Fur Over Every Edge
A plush creature character rendered full-length — held to the one thing that decides whether it reads as fur or as vinyl with fur printed on it: what happens where the coat meets anything hard. Six fields.
Two runs of the same template. A bookshop creature with a satchel across its chest beside a harbour one with a lantern and a knitted wrist band — indigo into oat, sea green into sand. Both coats close over every edge they meet, and both change colour one hair at a time.
Generated from this template with the fields shown above — the satchel strap crosses the chest with fibres lying over both its edges and the coat bulging where it presses, the eyes are sunk into the pile rather than resting on it, and the indigo gives way to oat by interleaving hair by hair across a wide grainy band. The second prediction I got wrong in a row: I expected the reference to render fur as a texture map inside a crisp outline, and its silhouette was in fact properly broken by stray fibres. It failed at the contacts instead. A crisp apron lay straight on the coat with a hard line, two glossy eye domes floated on the surface, and the shoes sat on top like stickers — a perfect coat on a moulded creature, because fur is defined where it meets things, not at its edge. Its colour was airbrushed underneath the pile too, which is what dyed vinyl looks like. Run-to-run quirks: the second run's ground carries a faint gradient rather than staying flat, and boots tend to read as separate objects even with fibres over their tops.
Generated for this library
Input
Creature a bookshop creature who reshelves overnight
Masses one tall rounded body, a smaller head set low on it,
thin limbs
Coat deep indigo through head and shoulders giving way to
warm oat below, interleaving across a wide band
Set into two round eyes, a leather satchel on a strap, canvas
boots
Smooth a wide matte nose and the eye domes in soft rubber
Ground warm white, seamless, one soft contact shadow
Returned 1 character · 3:4 · full length, centred, clean ground
silhouette broken all the way round by stray fibres, never a
clean outline anywhere
contact fibres lying over the eye rims, over the strap where it
crosses the chest, over the boot tops
colour indigo and oat mixing hair by hair through a wide band,
no smooth blend underneath the coat
masses two shapes readable in solid black at thumbnail size
light soft key from the front, fibres catching a rim of it,
one quiet contact shadowYou fill in 6 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1The creature, and its job
- 2The body, in masses
- 3The coat, and where its colour changes
- 4What is set into the coat
- 5The smooth parts
- 6The ground
Fur Over Every Edge
Produce ONE image, 3:4 portrait: a full-length plush creature on a clean ground. 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 creature, and its job: {what it is, and what it does} e.g. a bookshop creature who reshelves overnight
- The body, in masses: {two or three simple shapes} e.g. one tall rounded body mass, a smaller head mass set low on it, thin limbs
- The coat, and where its colour changes: {the colours, and where they meet} e.g. deep indigo through the head and shoulders giving way to warm oat over the lower body, the two interleaving across a wide band
- What is set into the coat: {eyes, garments, props — three at most} e.g. two round eyes, a soft leather satchel on a strap, and canvas boots
- The smooth parts: {which parts are not furred} e.g. a wide matte nose and the eye domes in soft rubber
- The ground: {a colour, and the shadow} e.g. warm white, seamless, one soft contact shadow
The contact law
This is the whole thing.
Fur swallows every edge it meets. Anything hard — an eye rim, a strap, a collar, a boot top, the base of a nose — is *set into* the coat, and fibres lie across its boundary. Not around it. Over it.
A reference run of this style groomed a beautiful coat with a properly broken, fibrous silhouette, and then laid a crisp apron straight onto it with a clean edge, floated two glossy eye domes on the surface, and sat the shoes on top like stickers. Every single contact point was a hard line. The coat was perfect and the creature still read as moulded, because fur is defined at its contacts, not at its outline.
So, for every object:
- Fibres cross its edge in several places, irregularly.
- The coat bulges slightly where a strap or band compresses it.
- An eye is a dome sunk into the coat with fur overlapping its rim all the way round, never a ball resting on the surface.
The silhouette
The outline is broken everywhere. Stray fibres, cowlicks, uneven tufts, a few longer hairs escaping. A clean edge anywhere along the silhouette means the fur is a surface texture on a solid shape.
