Carolyn Mazanec — Portfolio

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The Bathroom Attendant

A whodunit about Gary, a rule-obsessed bathroom attendant (who happens to be a dog), teaming up with his far less disciplined counterpart in the girls' room — Ava, a cat — to solve a crime. Gary's golden rule, and the joke the whole show is built on: "sit, stay, and be a good bathroom attendant."

Read the Substack →    Watch on YouTube →

ROLE
Writer / Director
FORMAT
AI mini-series, monthly episodes
STATUS
In production
COLLABORATORS
Mara MacMahon
YEAR
2025–Present
Procreate ChatGPT NanoBanana Pro Krea Kling DaVinci Resolve ElevenLabs
Script
Storyboard sketch of Gary
Storyboards
Looping process video of Gary's character design, from sketch to 3D visualization
Character DesignProcreate sketch → ChatGPT 3D visualization
First frame of Gary, close up, no towel Last frame of Gary with a towel draped over his head
First / Last FramesNanoBanana Pro via Krea
Looping animation test of a washcloth toss close-up
AnimationKling
Looping clip showing the re-timed shot from Episode 1
Re-timingDaVinci Resolve

Each episode is a several-week production blending traditional filmmaking — a human-written script and hand-drawn storyboards — with AI image and video tools for execution. Gary's look was built from a hand-drawn character sketch, fed into ChatGPT with reference images from stop-motion favorites like Isle of Dogs, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Wallace & Gromit to lock in a miniatures-style aesthetic, then refined over many rounds of prompting and hand-painted corrections in Procreate to keep his proportions consistent shot to shot.

Individual shots start as a rough Procreate sketch, get turned into a polished key image in Nano Banana Pro, and then go into Kling AI for motion — often prompted in reverse (removing an object from frame rather than adding one) since AI video tools handle that direction more reliably. The Kling output then gets reversed and re-timed in DaVinci Resolve to land the final motion.

Episode 2 raised the difficulty considerably: two new sets, the introduction of Ava and the girls'-room world, a much wider emotional range for Gary to act through, and more wide shots — which are harder to art-direct since more of the frame (and more of the character's acting) is exposed at once.

Episode 2

Demo

Demo

Episode 1

The pilot, plus the full AI/non-AI tool list used to make it.

Demo #1: The Mints Shot

A full shot breakdown, sketch to final frame.

Demo #3: Character Design

How Gary's look and style were developed.

Episode 2

New sets, a new character, and a wider emotional range.

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