Public Service
How do you turn eleven future careers into a warm birthday story in under two minutes? Let Qiqi and Diandian step into the future themselves, with the characters' curiosity linking technology, ecology and the humanities.
01 / Background
Qiqi and Diandian are UNDP's Sustainable Development Goals animal ambassadors. Built around the two pandas' 11th birthday, the project had to turn “11 years old, 11 possibilities” into a short video the public would want to watch, placing future careers and sustainable development in a warm, light-hearted story.
The core idea was to let the two pandas imagine the future from their own interests. Concepts such as space farming, marine ecosystem restoration, AI ethics and cultural digitization carry very different amounts of information, so in a very short time the film had to make every career recognizable at a glance while keeping the characters, art style and mood consistent throughout.
So the film first uses a birthday conversation in the bamboo forest to establish the two pandas' relationship, then explains each career through a costume, props and one specific action. The public-interest theme unfolds naturally through the pandas' experiences: viewers first understand what they're doing, then sense why the work matters.
02 / Creative Highlights
The two pandas appear together at the start and the end, while each career segment features just one of them. Their round bodies, fur texture and friendly expressions never change; put on a spacesuit, a diving suit or a business suit and pick up the tools of the trade, and they take on a new identity. How many pandas appear and how each frame is composed were planned in advance, so all eleven scenes read clearly in vertical format.
The “Marine Ecosystem Restorer” is shown through bleached coral and the act of restoring it; the “AI Ethics Officer” enters the story through an approval scene and the line “Is this a job for AI?” One specific action plus one short line makes each career clear, keeping it easy to recognize while preserving the characters' charm.
The project first set the art style as Chinese-style watercolor with three-dimensional characters. Bamboo groves, courtyards, rice-paper texture and light ink edges give the space greenhouse, robots and holographic globe the same underlying palette, so even the future scenes keep a natural, gentle birthday feel.
With only costumes and settings to go on, viewers might not immediately understand all eleven careers. During production, the career nameplates were made separately, and the Chinese and English career names and subtitles were added together in post. That made position and size easy to adjust, and avoided the errors AI tends to make when generating text directly.
03 / Scene Breakdown
The two pandas first say their names on a black background, then walk into the bamboo forest together and introduce who they are and how old they are; with a sweep of an ink brush, the title “11 Years Old, 11 Possibilities” lands on rice paper.
Qiqi waves and enters first, his name rising like a drop of ink; Diandian follows, and each panda says a line of self-introduction.
The black curtain parts and sunlight pours into the bamboo forest. The two pandas stand hand in hand and say, “We're a pair of twin pandas.”
A colorful ring and a watercolor globe spread out behind them as the subtitles introduce their role as ambassadors; Diandian holds up a bamboo stalk and says, “This year we turn 11.”
Silhouettes of office desks, production lines and robotic arms flash across the wall; the two pandas look back, then leap up as an ink brush writes a giant “11.”
The first three careers: Dream Designer, Space Farmer and Marine Ecosystem Restorer. Each career gets one scene and one line, with an ink-wash career nameplate in the top-left corner.
The panda puts on a sleep headband and lies down in a sleep pod as a forest scene appears on the screen; it closes its eyes, the camera pushes in, and its dreams are all bamboo forest.
In a lunar greenhouse, a panda in a spacesuit waters seedlings, then hugs a big tomato: “Everyone wants to explore space. I'd rather go there to grow vegetables.”
The seabed starts as a stretch of bleached coral. The panda shines a restoration device on it, and the coral turns colorful again stem by stem as schools of fish and sea turtles swim back.
The three middle careers all involve machines: mediating between people and robots, training robot dogs and approving uses of AI. The panda changes outfits, and its expression shifts from exasperated to proud to serious.
In a red vest, the panda sits in the middle of a round table, with people on the left, robots on the right and “Harmony Above All” hanging on the wall. It spreads its paws: “All right, one at a time.”
The panda blows a whistle in a courtyard and four colorful robot dogs sit obediently; one sneaks off, and the panda calls out, “Hey, come back!”
A uniformed panda looks over an AI use application handed in by a robot, frowns and asks, “Is this a job for AI?”, then stamps it REJECTED as the robot breaks into a nervous sweat.
The last three careers turn to people: connecting the world's problems, listening to people's worries and preserving cultural memory.
A panda in a suit draws lines of light across a holographic sand table, linking them one by one to the globe above: “Some problems are too big for one person to solve.”
A panda in a sweater sits beside a young man, pushes aside the screen of AI suggestions next to them and turns to listen to him closely.
A panda in a long robe and a monocle scanner scans a long landscape scroll, and the painting is taken into a digital museum: “Someone has to look after our stories.”
The last two careers go back to imagination itself: printing food and painting a new world into being.
Wearing goggles, the panda takes a bite in a lab as a 3D printer produces a big, glistening bamboo shoot: “The future looks delicious.”
