Case Study — The Great Cocoa Avalanche

The Brief

A love letter to Swiss chocolate, engineered for absurdity.

The Great Cocoa Avalanche is an internal research project at Vertical Labs — a ~2:13 animated short built to validate a new AI-native animation pipeline and serve as strategic client teaser for the Swiss chocolate industry.

High in the Alps, an alphorn's vibration dislodges a cocoa fave from a cliff. It cracks open, revealing Bérnois — a tiny cocoa bean with big dreams. He bounces down the valley meeting a cow, a chocolate-drinking St. Bernard, and a marmot marching band, until a yodeler's impossibly high note triggers a cocoa avalanche that buries the local chocolaterie. In the aftermath, a master chocolatier discovers Bérnois, takes him under his wing, and together they create a masterpiece truffle.

Every Swiss cliché is present and correct — alphorns, cowbells, yodelers, marmots in lederhosen — played with deep affection, never irony. The tone is Pixar-wholesome, maximum goofiness, zero cynicism.

Strategic Objectives

Establish a reusable AI animation pipeline for Vertical Labs' Entertainment vertical
Generate pitch-ready IP for potential Swiss partners
Prove broadcast-quality character consistency across a 20-shot, three-act narrative
Produce a repeatable Flora node-graph template for future brand-commissioned shorts
Position Vertical Labs at the intersection of Swiss heritage and AI-native filmmaking

Shot Breakdown

Twenty shots, three acts.

Every shot is ≤10 seconds — built around Seedance 2.0's generation ceiling. Each is produced from locked start-frame and end-frame keyframes, connected by a natural-language motion prompt, assembled in Flora's node canvas with branching variants.

ACT I Birth & Discovery

10 sec

The Grand Vista

Sweeping alpine panorama at golden hour. An alphorn player on a cliff blows an endless, mournful note into the sky.

8 sec

The Cocoa Fave

The sound wave dislodges a chocolate fave from the cliff face. It tumbles down the rock and lands softly in the snow field below.

6 sec

The Birth

The fave cracks open like a nut. Bérnois — our tiny cocoa bean hero — blinks into the world for the first time. Eyes wide. Pure wonder.

8 sec

The Joyful Run

Bérnois takes off down the valley, bouncing through the snow with pure glee, leaving little cocoa footprints behind him.

ACT II Friends & Chaos

7 sec

Meet the Cow

Bérnois skids to a halt in front of a massive Swiss cow. They stare. The cowbell goes KLONG. Bérnois waves politely.

7 sec

Meet the St. Bernard

A St. Bernard drinks chocolate through a straw from its barrel collar. The dog nods solemnly. Bérnois nods back.

7 sec

Meet the Marmots

Three marmots in lederhosen play a tiny fanfare on pretzel-stick alphorns. Bérnois waves. They toot louder.

5 sec

The Sign

Bérnois spots a signpost: "CHOCOLATERIE → 2 KM." His eyes go huge. His whole body vibrates with joy.

6 sec

The Cocoa Shed

Bérnois bounces past a rustic alpine storage house stacked floor-to-ceiling with sacks of cocoa powder. The shed groans under the weight.

8 sec

The Yodel

Cutaway: a yodeler on a distant ridge, singing with abandon. The note climbs impossibly high. A glass-shattering pitch echoes across the mountains.

6 sec

The Avalanche Begins

The high note triggers an avalanche. Snow tumbles into the cocoa storage shed, smashing it apart. A massive brown wave of cocoa powder erupts downhill.

6 sec

The Reaction

Bérnois turns. Sees the cocoa wave. Eyes go plate-sized. He bolts down the valley, tiny legs a blur.

7 sec

The Marmot Raft

The marmots join in, surfing the cocoa wave on a raft made from their giant pretzel sticks. They're having the best time of their lives.

8 sec

The Barrel Wave

Epic wide shot: the barreling cocoa wave closes in on the chocolaterie, growing larger, engulfing pine trees. Bérnois and the gang tumble in the current.

7 sec

Impact

The cocoa wave crashes into the chocolaterie. Doors burst open. Cocoa powder erupts from every window and chimney. A single cowbell klong rings out.

ACT III The Apprentice

10 sec

The Aftermath

Interior: cocoa powder blankets everything. Bérnois, the dog, and the marmots play in the powder like kids in fresh snow. Pure chaos, pure joy.

8 sec

The Master's Eye

The chocolatier emerges, dusted in cocoa. He spots Bérnois. Something lights up in his eyes. He kneels down. He decides — this one is special.

10 sec

The Apprenticeship

Montage: the chocolatier teaches Bérnois the craft — tempering, moulding, tasting. Bérnois wears a tiny chef hat. He fumbles. He learns. He glows.

10 sec

The Master Truffle

Bérnois presents his creation — a perfect truffle on a golden tray. It sparkles. The chocolatier's eyes go wide. Bérnois vibrates with pride. Triumph.

5 sec

Cast Salute

The full cast — Bérnois, the cow, the St. Bernard, the marmots, and the chocolatier — line up and take a bow. Fade to black.

Character Definition & Continuity

Same face, every shot.

One of the core technical challenges of AI filmmaking is keeping characters consistent across 20 independent generation calls. Each shot is generated separately — maintaining visual identity across that many nodes requires deliberate character engineering upfront.

Hero · @bernois

Bérnois

The cocoa bean protagonist. Defined as a top-level reference node — every shot inherits from this anchor.

