Dream Storyboards
AI Experiment · Local image model · Agents · 2026
The question
Tell someone a dream and it falls apart: the details slip, and the strange logic only made sense from inside. So I
asked whether an agent, working the way a storyboard artist does, could turn a dream into frames a stranger can
follow. The same characters had to stay recognisable from frame to frame, every story got a different art style,
and it all ended in a narrated play-through.
what ran
35 stories · 532 frames
timeline
Sep – Oct 2026
running on
One local GPU. No paid APIs.
100% local
Everything ran on my own machine. An open image model (Qwen-Image) drew and edited every frame, a local voice model read each story aloud, and a speech-to-text pass checked the narration. No cloud image service and no per-image bill, so the agent could take as many attempts as a frame needed.
How it draws
- Sheets first. Every recurring character, prop and place gets one reference picture. Each frame is then an edit that uses those references, which is how the baker stays the same owl for 35 frames.
- One change per edit. When a jump needs two changes, the agent draws an in-between frame. Ask for two changes at once and neither lands.
- Checked, then read cold. Each frame is judged against what it was meant to show. Then an agent that never saw the plan reads the finished story, and that cold read caught the most problems.
What we learned
- Flat-colour styles (woodblock, risograph, linocut, gouache, ligne claire) survive long chains of edits. Grain, halftone and photo-like styles fall apart.
- Moving a figure is hard: "she walks in" duplicates her. It works when the figure is removed and redrawn from its reference sheet.
- The cheapest place to fix a story is the plan, before a single image exists.
- Keeping a place recognisable across a camera move was the hardest part. "The same space, naturally changed" beat "the same image".
All 35 stories
The Bakery Where Time Is Sold
Claymation stop-motion miniature
A girl in a yellow raincoat buys a loaf of time from an owl baker and takes one bite. Time runs for everything in the world except her.
The Whale Who Delivers the Mail
Ukiyo-e woodblock print
An old postman waiting on a fire-watch tower is swallowed by a whale that is a post office — and one letter inside is for him, from the boy he used to be.
Room 214
1980s disposable-camera flash photographs
A tired man takes the last key from an empty hotel desk and walks a corridor that turns to carpet and fills with water — and room 214 opens onto the lobby where he began.
My Teeth Are Moving Out
Two-colour risograph (fluorescent pink and teal)
One night a young man's teeth pack tiny suitcases, ride the toothbrush cup — now a bus — down the plughole, and move into a town made of sugar cubes. He follows them. In the morning they are all back. One of them has a door.
The Night Nani Knits
Gouache picture-book illustration (mid-century)
Every night, Nani knits the night for Asha's window. One night she dozes off with a thread left loose, the cat pulls it, and morning comes at midnight — so Asha carries the whole night up a ladder and throws it back into the sky.
The Moon Is a Lightbulb
1930s black-and-white rubber-hose cartoon
When the moon — a giant lightbulb — burns out, an old lamplighter rides his rubber lamppost into the sky and screws in the only spare he has: his own lantern.
Dadi's Monsoon Jar
Pahari miniature painting (Kangra)
Every summer Dadi sets her jars out on the terrace — not pickles, seasons. She tells Kabir not to open them. He opens the monsoon, and the whole town gets rain in May, until Dadi sings the cloud back home.
My Shadow Went to Work Without Me
Andhra leather shadow puppets (Tholu Bommalata)
For twenty-two years Ravi has never missed a day of work. One morning he oversleeps, and his shadow goes without him — and does his whole job by lunch. Then it takes him to the sea.
The Sun Broke in Two
Stained glass
In a city made of glass, the sun breaks in half. A boy in the west and a girl in the east each find a half, follow the other's glow across the dark city, and meet under the empty frame.
The Night the River Went for a Walk
Warli painting (white rice paste on mud)
One full-moon night the village river gets up on a hundred little legs and walks away. Sai follows its trail of fish across the fields, dances with it under the moon, and carries it home in her pot.
The Poster Holiday
1950s travel-poster screenprint
Waiting for a late train, a woman steps into the travel poster on the platform wall — and nearly stays there.
The Heron in the Ink
Sumi-e ink wash
An old calligrapher's brushstroke becomes a heron and flies away; he follows it through hills of wet ink to the edge of the paper.
