Greek vase style explainer videos

Black-glaze silhouettes with incised lines on terracotta clay. Brief it in one sentence and get a narrated, animated explainer film in the Greek black-figure vase 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 Greek black-figure vase style

What it looks like, and when to use it.

Solid black silhouettes on orange terracotta, with fine lines scratched through the black, touches of purple-red and white, and patterned friezes that scroll around the frame. The Greek black-figure look is drawn in code and turns a story into a row of figures acting it out, the way it was told on pots 2,500 years ago.

Best for

Myths, legends and classical history
Philosophy and the origins of ideas
Stories told as a sequence of scenes

Try a brief like

“How Athenian democracy worked”
“Why the Trojan horse worked”
“What the first Olympic Games were like”

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 Greek black-figure vase.

Look: Attic black-figure vase painting drawn in code, after Exekias (c. 530 BC): a terracotta clay ground with throwing lines, faint mottling and cracks; every figure and object a solid black-glaze silhouette with no outline; details incised through the black as thin clay-coloured lines; added purple-red bands and white dots for accents; meander and lotus friezes framing the scene; inscriptions in hand-painted Greek-style capitals.
Motion: Measured and decorative: friezes scroll steadily along the top and bottom, figures pivot at the joints in profile, small motifs swing, row or turn (a lyre, a rosette, a ship on waves), and new figures land as black silhouettes before their incisions are scratched in.
Music: Ancient Mediterranean: lyre and kithara plucks, an aulos reed melody, frame drum, hand claps.
Type: Hand-painted capitals in black glaze, built from strokes, letters of uneven height (±10%) on a wavering baseline, with small round O's; Cinzel 700 only for a title on a clay band.