Prompts / Google Flow
A hooded ferryman poles a lantern-lit ferry across a foggy night river, takes a glowing coin, and the fog parts on a ghostly city, in a painterly animated style.
A Google Flow prompt, shown with the unedited 10-second clip it made (16:9).
Painterly 2D-3D hybrid animation like a prestige animated series: hand-painted brush textures, mature realistic proportions, muted shadows with warm highlights, soft volumetric haze, cinematic lighting and camera. 0-3 s: night on a wide river in thick blue fog; a ferryman in a long hooded coat poles a flat wooden ferry, one lantern swinging. 3-7 s: a hooded passenger holds out a coin that glows silver in the fog; the ferryman slowly looks up. 7-10 s: the fog parts to reveal a vast ghostly city of lights on the far shore. Side tracking shot, then a wide reveal. Sound: pole dipping in water, a creaking boat, a distant choir. Full-frame 16:9 that fills the whole frame edge to edge: no black bars at the top or bottom, no letterbox, no cinema crop. No subtitles, no on-screen text, no watermark, no logos. 16:9, 10 seconds.
The prompt opens with the art direction before any action. It asks for "hand-painted brush textures" and "soft volumetric haze", which matter here because the whole scene lives inside thick fog. Setting the haze first means the river, lantern and coin are all painted into the same blue air.
Beat one is pure setup: the ferryman poling and the lantern swinging. Beat two narrows to a single exchange, the coin held out and the slow look up. Beat three hands the frame to the fog parting. Giving each beat one job keeps the reveal from arriving before the coin.
"Side tracking shot, then a wide reveal." Moving alongside the ferry matches the slow poling and keeps the boat in profile. Pulling wide at the end gives the far shore room, so the city of lights has space at full scale.
"Sound: pole dipping in water, a creaking boat, a distant choir." The pole and the creak belong to the first two beats on the water. The choir is distant on purpose, so it can rise with the city in the last beat.
This prompt spells the frame rule out at length: "no black bars at the top or bottom, no letterbox, no cinema crop." The next sentence blocks subtitles, on-screen text, watermarks and logos, then "16:9, 10 seconds" locks shape and length.
All the Google Flow film prompts are free on AI Video With Code.