The Mountain Came to Tea
Sumi-e ink wash
Every winter morning, Hana looks at the mountain through her round window. One morning the window is empty — the mountain is at her door.
Dada's Moustache Grew a Garden
Madhubani (Mithila) folk painting
Dada naps on his charpai every afternoon. One afternoon his enormous moustache sprouts, then grows into a flowering garden — and Tara waters it.
The Tiger Whose Stripes Ran Away
Gond painting (Pardhan Gond)
A tiger sleeps so deeply that his stripes get bored and wander off into the night. Raju finds them tangled above the trees — and puts them back.
The Missing Stitch
Cross-stitch embroidery
In a village stitched on cloth, a sparrow pulls a loose thread and the sky begins to unravel — until an old embroiderer climbs the church spire with the only thread she has, which is red.
The Barber's Reflection
Ligne claire comic
At closing time, a tired barber stops sweeping — and his reflection doesn't. It steps out of the mirror and finishes the job for him.
The Paper Sea
Papercut (kirigami) inside a photograph
A paper girl rows across the sea of a pop-up book — until the house cat reaches in.
The Cat Who Stole the Moon
Kalighat pat painting
Every night the fat cat by the pond stares at the moon in the water. One night it pounces — and comes up with the real one.
The Walk to Grandma's
16-bit pixel art (side-scroller)
A girl in a yellow raincoat walks to her grandmother's house at the end of the street — and on the way the year turns, and so does her whole life.
The Rooster Who Woke the Sun Too Early
Persian miniature (Safavid)
A rooster who can't wait for morning crows at midnight — and the sun, still in its nightcap, gets up.
The Wall Between
Azulejo (Portuguese blue-and-white painted tiles)
An old man and a young woman live on either side of one wall, each alone — until one night he knocks, and the wall knocks back.
The Umbrella That Rained Upward
Two-colour linocut
In a town where it always rains, a girl's red umbrella makes the rain fall up — and the storm shrinks to a small cloud that follows her home.
The Cat Who Wouldn't Stay in Profile
Ancient Egyptian tomb painting
For three thousand years everyone in the tomb painting has faced sideways. Then the cat turns round to look at us.
The House for Rosa
Architectural blueprint (white linework on Prussian blue)
An architect promised his wife a house by the sea. They never built it — so on her birthdays, he kept revising the drawing.
The Firebird's Feather
Palekh lacquer miniature
In a village with no oil for its lamps, a boy asks the Firebird for a single feather — and lights every window, one by one.
The Broken Drum
Kerala mural painting
An old temple drummer will not let his granddaughter play her own beat, until his drum splits on festival day and the temple elephant refuses to move for anyone else's rhythm.
The Bridge That Didn't Meet
Soviet constructivist poster
Two proud foremen race to build the higher half of a bridge, and the halves miss by a storey, until a storm and a child's red skipping rope make them build the one thing that joins them.
Winter's Garden
Art Nouveau poster (Alphonse Mucha)
Spring will not let the garden rest, so Winter waits outside the gate — and Jan's bulb, the one his mother left him, never flowers.
Floor Thirteen
1950s UPA limited animation
On his last night, a strict hotel lift operator meets a small girl with a red balloon who wants floor thirteen, the floor that isn't there.
The Raven and the Lamp
Inuit stonecut print (Cape Dorset)
In the long night, a girl lets her grandmother's lamp burn too high, a raven steals the flame, and the fire he cannot hold becomes the northern lights.
The New Year Carp
Chinese New Year woodblock print (Yangliuqing nianhua)
Every New Year, Grandma cooks a carp. This year her grandson makes friends with it, and when she comes with the pot he looks exactly like the lucky picture on the wall.
The Watch Without Hands
Night gouache illustration
On a night train she can't find her compartment; a faceless conductor hands her a watch with no hands, and she wades into a warm flooded field as the lanterns go out, wanting only to fix it.
The Megastructure
1970s French science-fiction bande dessinée, ligne claire
A hostel that is also an ancient megastructure: from their high window, the dreamer and two friends ride future boards down its face like a mountain, and at the bottom they look up at something too big to end. (A dream shared anonymously.)
Lifted Anyway
Neon flat-vector arena poster