Rotund cocoa-brown form, expressive wide eyes
Tiny nub arms, stubby legs — exaggerated Pixar proportions
Reference sheet: 6 poses, 4 expressions, 2 scales
Appears in 18 of 20 shots

Supporting · @alphorn

Alphorn Player

The unwitting catalyst. His impossibly high yodel note triggers the entire avalanche. One scene, enormous narrative consequence.

Traditional Swiss costume — lederhosen, felt hat
Weathered face, silver beard, wide-open lungs
Appears on a distant ridge — shot always wide
Expression: pure abandon, zero awareness of consequences

Supporting · @cow

The Cow

The first character Bérnois encounters. A silent, massive, utterly unimpressed Swiss cow. The comedy is in the size contrast.

Classic Braunvieh markings — brown-grey, white patches
Oversized cowbell, half-lidded eyes
One cowbell KLONG — that's the whole performance
Reappears briefly in Act III aftermath

Supporting · @stbernard

The Dog

A St. Bernard with a chocolate-filled barrel collar. Stoic, enormous, oddly wise. Nods once at Bérnois. That's enough.

Classic St. Bernard markings, barrel collar (chocolate, not brandy)
Drinks through a straw — solemn, deliberate
Expression never changes — that's the joke
Surfs the cocoa wave in Act II alongside the marmots

Supporting · @marmots

The Marmots

A trio of marmots in lederhosen playing pretzel-stick alphorns. Pure comic relief. They are having the best day of their lives at all times.

Three distinct sizes: large, medium, small
Lederhosen in brown, green, red respectively
Pretzel sticks as alphorns — consistent prop across acts
Raft surfers in Act II, bow-takers in Act III cast salute

Supporting · @yodler

The Yodler

The inadvertent villain. His glass-shattering high note triggers the cocoa avalanche that sets the entire third act in motion. Zero awareness, maximum impact.

Traditional Swiss costume, ridge silhouette
Mouth permanently open mid-yodel — always at full volume
Never sees the chaos he causes — camera cuts away
Single shot, single note, entire plot consequence

Methodology · @reference locking

Reference Architecture

Flora's node system allows character references to be locked at the top of the graph. Every downstream shot node inherits them automatically — no copy-pasting prompts.

8 reference nodes locked before shot generation begins
Style lock applied globally: Pixar 3D, golden hour, 2K
Per-shot variants generated 3–4× and compared in canvas
Rejected variants kept visible for audit and iteration

Challenge · cross-shot drift

Continuity Failures & Fixes

Despite reference locking, some shots produced character drift — slightly different proportions, altered eye shape, inconsistent colour temperature.

Drift detected by visual review after each generation batch
Fix: re-anchor the reference node with a corrected keyframe
Blooper reel captures the most egregious drift moments
3 shots required full re-generation to pass continuity check

The Continuity Lesson

Character consistency in AI filmmaking is not a generation problem — it is an architecture problem. The quality of your reference nodes determines the consistency of your cast. Invest in the character sheet before you write a single shot prompt. The shots are easy. The character is the product.

Tech Stack

Three tools, one animated short.

Vertical Labs has standardized its AI film pipeline on Flora.ai for creative orchestration, Seedance 2.0 for video generation, and DaVinci Resolve for final assembly and edit. The Great Cocoa Avalanche is the first internal project to validate this three-tool workflow across a 20-shot, three-act narrative.

Orchestration

Flora.ai

Node-based infinite canvas with FAUNA agent. Character references locked as top-level nodes. Every shot is a branching node with 3–4 variants compared side-by-side. Full lineage from prompt to final cut.

Video Generation

Seedance 2.0

ByteDance's multimodal video model. Native audio co-generation, physics-aware motion, character consistency via @reference tagging, up to 15 seconds per shot at native 2K, 60fps.

Final Assembly

DaVinci Resolve

Industry-standard editing and color grading. All 20 shots assembled, trimmed, and sequenced on the timeline. Final color grade, audio mix, and master export to 2K delivery.

Flora.ai node graph — Cocoa Avalanche pipeline

The Pipeline

A repeatable node graph.

Reference Lock

Eight characters and environments generated once in Imagen 4 / Flux 2 Pro, bound to @tags at the top of the Flora canvas.

Keyframe Generation

For each of the 20 shots, a start-frame and end-frame image are generated as locked keyframe nodes.

Motion Synthesis

Keyframes feed Seedance 2.0 with the shot prompt. Native audio — dialogue, SFX, ambient — is generated in the same pass.

Branching & Selection

3–4 variants per shot. Best takes promoted to the assembly track. Across 20 shots, roughly 60–80 total video generations.

Final Assembly in DaVinci Resolve

Twenty shots exported from Flora into DaVinci Resolve for final edit, color grade, audio mix, and delivery as a single ~2:13 2K master file.

Strategic Value

Why this is client teaser.

Every element of this short was engineered for swappable reuse. Replace Bérnois with a brand mascot, re-run the node graph, and deliver a new film in the same visual language within days.

/ 01

Brand-safe character IP

A single reference pass locks a mascot across a 20-shot film. Client mascots can be swapped in without re-architecting the pipeline. Every future short reuses the same node skeleton.

/ 02

Heritage done with affection

Alphorns, cowbells, marmots, St. Bernards — and a chocolatier-mentor apprenticeship arc. Every Swiss cliché is a love letter, never satire. Chocolatiers will feel celebrated.

/ 03

Days, not months

Two minutes thirteen seconds of broadcast-quality animation in days rather than the months a traditional pipeline would demand. Campaign-velocity filmmaking for brands that used to commission one film per year.

/ 04

The graph is the product

The deliverable isn't just the film — it's the reusable Flora node graph. Future client work inherits the full 20-shot, three-act pipeline as a starting template, with character slots pre-wired.