| --- |
| title: Celebrity Deathmatch |
| emoji: 🥊 |
| colorFrom: red |
| colorTo: yellow |
| sdk: gradio |
| sdk_version: "6.0.0" |
| app_file: app.py |
| pinned: true |
| short_description: Two photos in, a claymation celebrity death match out |
| tags: |
| - track:wood |
| - sponsor:modal |
| - sponsor:openbmb |
| - achievement:offbrand |
| - thousand-token-wood |
| - off-brand |
| - best-demo |
| - text-to-video |
| - image-generation |
| - text-to-speech |
| - gradio |
| - modal |
| models: |
| - openbmb/MiniCPM-V-2_6 |
| - black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-schnell |
| - Lightricks/LTX-Video |
| - Qwen/Qwen3-TTS-12Hz-1.7B-VoiceDesign |
| --- |
| |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|
|
| # 🥊 Celebrity Deathmatch |
|
|
| **Upload two photos. Our AI ring director books the brawl** — a claymation fight |
| script, a rendered keyframe reel, a declared winner — then turns it into one |
| continuous fight video with **two ring announcers screaming over the action** and |
| the crowd going wild. |
|
|
| It's MTV's *Celebrity Deathmatch* as an AI-native toy: pure spectacle, zero |
| practical value, maximum fun. (That's the [Thousand Token Wood](#) track in one |
| sentence.) |
|
|
| > ⚠️ **Parody.** Every visual is an AI-generated claymation **caricature** of a |
| > public figure, for comedic effect. Not real. No real people were harmed. |
|
|
| ## ▶️ See it in action |
|
|
| [](https://youtu.be/JNl-N7NN8oI) |
|
|
| 🎬 **[Watch the 60-second demo](https://youtu.be/JNl-N7NN8oI)** · 🥊 **[Try it live](https://huggingface.co/spaces/build-small-hackathon/deathmatch)** · 🔗 **[Launch post](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pawel-pisarski_buildsmall-huggingace-modal-activity-7472333779378921473-6r2w)** |
|
|
| ## Why it's worth a look |
|
|
| - **🎙️ Two-announcer voiceover, not a silent clip.** Every beat is called by |
| **Nick** (dry, sarcastic) and **Johnny** (loud, over-excited) — two *designed* |
| voices from Qwen3-TTS VoiceDesign — mixed over a bell, a crowd murmur bed, and a |
| winner roar. The fight has a soundtrack, like the real show. |
| - **🎨 Off-brand UI.** No default Gradio look: a custom claymation-fight art |
| direction — Anton display type, fire-and-clay palette, tale-of-the-tape stat |
| bars, animated winner banner. |
| - **🧱 Real caricatures, real stakes.** MiniCPM *reads both photos*, invents a |
| fighting persona, signature move, and stat line for each, then choreographs a |
| 5-beat arc and picks a winner. |
|
|
| ## How it works |
|
|
| A four-model pipeline — **every model under the hackathon's 32B cap**: |
|
|
| | Stage | Role | Model | Params | |
| |------|------|-------|--------| |
| | 1 | Fight director — reads **both** photos → fight card JSON | **MiniCPM-V-2_6** (OpenBMB) | 8B | |
| | 2 | Claymation keyframe reel | **FLUX.1-schnell** (BFL) | 12B | |
| | 3 | Keyframes → continuous fight video (opt-in) | **LTX-Video** (Lightricks) | 2B | |
| | 3 | Two-announcer voiceover | **Qwen3-TTS VoiceDesign** (Qwen) | 1.7B | |
| |
| **The entire fight pipeline runs on small models — all ≤12B**, well under the |
| 32B cap. No giant foundation model anywhere: a clever chain of small specialists |
| (read → draw → animate → voice) does the whole show. That's the Build Small ethos. |
| |
| ``` |
| photo A + photo B |
| └─▶ Stage 1 MiniCPM-V-2_6 → fight card (fighters, 5 beats, 2-announcer commentary, winner) |
| └─▶ Stage 2 FLUX.1-schnell → 5 claymation keyframes |
| └─▶ Stage 3 (Animate) LTX-Video → chained clips |
| + Qwen3-TTS → Nick/Johnny voiceover + crowd SFX + burned-in captions |
| → one MP4 |
| ``` |
| |
| The reel (Stages 1–2) is the fast default; **Animate** (Stage 3) is opt-in |
| because it's the GPU-heavy step. |
|
|
| ## Tech |
|
|
| - **Frontend:** this Gradio 6 Space (custom CSS, no template look). |
| - **Backend:** two Modal GPU apps — `deathmatch` (MiniCPM A10G + FLUX L40S + |
| ASGI gateway) and `deathmatch-video` (ComfyUI + LTX on H100, Qwen3-TTS on A10G). |
| - **Audio/video post:** pure `ffmpeg` — xfade stitch, fit-to-beat TTS mixing, |
| synthesized crowd SFX, burned-in captions. |
| - Wired to the backend via `DEATHMATCH_API_URL` (set automatically on deploy). |
|
|
| ## Sponsors we built on |
|
|
| - **🤗 OpenBMB — MiniCPM-V-2_6.** The whole show starts here: one 8B |
| vision-language model reads *both* fighter photos in a single call and returns |
| the entire fight card as JSON — names, personas, signature moves, stat lines, a |
| 5-beat script, two-announcer commentary, and a winner. It *is* the ring director. |
| - **▲ Modal.** Every GPU stage runs on Modal — MiniCPM (A10G), FLUX (L40S), and |
| the ComfyUI + LTX-Video + Qwen3-TTS video app (H100 / A10G) — behind warm-pooled |
| `@app.cls` containers and an ASGI gateway. The HF Space stays CPU-only and calls |
| Modal over HTTP; one `modal deploy` ships each app. |
| |
| ## Run it locally (no GPU) |
| |
| ```sh |
| DEATHMATCH_MOCK=1 python app.py |
| ``` |
| |
| Mock mode exercises the **entire UX** on CPU — canned fight card, placeholder |
| keyframe reel, and a stand-in fight video — so you can see the whole flow without |
| burning a single GPU minute. |
|
|
