Original prompt — Tested Kinetic typography prompt — retro poster style
by MotionPrompts (own run)
Prompt
Banned list ✓Beat grid ✓Build method ✓Self-review ✓
<direction>
An 8-second square retro poster film, 1080x1080 square. A double-rule poster frame settles in. Masthead: THE in spaced caps, then RETRO REVIVAL — the first word huge with a hard orange offset shadow printed 9px behind it (a flat duplicate layer, the letterpress trick), the second word under it. A regular five-point star badge pops in top-right and turns slowly; its EST. caption sits static beneath it. Two rules bracket IN MOTION, AS IT SHOULD BE.
Banned: gradients, blur shadows, distressed textures, sepia filters, halftone overlays — flat colour and layout carry the retro, nothing else.
</direction>
<structure>
Beat 1 (0.25s): frames settle. Beat 2 (0.7s): THE fades. Beat 3 (1.0s): title word slams; its offset shadow prints 0.2s later. Beat 4 (1.45s): second word rises. Beat 5 (1.9s): star pops, caption with it; star turns 40° across the rest. Beats 6–8 (2.2–3.3s): rules draw, line fades, footer lands. Hold.
</structure>
<build>
One HyperFrames composition, seek-driven GSAP. The offset shadow is a second absolutely-positioned copy of the word in the accent colour, translated 9px, z-under the main word.
</build>
<gotchas>
Two lessons: (1) the layout inspector flags the shadow layer as overlapping text — it is the design (a 9px print offset), verified crisp in snapshots; (2) text placed ON a rotating badge drifts off-centre as it turns — captions belong under badges, not on them. The first star polygon was also hand-drawn and lopsided; a regular star is computed, not eyeballed.
</gotchas>
Before you finish: step through the timeline at five points and fix anything that overlaps, clips the frame, or drifts off the beat grid.
A retro poster that prints itself in motion: double-rule frame, a masthead with a hard flat offset shadow (a duplicate layer, not a blur), a slowly turning star badge, and ruled lines bracketing the tagline. Flat colour only — the retro is in the layout, not in filters.
Run log
| Model | Claude (agent build) |
| Renderer / stack | HyperFrames + GSAP |
| Iterations to final | 2 |
| Render time | 30s (final render) |
| Format | 1080×1080 · square |
| Published | 2026-10-25 |
What broke (and the fix)
- The layout inspector flagged the RETRO headline as overlapping text — that one is the design (a flat offset duplicate 9px behind the word, the retro print shadow), verified crisp in the snapshots and kept.
- A real defect sat next to it: the hand-drawn star polygon was lopsided, and its 'EST. 2026' text — a non-rotating overlay on a rotating badge — drifted off the star's centre as it turned. Rebuilt the star as a regular five-point star and moved the caption underneath the badge, static.
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