilliant engineering · Good old FFmpeg, with basically every encoding decision left to Claude Opus 5.5 · Web Audio API: you can spot some sound design tied to the same semantics. Very WIP, tbh, and something that can keep evolving as new episodes come out

I’m so grateful to be part of this in such an unexpected, fortuitous, and low-effort way god bless the web for connecting me to the whole world, and especially to everyone who’s inspired me to keep building, above all to help others shine every time a podcast with Guillermo comes out, I learn a ton, btw. I remember the bad times, not knowing what my future would look like, and listening to Guille’s podcast appearances where he painted such a bright future for the web go tune in to the episode. It’s a freaking banger

@firstofkind Build Rome in a day! Your work on this was a HUGE unlock. Can’t wait to extend it further.

@firstofkind goat

@soleio @firstofkind So glad you came on board to bring our work to life. You’re a magician! 🐐🪄

@soleio @firstofkind dude, I’m honored, and so happy to get my hands on such a beautiful piece of art

@soleio @firstofkind bestia total 🔥

@soleio @firstofkind gracias querido, seria un sueño conocerte hoy, y si lo traes al Guille no se ya.. me meo encima

@evilrabbit_ @firstofkind Nos veremos esta tarde, no? Se requiere un selfie.

@agusegui @firstofkind LFG! 🔥

@soleio A real honor to partner with you on bringing this brand to life. Thank you!

@soleio @firstofkind beautiful agu, just beautiful. so well done!!

@soleio @firstofkind man, when I saw the portrait come alive, I felt so glad to have the chance to be part of this. Such a delicate piece of art you both made. I’m honored

@soleio @firstofkind You sir are a legend 🙇

@soleio @firstofkind damn I don't deserve to breathe your same air wtf

@soleio @firstofkind LOL

@soleio @firstofkind You're a magician! @agusegui

@soleio @firstofkind sooo good, this is the future

@soleio @firstofkind thank you for building the tools for the future man

@soleio @firstofkind incredible work

@soleio @firstofkind means a lot, legend 🔥

@soleio @firstofkind just gave you a shout out live too :) so good

@soleio @firstofkind oh gooosh best Thursday of my life

@soleio @firstofkind Incredible job on this 🫡

@soleio @firstofkind So good 🔥

@soleio @firstofkind Woo love it!

@firstofkind @soleio sick!!!

@soleio @firstofkind wowwww

@soleio @firstofkind beastttt haha thanks for the breakdown. the moment i saw the posters and the animations i wanted to recreate it so it's fun to see the choices made vs my own take on it

@soleio @firstofkind Agu, this work is on another level! My compliments!

@soleio @firstofkind sooo goood!!!

@soleio @firstofkind always learning from the best!

@soleio @firstofkind super coooooool!! reminds me a bit of

@soleio @firstofkind Rad work!

@soleio @firstofkind Man, this is insanely good!

@soleio @firstofkind legend strikes again

@soleio @firstofkind When the same portrait goes from widescreen to phone, do you keep the word positions fixed and crop, or recompose the tiles? Keeping the face recognizable at different scales seems like a fascinating constraint on the motion system.

@soleio @firstofkind 🐐

@soleio @firstofkind

@soleio @firstofkind 🔥🔥🔥

@soleio @firstofkind Legend!

@soleio @firstofkind you're too good!

@soleio @firstofkind impossible to get better without meeting you first at some point of my life, man

@soleio @firstofkind tried to dm you about a product designer-engineer building an ai design agent i can intro you to but your dms are closed

@soleio @firstofkind so good