Chiaroscuro style explainer videos

Golden pools of light carved out of deep brown shadow. Brief it in one sentence and get a narrated, animated explainer film in the Rembrandt chiaroscuro style, scored and voiced, in about 15 minutes.

Make one in this style

Or let the director choose a style for your topic.

A frame in the Rembrandt chiaroscuro style

What it looks like, and when to use it.

A room sunk in warm brown shadow, where a candle and one window carve out golden pools of light and thick paint catches every highlight. Rembrandt-style chiaroscuro is drawn in code, so the light can flicker, drift and move from one thing to the next. It is made for stories that should feel intimate and serious.

Best for

Biographies and portraits
Mysteries and dramatic stories
History of the Dutch Golden Age

Try a brief like

“How the Dutch East India Company worked”
“Why Rembrandt went bankrupt”
“How candles changed life after dark”

The art direction the director follows.

Every style is a full art direction, not a filter: its own palette, type, motion and music. This is the brief the director works from for Rembrandt chiaroscuro.

Look: Baroque chiaroscuro oil painting drawn in code, after Rembrandt (c. 1642): a room sunk in warm brown darkness where one window and a candle carve pools of golden light out of the shadow; dark sides of forms dissolve into the background (lost edges) while lit faces and fabrics glow; thick bristle-brush impasto on the highlights; brown underpainting strokes in the dark; a warm golden-brown varnish, craquelure and grain over everything.
Motion: Hushed and slow: the candle flickers and the light pools breathe and drift, clouds pass the window and dim it, dust glitters only inside the light shaft, and small gestures and steam rise; the drama is in the light, not in movement.
Music: Baroque and intimate: solo cello or viola da gamba, a slow harpsichord, low strings, candle-quiet.
Type: An old-style serif (IM Fell English or Cormorant Garamond italic) in warm cream, small and set inside the light, fading into the dark at its edges.