Drawn Into the Photograph

Drawn Into the Photograph

Produce ONE image: a photograph with one glowing hand-drawn figure living inside it. 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 six lines only

• The campaign: {what this is for} e.g. Vibary's build week, out in the city
• The photograph, and its empty region: {the scene, and where it is quiet} e.g. a wide studio corridor at night, doors lit along both sides, people working at the far end — the empty region is the near floor and the lower left wall
• The drawn figure, and what it touches: {who, and the contact} e.g. a small crouching character holding up a glowing panel, sitting on the near floor with one hand flat against the real wall
• The glow colour: {one saturated colour} e.g. electric indigo, with a soft halo
• The headline and the dates: {two short texts} e.g. BUILD IT IN PUBLIC · 18–24 JULY
• The footer: {one line} e.g. vibary.ai · free all week

The contact law

Every template in this style asks the drawing to "interact with the scene", and every one of them produces a doodle hovering over a photograph it never meets. Interaction is an adjective. Contact is a place.

The drawing touches the photograph in a named, visible way:

• It stands on something real — the floor, a step, a kerb, a table. Its feet or its weight meet a surface that exists in the picture, at the right height for that surface's perspective.
• It touches one real object — a hand flat on a wall, an arm resting on a railing, a palm against a door. One point is enough; two is better than none but not necessary.
• It never floats. A figure suspended in mid-air over a street is the failure this rule exists to stop.

The light exchange

The two media share one physics, and this is what sells it:

• The glow lands on the scene. A soft pool of the glow colour on the surface beneath the drawing, faint and correctly placed for where it stands.
• Wet surfaces reflect it — a short vertical smear in wet paving, water, or polished floor.
• Nearby real objects catch it — a faint wash of the glow colour on the wall the hand rests against, on the edge of a nearby step.

Everything else in the photograph keeps its own light. The photograph is not tinted, graded, darkened or filtered to accommodate the drawing.

The placement law

Glowing line work and a busy photograph destroy each other.

The drawing goes in the emptiest region of the frame, named in the fields — an open floor, a blank wall, a stretch of water, an empty foreground. Never over a crowd, a rack of signage, a table of people or a wall of detail.

It is large enough to read at a glance and small enough that the scene still reads as the subject: roughly a quarter to a third of the frame's height.

The drawing

• One even line weight throughout, no thick-and-thin, no fill. A simple cartoon character, summarised, four or five features at most.
• A soft halo immediately around the line, tight rather than spread — this is a light source, not a blur.
• One or two tiny drawn props at most, in the same line and the same colour, near the figure and also touching something real.

The photograph and the texts

• The photograph fills the frame edge to edge, evening or night, its own colour and grain intact.
• Three texts only: the headline, the dates beneath it, and the footer along the base. All in white, all placed on the photograph's quiet areas — sky, ceiling, dark wall, road surface.
• No badges, no logos beyond the footer's own words, no QR code, no fourth text.

Never

• ✕ a drawing that touches nothing, or floats in mid-air
• ✕ a glow that lights nothing in the scene beneath it
• ✕ the drawing placed over the busiest part of the photograph
• ✕ the photograph tinted, darkened or filtered to suit the drawing
• ✕ more than two drawn props, or a whole drawn scene
• ✕ a fourth text block, or text over a detailed part of the image

The result

A poster where the drawing lives in the picture rather than on it: one figure standing on a real floor, its light falling on real ground, in the one part of the frame that had room for it.