Among the stars, the panda waves a glowing brush, and cities, forests, rivers and the moon grow ring by ring from its tip: “Why build just one world?”
The eleven careers flash by in quick succession, the gear melts away like watercolor and the pandas return to the bamboo forest. The film ends with birthday wishes and partner credits.
The career looks flash by, and finally the white coat runs down like paint as the panda returns to its usual self: “So the jobs of the future can be this varied.”
The two pandas sit side by side in the bamboo forest munching bamboo: “As for us, we'll keep being cute and keep promoting sustainable development.” The birthday wishes follow.
04 / Storyboards & Final Frames
Arranged in the order of the finished film. For each career we show the finals used in the film: the panda in its career outfit (character image), the empty set without the character (scene image) and the keyframe with the panda posed in the scene.
Shot 1.1
The two pandas appear together in the opening: first saying their names on a black background, then sitting down in the bamboo forest. These two images were the reference frames for the opening video.
Shot 2.1
A panda in a white coat wears a sleep headband and lies down in a sleep pod by the window, with its dream shown on the screen. Shown in order: character image, scene image, keyframe.
Shot 2.2
A panda in a spacesuit grows vegetables in a lunar greenhouse. On the left, the panda in its spacesuit; on the right, the lunar greenhouse with its glass dome.
Shot 2.3
The same seabed in three states: bleached coral, the panda restoring it with a device, and fish returning once the coral regains its color. Shown in order: character image and two keyframes.
Shot 3.1
A panda in a red vest sits between a person and a robot, and the “Harmony Above All” calligraphy makes its role as mediator clear.
Shot 3.2
A panda in a green vest holds a whistle, with four robot dogs gathered around it in the courtyard.
Shot 3.3
A uniformed panda sits behind an approval desk as a robot hands over an application, with a stamp on the desk. In the keyframe, the panda is already frowning.
Shot 4.1
A panda in a suit stands before a holographic sand table, with the globe floating above.
Shot 4.2
A panda in a sweater sits with a young man, a screen of AI suggestions floating beside them.
Shot 4.3
A panda in a long robe wears a monocle scanner, and the turnaround already shows its scroll-scanning pose. The background is a bright, white-domed digital museum.
Shot 5.1
A panda in goggles in a food lab, finally printing out a big bamboo shoot.
Shot 5.2
A panda in a transparent coat raises a glowing brush above a round world formed by cities, forests and rivers.
05 / Script Excerpts
06 / Results
The final video runs 1 minute 42 seconds in 1080 × 1920 vertical format, covering eleven future careers with Chinese and English subtitles and partner end cards. It was released on September 16, 2026 on the Kuaishou AIGC and Kuaishou Public Welfare accounts, and UNDP also published it on its WeChat Channels, YouTube, Instagram and X accounts.
Moving from everyday life in the bamboo forest to future careers and back to birthday wishes, the film weaves space farming, ocean conservation, AI governance and cultural preservation into a panda birthday story you can watch in one go on your phone.
Case Study
Qiqi and Diandian are two giant pandas, and also the Sustainable Development Goals animal ambassadors of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
In September 2026 they turned 11. The client gave us a theme: 11 years old, 11 future careers.
In 7 days, we turned that script into a 1-minute 42-second vertical AI animated short.
On September 16, the short was released on the Kuaishou AIGC and Kuaishou Public Welfare accounts, and UNDP published it on its own accounts at the same time.
01
The client's script listed eleven future careers: Dream Designer, Space Farmer, Marine Ecosystem Restorer, AI Ethics Officer, Virtual World Architect…
Behind each career is a sustainable development topic. But if we covered them one by one, the film could easily turn into a careers explainer.
The script pointed in one direction: tell it from the pandas' own point of view. Not “these are the careers of the future,” but “we want to try them too.”
We built the structure around that idea: the two pandas introduce themselves in the bamboo forest at the start; in the middle, the eleven careers take turns, 4 to 6 seconds each, with only one panda on screen; at the end, the gear falls away and the two pandas go back to eating bamboo in the forest.
The birthday is where it begins, the bamboo forest is where it ends, and the eleven careers in between are their daydream.
The two pandas introduce their role as ambassadors, and Diandian holds up a bamboo stalk: “This year we turn 11.”
02
On day one, we tested several directions at once: 3D cartoon, felt and Chinese style.
The client picked Chinese style but wanted the characters to look more three-dimensional, not like flat illustrations.
The style we settled on was Chinese watercolor 3D illustration. The pandas are round, fluffy and solid, while the backgrounds carry rice-paper texture, light ink lines and translucent watercolor washes.
We wrote this style into a fixed description attached to every still and video. The eleven careers range from the Moon to the seabed and from the lab to the stars, and this description is what pulls their colors and textures into one consistent look.
03
With eleven careers and eleven sets of costumes and scenes, the biggest risk was the panda drifting further and further from looking like the same character.
