"Isn't Seedance only good for live-action?" That's what we thought too. Then we tried a clay animation prompt and got something straight out of Wallace & Gromit.
We tested every style. The takeaway — each style requires a completely different prompting approach. Here are the 5 prompts that produced the best results for each style.
1. Cyberpunk Chase — Neon Night Market Action
See the full prompt on scenic.sh →
"SUBJECTS Female enforcer: White long hair, with slightly fluorescent-colored tips; Wearing a loose jacket, fitted top, dark tight pants, and glowing speed shoes emitting a cyan light;
Target male: Male, wearing ordinary clothing, a thief;
ENVIRONMENT Night market setting, stalls arranged irregularly, string lights at uneven heights, crowd moving in inconsistent directions, wet reflective ground, distant city skyscrapers with neon lights
SHOT 1 (0:00-0:02) Third-person wide shot, 35m..."
Style breakdown: Separating SUBJECTS and ENVIRONMENT mirrors how real film production uses separate character sheets and location sheets. Seedance 2.0 processes each element independently when information is structured this way, producing far more stable results. For cyberpunk visuals, "wet reflective ground" is the essential keyword — it creates neon reflections, and that single detail carries half the cyberpunk aesthetic.
This SUBJECTS/ENVIRONMENT separation works across genres. Define your characters completely first, then define the space — Seedance handles both elements without blending them. Whether it's cyberpunk, fantasy, western, or horror, adding "where light reflects" to your environment description dramatically changes the atmosphere.
2. Samurai Period Drama — A Single Strike in the Rain
See the full prompt on scenic.sh →
"[0-2s] Rain. A stone courtyard. Two swordsmen face each other. Water dripping from their blades. [2-4s] One breathes in. The other shifts his back foot. That's all the warning there is. [4-6s] They move. One slash each. Bodies pass each other. [6-8s] They stop. Backs turned. Rain fills the silence. [8-10s] A cut opens across one's shoulder. He drops to one knee. [10-12s] The winner sheathes his sword. Doesn't look back. The rain washes the blood off the stone."
Style breakdown: Restraint is everything here. Like a Kurosawa samurai duel — long buildup, instant exchange. "[4-6s] They move. One slash each." — over in 2 seconds. Short sentences aren't just stylistic — the AI treats each short sentence with equal weight, producing more stable results. "That's all the warning there is" conveys tension far more effectively than any adjective like "tensely."
If tension isn't landing in your prompts, strip out the adjectives and leave only actions. Instead of "Two swordsmen stand tensely facing each other," write "Two swordsmen face each other. Water dripping from their blades." — show, don't describe. Split the timeline finely and place one action per segment, and Seedance will follow the rhythm precisely.
3. Pixar-Style 3D — The Ice Cream Truck Chaos
See the full prompt on scenic.sh →
"Master Settings: Location: Sun-drenched park by vintage ice cream truck, afternoon, sunny breeze, playful tension. Lighting: Soft high-key, warm sun flares. Color: Bright pastels, warm golds. Film Look: Clean, hyper-real Pixar-style, expressive characters, slightly desaturated background, ARRI Alexa Mini LF. Music: Upbeat, whimsical strings/woodwinds. [00:00 - 00:03 | Establishing Shot] Crane up reveals Leo (7, energetic, messy ginger hair, blue tee) and Maya (6, braided hair, glasses, pink dres..."
Style breakdown: Declaring "Master Settings" first ensures every subsequent shot generates within those constraints. It's the same approach Pixar uses in "look development" — locking down color palette and lighting before anything else. Specifying "ARRI Alexa Mini LF" for animation is valid too — instead of CG's perfectly sharp rendering, you get the optical softness of a real camera lens. "Slightly desaturated background" pulls down background saturation so characters naturally pop.
The most common mistake when creating Pixar-style videos is obsessing over character descriptions while forgetting the color palette. Define the saturation relationship between background and characters in your Master Settings first, and characters will stand out clearly. Just specifying two dominant colors like "warm golds + bright pastels" unifies the entire frame's tone.
4. Hand-Drawn 2D — A Witch's Flight
See the full prompt on scenic.sh →
"Pure Hand-Drawn 2D Cartoon Witch Flight Through an Old European Town"
animation_style:
- medium: "pure hand-drawn 2D cartoon animation"
- rendering: "drawn on ones"
- line_quality: "every line breathes with hand-drawn imperfections"
- look: "traditional handmade animation"
- forbidden_elements: ["3D", "CGI depth rendering"...]
Style breakdown: The most important technique here is the explicit "ban list." From Seedance's perspective, the most "plausible-looking" animation is 3D rendering. Without explicitly blocking 3D and CGI in forbidden_elements, the AI will quietly drift toward 3D. "Drawn on ones" means every single frame out of 24 per second is individually drawn — this one term alone determines the entire feel of the motion.
When your desired style isn't coming through, don't just describe what you want — also specify what you don't want. Adding exclusion conditions like "no 3D", "no CGI", "no smooth motion blur" blocks the AI's default tendencies. Ban lists are especially transformative when you want a style that runs counter to Seedance's defaults, like hand-drawn 2D.
5. Clay Animation — Friday Night After Work
See the full prompt on scenic.sh →
"Hyperrealistic miniature diorama, stop-motion clay animation, handcrafted tactile materials, real fabric, professional studio animation style — miniature bedroom, Friday night, clay figure stumbles through the door with enormous hollowed-out face, dark circles sculpted deep under tiny dead eyes, dragging his feet, real fabric shirt wrinkled and untucked [cut] close-up: he collapses face-first onto the bed, his giant body bounces once on real fabric sheets, arms limp [cut] extreme close-up: his h..."
Style breakdown: "Stop-motion clay" sets the motion style, and "hyperrealistic miniature diorama" sets the spatial style. Combined, they produce the Aardman Studios (Wallace & Gromit) texture. Repeating "real fabric" is intentional — clay-rendered clothing looks stiff, but writing "real fabric" triggers simulation of wrinkles, sagging, and crumpling. Clay animation naturally suits exaggerated expression, so push your descriptions to extremes.
When using clay style for everyday subjects, exaggerate the emotions too. Instead of "tired expression," write "enormous hollowed-out face, dark circles sculpted deep under tiny dead eyes" — turning emotion into extreme physical features brings out clay animation's signature comedic expressiveness. Repeating material keywords ("handcrafted", "tactile", "real fabric") keeps the clay texture consistent across the entire frame.
Style Keywords Cheat Sheet
| Style | Essential Keywords | Watch Out For |
|---|---|---|
| Cyberpunk | wet reflective ground, neon, glowing, cyan light | Specify exact glow colors, separate SUBJECTS blocks |
| Samurai | Short sentences, timestamps, restrained descriptions | Fewer adjectives = stronger impact, use narrative sentences for mood |
| Pixar 3D | Pixar-style, expressive, high-key lighting, pastels, ARRI | Lock tone with Master Settings first, slightly desaturate backgrounds |
| Hand-drawn 2D | hand-drawn, drawn on ones, forbidden: 3D/CGI | Without an explicit 3D ban, AI will quietly drift to 3D |
| Clay | stop-motion, clay, miniature diorama, real fabric | Repeat "real fabric", push expressions to maximum exaggeration |
Check the result videos for each style on scenic.sh.
