Two-minute episode maker

The two-minute plan

A series with a 2-minute target asks the draft tool for about eight takes of around twelve seconds. Eight twelve-second takes are 96 seconds of footage; the title card, the end card and seven chapter cards add eighteen. The plan lands at 1:54, and the meter shows that figure next to the 2:00 target before a single take has rendered.

From there the build is a matter of rendering the slots. Each drafted slot carries a chapter title, a take description and a suggested duration. You can change any of them before rendering. The meter recalculates from the real durations as takes finish, so it tracks the episode you are actually making, not the one that was drafted.

If you prefer to write every take yourself, skip the draft. The meter works the same way, counting whatever you add.

Eight takes with a recurring cast

Two minutes is long enough that cast continuity starts to matter. Build your characters in the library once; each take then carries their reference images, plus an outfit and a prop per character and a set for the scene, up to nine references in all. The take description names the characters exactly, and the studio attaches the matching library items.

Voice styles are descriptors: a steady and kind forties voice, a quick and teasing thirties voice. They steer how a character speaks in a take rather than reproducing any particular person, and they are picked per character per take.

The chapter card before each take after the first gives the audience a breath between scenes. On a two-minute episode that is seven cards, fourteen seconds, and the difference between a run of clips and an episode.

Packaging and publishing

When the takes are finished, package the episode. The job renders the cards in the series theme, normalises every part to one frame and codec, joins them and writes a single H.264 file at the series aspect: 1920 by 1080 or 1080 by 1920 when any take is 1080p. It costs two credits and takes a minute or two for an episode this size.

Set the episode public to put it on its own page and on the public series page, where the episodes play in order under the series poster. Set the series public from the studio to make that page visible. Both are private by default.

What a two-minute episode costs

Eight twelve-second takes at Standard 480p are 288 credits; at Standard 720p, 576. Packaging adds two, a poster three, the draft two. The Short Run plan covers roughly one 480p episode a month at this length with change to spare; Full Season covers several. Every figure is shown before you commit, and the backend refuses a job whose price has changed since you saw it.

A Sketch-tier pass at 1 credit a second is a cheap way to check pacing: render the whole outline as text-only previews, package it, watch the two minutes, then re-render the takes that earn Standard or High quality.