render-whiteboard-explainer

render-whiteboard-explainer

The renderer for the whiteboard video ad format: a voice explains one idea while a board fills up in marker, the way a graphic recorder works a room. Every mark lands on the word it belongs to, and the board is wiped and reused between sections.

Siblings in the chat-UI family are render-imessage-chat, render-chatgpt-chat and render-apple-notes-chat, where a screen is the creative. Reach for this one when the creative is someone explaining a thing by drawing it.

The three decisions that make this format work

The board is a photograph. A drawn board reads as a drawn board, and a plain white frame reads as a sketch film. Both were built and both were rejected. One generated still of a real blank whiteboard in a real room is the plate, and the ink is multiplied onto it so the surface sheen and the window light come through the strokes rather than sitting on top as flat black. The handheld drift is generated over both layers at once, so nothing can slide against anything.

The drawings are generated as line art, then traced. Do not hand-code them, and do not trace painterly images. Art traced from a photograph carries every contour the photograph had and reads as clip-art; art generated as a marker drawing traces to a handful of confident paths. An open hand came back as a single continuous stroke. Chain each generation off the first so the line weight matches across the set.

There is no colour. Black marker throughout. Do not add an accent.

Choices

The recipe asks these before any paid step; this renderer only draws what the beats say.

• the script — what the narrator says. Everything downstream is anchored to its word timings, so it is settled first and never changed afterwards.
• the beats — for each moment, what is SAID and what is DRAWN. A row of text, a drawing, or both. One number can be marked as the hero, which letters it large instead of as another row.
• the title and subtitle — lettered on the first board.
• the payoff — the closing line, lettered on the last board, with a ring closing around the claim it refers to.
• the boards — how many times the board is wiped and reused. Three suits a half-minute. The split is automatic. To set it by hand, put "new_board": true on the beat that should open a board; any such mark turns the automatic split off. Use it when the split puts a line on the wrong board, such as the brand name landing on the problem board.