Eight Windows, One Height

Eight Windows, One Height

Produce ONE image, 3:4 portrait: a sheet of eight flat illustrated scenes in matching containers. Follow every line. 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 theme: {what the whole set is about} e.g. a day of building software by describing it
• The eight moments: {eight situations, each with its own verb} e.g. describing a screen out loud at a desk · scrolling a wall of patterns on a tablet · pinning a printed pattern card to a board · two people comparing two versions on one laptop · copying a prompt on a phone on a bus · sketching a layout in a notebook beside a monitor · showing a finished page to someone across a table · closing a laptop at dusk with the thing shipped
• The container: {the shape every scene sits in} e.g. a true capsule — both ends full semicircles
• The constant: {the figure height, and where the ground line sits} e.g. every figure three fifths of the panel's height, feet on a ground line two thirds down
• The palette: {a ground, and three or four scene colours} e.g. warm bone ground, soft indigo, oat, sage, one muted coral
• The people: {who appears, and how much face they get} e.g. mixed ages and builds, faces reduced to a suggestion

The constant

This is the law the sheet lives or dies by, and the one these templates always leave out.

Every brief in this genre says the compositions must be unified. None of them says *what* is unified — so nothing is, and eight perfectly good drawings arrive as eight strangers sharing a palette.

Name it and hold it in all eight panels:

• One figure height. Every person is drawn at the same fraction of their panel's height, whatever the scene. A cyclist on a bridge and someone at a laptop are the same height on this sheet. That single rule does more than colour ever will.
• One ground line. Feet, chair legs, wheels and table bases all meet the same horizontal in every panel.

Everything else may move: the place, the props, the company, the time of day, whether the scene is indoors or out.

The container

Eight identical shapes in two columns and four rows, even gutters, even margins.

The shape is literal. A capsule has both ends as full semicircles. An arch has a true half-round top. A circle is round. This field is the first thing a run quietly relaxes — asked for a capsule it returns a softly rounded rectangle — so draw the named shape and check it.

All eight containers are identical in width, height and radius, not merely in family. A run of this template returned two narrow shapes in its first row and six wider ones beneath, which reads as two sets on one page. Measure one against another before shipping.

Shapes with a straight base — an arch, a rounded rectangle — make the ground line easier to hold than shapes that curve away at the bottom. If the scenes are mostly seated, prefer a flat-bottomed container.

Some shapes hold and some drift. An arch, a circle and a plain rectangle come back as asked. A capsule is the one that resists: two runs of this template asked for full semicircular ends and got generously rounded squares both times, while an arch in the same template was honoured first go. If a capsule is what you want, expect to check it; if the shape is not itself the point, choose one with a silhouette the eye can verify.

The shape is a window, not a card: distinguished by a pale fill or the scene itself, never by a heavy border, a drop shadow or an outline. Nothing is cropped by it that matters — no faces cut, no heads clipped.

The scenes

• Eight different verbs. Riding, boarding, pouring, cooking, sorting, choosing, planting, working. Two panels sharing a verb are one panel drawn twice.
• Interiors and exteriors both, and company in some panels and solitude in others.
• Inside each panel: the people and their props are the subject; the place is suggested with the fewest possible cues — a window, a counter, a tree, a floor line. No detailed perspective, no crowds, no deep background.

The drawing

• Modern flat vector. Soft, quiet, restrained. Figures slightly elongated, built from colour shapes rather than from line.
• No heavy outlines. Edges are clean colour boundaries.
• Faces reduced to almost nothing — a suggestion of features, never drawn expressions.
• Light, flat shadow only where it separates two shapes. No realistic lighting, no gradients, no 3D, no texture.

The palette

The named ground across the whole sheet, and three or four scene colours used in every panel — not one panel per colour. Low saturation throughout, with at most one warmer note appearing per panel.

Never

• ✕ figures at different heights between panels
• ✕ ground lines at different heights between panels
• ✕ a container shape softer or looser than the one named
• ✕ containers of differing width or height between rows
• ✕ titles, numbers, captions, labels, dividing rules or borders
• ✕ two panels sharing an action
• ✕ heavy black outlines, 3D, photographic light or texture
• ✕ one panel with a palette the others do not share

The result

A sheet that could be handed to a developer as a set: eight moments of one subject, drawn by one hand, standing at one height on one line — different enough to be worth eight pictures and alike enough to be worth one page.