Built by Tiny Hands

Built by Tiny Hands

Produce ONE image: a miniature-scale poster where small figures are assembling its subject. Follow every line below. Replace only the FIELDS block; everything after it is fixed.

First — do you have the fields?

If any field below still has braces around it, stop and ask. Put all the questions in one short message, and show the example under each one so they can see the shape of a useful answer. Wait for the replies, then draw. Never fill a brace yourself: a value you invented is a value nobody asked for, and it will look exactly as considered as the ones they did give you.

Ask in whatever language they are writing to you in. Translate the questions and the examples; do not make someone read English to tell you what they want.

The examples are only examples. If someone answers a question, use their answer; never fall back to the example because you prefer it.

If the fields are already filled in, ignore this and carry on.

Fields — replace these seven lines only

• The occasion: {what this is for} e.g. Vibary's first summer of open building
• The figure height, and what it measures: {the unit, and object sizes expressed in it} e.g. each figure is one unit tall — a laptop is 2 units wide, a mug half a unit, a bench 3 units long
• The work in progress: {three or four figures, each with a verb} e.g. four figures assembling a workbench scene: one hauling a cable into place, one unrolling a sheet of paper, one hanging a small lamp from a stand, one carrying a keycap on their back
• The enlarged foreground: {two objects, named as enlarged} e.g. two objects blown to giant scale and stated as such: one mechanical keycap standing as tall as a figure, and one coffee cup the size of a barrel
• The title and its subtitle: {a brush title, and a line beneath} e.g. Open Build, in brush script, the strokes dry and splitting at the ends — 'one afternoon, start to finish'
• The colophon and the couplet: {a date line, and one poetic line} e.g. 2026 · summer series / one prompt, then the rest of the afternoon
• The palette: {ground, two tones, one stamp colour} e.g. warm bone ground, pale oak, soft indigo, one vermilion stamp

The one-unit law

This style lives or dies on scale, and it dies quietly: the same object appears twice at two different sizes and the little world stops being a place.

One figure is one unit, and every object's size is stated in units. A bench is three units long wherever it appears. A mug is half a unit whether a figure is carrying it or it is sitting on the ground. Nothing is sized by eye.

Enlargement is named, not improvised. Two foreground objects are deliberately giant — that exaggeration is the charm of the style — but the fields say which two, and no third object is enlarged. A lantern that is knee-high to a figure in one corner and taller than a tent in another is the failure this rule exists to stop, and it is what a template without a unit produces every time.

Audit the finished poster by object: find every instance of the same thing and confirm they agree.

The work

Every figure is mid-action, and the action is construction. They are hauling, unrolling, hanging, lifting, tying, carrying, placing. Between them they are assembling the thing the poster is about, so the scene reads as being made rather than being displayed.

• Three or four figures. Five becomes a crowd at this scale.
• Each does something different, and the evidence of the action is visible: a rope under tension, a sheet half unrolled, a lamp swinging from its hook, weight on a shoulder.
• Nobody stands, poses, or looks at the camera. A figure with no verb is the same failure as a floating doodle: presence without participation.

The scene

• The built scene occupies the lower two thirds of the frame, in sharp macro focus, its materials legible — grain, weave, moss, paper fibre.
• Soft, even daylight from one direction, gentle shadows, no hard sun and no artificial glow other than a lamp the figures themselves have hung.
• The upper third is mostly empty ground, holding the type.

The type

Four texts, arranged as an Eastern editorial page:

1. 1The brush title, upper left, largest, with its translated subtitle set small beneath it in a serif.
2. 2The colophon, upper right: a thin vertical stack of a date, a series name and a season, with hairline rules between.
3. 3The couplet, lower right: one poetic line, small, in two short lines rather than one long one.
4. 4One stamp, vermilion, beside the title, carrying a single Latin initial. The only saturated colour on the page.

The palette

• A pale warm ground — bone, oat, warm white — carrying the empty upper third.
• Two supporting tones drawn from the scene's own materials.
• One vermilion stamp. Nothing else is saturated.

Never

• ✕ the same object at two sizes, or an object sized by eye
• ✕ a third enlarged object beyond the two the fields name
• ✕ a figure standing, posing, or facing the camera
• ✕ five or more figures
• ✕ hard sunlight, coloured gels, glow, heavy vignette
• ✕ a busy upper third, or type overlapping the scene
• ✕ a second stamp, or a fourth colour — not in the title, not in the stamp, not printed on a prop

The result

A little world that holds together because it was measured: figures at work on the thing the poster announces, two giants declared as giants, and everything else the same size as itself.