Animaker-grade SVG rig
Hand-authored parametric vector human — the flagship candidate
About this approach
Original layered SVG following the reverse-engineered style bible: ~5.5-head proportions, hair as silhouette + underlayer shadow + highlight sweep, Character-Animator eye stack (sclera/iris/pupil/shine/lids/brows), viseme mouth set, tailored clothing with fold wedges, 3 derived tones per material. Driven by the proven Puppet Studio spring engine + phase keyframes.
Realism vs bar
- License
- Fully owned original art — zero restrictions, zero cost.
- Cost
- $0 (authoring time only)
- Effort
- High art effort, low engine effort (Puppet infra reuses verbatim)
- Determinism
- Perfect — pure function of the state vector
- Customization
- First-class: every slot/color is data (Animaker builder model)
- LLM fit
- Best of all options — the LLM can direct AND help author art
Pros
- Only path where characters are code — LLM-directable, versionable, reviewable
- Reuses Puppet Studio spring engine, action/expression orthogonality, builder, director route
- One hair/skin/cloth color input recolors whole tone stacks deterministically
- No editor lock-in, no binary formats, SSR-friendly, ~0 runtime deps
Cons
- The Animaker polish bar is real artist work — every hairstyle/garment is authored
- Cut-out joints show hard elbow breaks without overlap tricks (no mesh deform)
- Turns need a pre-drawn front + 3/4 atlas (multiplies art cost ~2x)
Verdict — FLAGSHIP CANDIDATE — the style bible + review loop is the clean-license route to the bar.
Runtime imposes no ceiling; polish is bounded by art iteration (dual-LLM visual review converges it, as Puppet proved).