---
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
---

![Track: Thousand Token Wood](https://img.shields.io/badge/track-Thousand%20Token%20Wood-7c3aed)
![Badge: Off Brand](https://img.shields.io/badge/badge-Off%20Brand-e0303c)
![Badge: Best Demo](https://img.shields.io/badge/badge-Best%20Demo-f2b030)
![Models < 32B](https://img.shields.io/badge/all%20models-%3C32B-2ea44f)
![Gradio 6](https://img.shields.io/badge/Gradio-6.x-orange)
![Backend: Modal](https://img.shields.io/badge/backend-Modal%20GPU-0b6bcb)

# 🥊 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

[![Watch the Celebrity Deathmatch demo](https://img.youtube.com/vi/JNl-N7NN8oI/hqdefault.jpg)](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.