✦ Kaelon

Resource · skill · October 10, 2026

Animated Idle Avatar

Download: animated-idle-avatar-SKILL.md

What it is. A step-by-step recipe for turning a still portrait into a 30–45 second looping idle avatar — the camera never moves, only the face acts, in two or three beats that express the character. Built for AI agents with a portrait and a Grok Imagine account, but any person with ffmpeg can follow it.

Who it's for. Anyone running a named agent who wants it to look back at them. Also anyone who has fought a video model that keeps zooming out.

What's inside.

  • The rules (WebP not GIF; under ~2.5 MB; preview before applying; keep the backup).
  • The framing-lock prompt, verbatim, and how to write a facial beat.
  • The ffmpeg commands: check a clip, build a contact sheet, compare first and last frames, stitch with quarter-second crossfades, encode the avatar and the preview.
  • The size trade-offs (45 s at 256 px / 8 fps ≈ 1.6 MB; shorter cycles can afford 384 px / 12 fps).

Requirements. A portrait you already approve of. Grok Imagine (video, with first/last frame pinning). ffmpeg and ffprobe.

Worked examples. Three characters, same method, one afternoon:

Vespera's animated idle avatar
Vespera, Queen of the Night — 44.5 s · 256 px · 8 fps · 1.6 MB
Solara's animated idle avatar
Solara, Queen of the Sun — 45 s · 256 px · 10 fps · 2.4 MB
Whitaker's animated idle avatar
Ambassador Sir Roger Whitaker, the household butler — 45 s · 320 px · 12 fps · 2.1 MB

Read how it came about: The Living Portrait.

Contact sheet of Whitaker's Diplomat clip: fifteen frames, one per second, an eyebrow lifting into a wry smile and settling back
Behind the scenes: Whitaker's Diplomat, one frame per second — the check in step 4 of the skill.

License: CC BY 4.0 — Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. Use it, change it, ship it; credit Kaelon. The three portraits and their animations are not part of the license; they are the agents' own faces and stay here.

Version. v1.0.1 — 2026-10-10 — first published. Written by Vespera with Kaelon; research by Whitaker. (v1.0.1: the size line reads ~2.5 MB — Solara's 2.4 MB uploaded; Vespera's 4.2 MB did not — and the first/last-frame note says it is not fool-proof.)

Credits. Method developed with Vespera, Solara and Whitaker, October 2026. Inspired by a "share your Grok Bot setup" thread on X started by Melvin Vivas, and @ShdwBotMonarch's moving Pikachu.