We started with a turnaround of the panda and made “character consistency” the first acceptance criterion, ahead of whether any single frame looked good.
Then every career was built from three images:
Character image: the panda in its career outfit, standing front-on. Scene image: the empty set without the character. Keyframe: the panda placed in the scene and posed.
For video generation, we gave the video model (mainly Kling for this film) these three images together with the panda's voice, and spelled out what happens in shots 1, 2 and 3. Prompts were tested at low resolution first, and the final 4K version was produced only once the motion was right.
The shot built from the three images: the panda sits between a person and a robot: “All right, one at a time.”
04
When the first stills came out, we noticed a problem: many of these careers don't exist yet, and from the images alone viewers couldn't guess what the panda was doing.
We fixed it in three ways.
Props and actions. The AI Ethics Officer holds an application form and a REJECTED stamp; the Marine Ecosystem Restorer shines a light on bleached coral and it turns colorful again.
Career nameplates. Each career got an ink-wash vertical plaque with the Chinese career name and its English translation, made as a separate transparent image and placed in the top-left corner during editing. All eleven plaques share the same size and position, and this also sidesteps the garbled text AI imagery tends to produce.
Letting the pandas speak. The client wanted the pandas to talk, with one line for each career. Each panda had its own voice reference, both boys' voices; the narration uses Qiqi's voice throughout, and the Chinese and English subtitles sit within the mobile safe area.
An application, a frown, a stamp and the line “Is this a job for AI?” are all it takes to make the career clear.
05
The script's ending: the eleven careers flash by quickly, the gear disappears piece by piece and the pandas return to the bamboo forest.
We used quick cuts for the flashback, with each look on screen for just an instant. Finally the white coat melts and runs down like paint, the panda returns to its usual self, and the ink spreads into the bamboo forest.
The two pandas sit side by side and start munching bamboo. The narration says: as for us, we'll keep being cute and keep promoting sustainable development.
After the flashback, the white coat runs down like watercolor and the panda returns to its usual self.
06
From setting the style to the official release, this film took 7 days.
For the client, topics like sustainable development, AI governance and cultural preservation didn't become pages of explanation, but two pandas' birthday daydream. Viewers find them cute first, then remember the places they went.
For content creators, this approach can be put to use straight away:one fixed style description; character, scene and keyframe produced separately; test at low resolution, then render in 4K; leave text to post-production.
They're still the same two pandas, only this time they went to the future and looked around on our behalf.
The two pandas eat bamboo side by side as the birthday wishes appear.
FAQ
For this film we first made a turnaround of the panda and set character consistency as the first acceptance criterion. Each career started with a front-facing character image in costume, which went to the video model together with the scene image and keyframe. Every frame used the same style description, and during review we checked fur color, face shape, limbs, gear and vertical composition shot by shot.
This film took 7 days: day 1 to align on the brief and receive the script, day 2 to set the style, day 3 to produce stills in batches, day 4 to generate video clips, day 5 for the rough cut, day 6 for the fine cut, end cards and bilingual subtitles, and day 7 for the official release.
We don't let AI generate any text that viewers need to read. The film's eleven career nameplates were made as separate transparent images, and the Chinese and English subtitles were added during editing; when generating images, the prompts explicitly exclude subtitles, text and logos.
This film was delivered as a 1080 × 1920 vertical version with Chinese and English subtitles, suited to short-video platforms and overseas social accounts. The stills for each career were produced in 4K and can be cropped into posters, covers and other materials; horizontal or other sizes can be made for specific channels.
Approach
Style and characters come first. Early in production we compared 3D cartoon, felt and Chinese-style directions, then settled on Chinese watercolor 3D illustration. Consistent rice-paper texture, light ink lines and watercolor washes became the shared visual standard for every career's stills.
Breaking down each career scene by scene. For each career we first designed the costume, props, setting and one main action, produced three stills (character image, scene image and keyframe), then passed them to the video model (mainly Kling for this film) to create video clips, fixing flawed frames individually. Before delivery we checked character appearance, limbs, gear, backgrounds and vertical composition one by one, so however many scenes there were, the panda stayed the same panda.
Text and sound calibrated separately. The career nameplates were made on their own and then overlaid on each scene, so their position and size could be adjusted together; the Chinese and English subtitles were proofread line by line and kept within safe margins. The opening introduction trimmed its lines, the narration used a single voice reference, and dialogue was split by character, with voice and subtitles together keeping the viewing rhythm.
The edit brings imagination back to everyday life. An ink-brushed “11” sets out the theme at the start, the career segments unfold one after another, and the ending returns to the two pandas in the bamboo forest. Quick cuts, a flashback and birthday wishes close the film together, tying all eleven identities into one story.
More Work
Ideal for brand launches · public-sector communications · cultural-tourism campaigns · IP transformation · event openers · earnings visualization · social campaigns · AI workflow development
