Experiment 05 · Video
Clay: why Seedance, not Hailuo
The same clay keyframe, five seconds each. Hailuo 3 Max for $0.40, Seedance 2.5 for $1.1657543 — and the studio chose Seedance for clay, at almost three times the price.
The takes
The bill
Every paid generation of the run, as its record has it: the amount the provider billed, to the last digit. The total is added in billionths of a dollar, so it never drifts.
| Item | Settings | Billed |
|---|---|---|
| The clay keyframe | GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst · high · 16:9 · 08:12:49 | $0.055155 |
| Hailuo take | Hailuo 3 Max · 5 s · 768p · 08:13:39 | $0.40 |
| Seedance take | Seedance 2.5 · 5 s · 720p · 08:16:47 | $1.1657543 |
Total$1.6209093
The total rounded up to the cent, as Kiju’s buttons round it$1.63, the billed amount rounded up to the cent
Prompt and settings
Static medium framing, slight slow push-in only: Tofu bobs gently in the air and blinks its amber eyes; Ada smiles and raises an eyebrow. Tofu keeps exactly its shape and its single antenna; its two mitten hands float free, never attached by arms. Stop-motion claymation animated frame by frame: slightly jerky movement, subtle clay boiling between frames, puppets and miniature set identical to the first image; one clear action beat; no smooth computer animation, no morphing, no extra characters, no text, no watermark.Settings
- Model
- minimax/hailuo-3-max · bytedance/seedance-2.5
- Provider
- openrouter
- Aspect ratio
- 16:9
- Duration
- 5 s
- Resolution
- 768p · 720p
- First frame
- yes
- Takes
- 2
- Day
- 2026-09-25
How it was made
First the puppets, drawn from text to look like photographs of real objects: Ada, the heroine of the studio’s series POC!, and Tofu, its robot. Then one scene with the puppets as references, and the same prompt sent to two models: a calm push-in, Tofu bobbing in the air, Ada raising an eyebrow, “slightly jerky movement, subtle clay boiling between frames”.
What was kept, and why
The studio’s records say Seedance was preferred in motion, and call Hailuo “more pronounced” without saying in what way. Seedance became the recommended model for clay in the studio’s style guide, and the clay pilot that followed was shot with it. The records name the preference, not the person, so nothing here is marked Kept.
What stays open
- One take each. Hailuo was not tried twice.
- In the same session, at no cost: camera shake was rejected, and of 12, 15 and 24 frames per second or smooth motion, 15 was kept.