Beneath that fuzz the creature is two or three simple masses — a body, a head, maybe a muzzle — readable as solid black at thumbnail size. The fuzz is the finish; the masses are the design.
The coat's colour
Colour changes at the fibre, never underneath it.
Where two colours meet, individual hairs of each colour interleave across a wide band, so the transition is grainy and irregular at the level of the strand. A smooth gradient through the coat means the body was painted and the fur laid over the top — which is exactly what it looks like.
Two colours. Three is mud.
The creature
- An animal nobody can name: rounded body, large face set low, oversized nose, wide-set eyes, slender limbs. Comic, warm, never frightening and never a human in a suit.
- Standing full length, facing forward, weight settled, one small asymmetry so it is not a mannequin.
- Three objects at most, each a different material from the others: leather, canvas, wood, enamel.
Materials
Three registers, clearly different:
- The coat: fibrous, soft, catching a rim of light along its edges.
- The smooth parts: nose and eye domes in soft matte rubber, with one small highlight each.
- The props: their own materials, none of them furred.
The frame
Seamless plain ground in the stated colour, the creature centred and filling about four fifths of the height. Soft frontal studio light, one quiet contact shadow, nothing else in view.
Never
- ✕ a clean edge where anything hard meets the coat
- ✕ a smooth gradient blended underneath the fur
- ✕ an unbroken, crisp silhouette
- ✕ a fourth prop, or a third coat colour
- ✕ a human figure, a costume, or anything frightening
- ✕ a scene, a prop on the floor, text or a watermark
The result
A creature you would want to pick up: a coat that eats the edge of everything it touches, colour that changes one hair at a time, and a shape underneath simple enough to print on a badge.
The whole template, in one piece. The steps below are the entire workflow.
How to use it
- Copy the whole template with the button above.
- Replace the six FIELDS lines. List what is *set into* the coat separately from what the coat is — that framing is what produces the contact.
- Paste it into any image-capable agent or model, in one message. One run returns the character.
- Check every hard edge before shipping: eye rims, strap edges, boot tops. If any of them is a clean line with no fibres over it, the coat is a texture and the run needs doing again.
What you swap
- The creature, and its job
- a bookshop creature who reshelves overnight
- The body, in masses
- one tall rounded body mass, a smaller head mass set low on it, thin limbs
- The coat, and where its colour changes
- deep indigo through the head and shoulders giving way to warm oat over the lower body, the two interleaving across a wide band
- What is set into the coat
- two round eyes, a soft leather satchel on a strap, and canvas boots
- The smooth parts
- a wide matte nose and the eye domes in soft rubber
- The ground
- warm white, seamless, one soft contact shadow
Before it runs
- A creature, not a person. Fur on a human figure is a costume, and the whole point here is an animal you cannot name.
- Few props. Every object added is another edge the coat has to swallow convincingly, and three is already generous.
- Two coat colours at most. A third turns the interleaving into mud.
When to reach for it
When a brand needs a creature rather than a person: a mascot, a shop character, an app's companion, a toy concept. Templates in this style specify beautiful grooming and then let every prop, eye and garment sit cleanly on top of the coat, which is what makes the result look assembled.
What changes
- One full-length creature on a clean ground, rendered as real plush with a broken, fibrous silhouette.
- Every hard object is partly buried in the coat — fibres crossing the rim of each eye, each strap, each shoe — which is the difference between fur and a fur texture.
- Colour changes carried by the hairs themselves, interleaving across a band, rather than airbrushed underneath them.
- A silhouette built from two or three simple masses, so the character survives being small.
- Three material registers — coat, smooth parts, props — so the creature reads as made rather than moulded.
Pairs with
- Hands Out of FrameA soft 3D character portrait in the art-toy idiom — built around choosing a pose that cannot go wrong, because the one thing these renders always break is named and never solved. Six fields.
- Every Control Says Where It IsA hyper-skeuomorphic app icon of a real device, front-on — with every control carrying an indicator and every indicator agreeing about what state the thing is in. Five fields.
- One Subject, Three SignsA soft-3D app icon on white — one object and exactly three signs around it, counted strictly, with one accent colour and a silhouette that survives being small. Six fields.