Half In, Half Out
A soft-3D character coming out of a screen — with the crossing proved: named parts behind the plane, named parts through it, and the surface visibly giving way. Five fields.
Two runs of the same template. The same three proofs through a porthole: the trailing boot and the far hand read through the glass, the edge clips shoulder and hip with the body continuing beyond, and concentric rings radiate from the crossing point. One divergence in style rather than structure - this run rendered much closer to photoreal than the matt, thick, simplified soft-3D the template asks for, particularly in the oilskin and the lantern.
All three proofs are present and you can point at each: the back foot is inside the screen, cooler and dimmed behind the glass; the screen edge cuts the shoulder cleanly and the torso continues correctly on the far side; and a swirling vortex with glass shards marks where the hip pushes through. The reference run had none of them - its character stood entirely in front of an intact, perfectly flat phone with interface cards floating nearby that had not come out of anything. The two tiles here leave through the same opening, tumbling, at different depths.
Generated for this library
Input
Frame an oversized phone at a slight angle, filling the
left half
Character a young person in a mint cardigan, mid-leap
toward the viewer, holding a cup out at arm's
length
Depths behind: back foot and trailing cardigan edge,
dimmed by the glass · crossing: left shoulder and
hip, clipped by the screen edge · in front: the
cup, the arm, the leading knee
Screen a soft app grid on pale blue - a coffee card and
a music tile lift off and follow them out
Setting a sunlit tram street with blossom, thrown soft -
cream, mint, pale blue, warm gold
Returned 1 poster · 3:5 · soft 3D, warm light
behind the back foot readable through the glass, cooler
and lower in contrast than the rest of them
crossing the screen edge cutting the shoulder cleanly, the
torso continuing on the far side
surface the glass bulging and rippling outward where the
hip passes through it
escape both tiles leaving through the same opening, on
the same trajectory, tumbling as they come
depth the street held well behind the phone, soft and
unbrokenYou fill in 5 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1The frame it comes out of
- 2The character, and what they are doing
- 3What is behind the plane, what crosses it, what is in front
- 4What the screen shows, and what escapes with them
- 5The setting and palette
Half In, Half Out
Produce ONE image, 3:5 portrait: a soft-3D character coming out through the screen of a device. 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 five lines only
- The frame it comes out of: {a device, and where it sits}
- The character, and what they are doing: {who, and an action toward the viewer}
- What is behind the plane, what crosses it, what is in front: {named parts, for each of the three}
- What the screen shows, and what escapes with them: {an interface, and one or two pieces}
- The setting and palette: {a place, and four or five colours}
The crossing law
The whole idea is that something is coming through a surface. It fails whenever the character is simply placed in front of an intact device, however energetic the pose.
The crossing is proved three ways, and all three are required:
- Something is behind the plane. The fields name the parts. They are visible *through* the screen — cooler, dimmer, lower in contrast, slightly veiled by the glass.
- Something is clipped by the plane. The fields name the parts. The edge of the screen cuts them cleanly, and the same body continues on the other side, correctly aligned.
- The surface gives way. Where the body passes through, the screen is no longer flat: it bulges outward, ripples in rings from the crossing point, or breaks into shards that are still leaving.
A reference run of this style drew a lovely character mid-leap with a giant phone behind her. Every part of her was in front of it. The screen was perfectly intact and perfectly flat. Interface cards floated nearby without having come out of anything. Nothing in the picture had crossed anything.
Ask what is behind the glass. If nothing is, the picture is a person standing in front of a phone.
What escapes
The interface pieces the fields name come out through the same opening the character does:
- on the same trajectory, moving in the same direction
- tumbling and foreshortened, at a range of depths, not floating flat and face-on
- nearest ones large and soft-focused, further ones small and sharp
- none of them in front of the character's face
They are made of the same soft material as everything else — rounded, matt, thick-edged. Not screenshots.
The plane
- The device is at an angle, so the screen is a plane in space with real perspective, not a rectangle parallel to the picture.
- The screen edge is hard and sharp where it clips, however soft everything else is. That crisp cut is what sells the depth.
- Where the surface deforms, the interface deforms with it — the app grid stretches over the bulge and bends into the ripple.
Depth and light
- Three ranges: the character in front, the device in the middle, the setting behind — and the setting stays fully behind the device and softly out of focus. Nothing in the background breaks forward.
- One warm key light, low and from behind, so the character is rim-lit and the air catches it.
- Shallow depth of field: the leading hand slightly soft, the face sharp, the street dissolved.
Style
- Soft 3D: rounded forms, matt surfaces, thick simplified shapes, gentle subsurface warmth. Nothing photographic, nothing hard-edged except the screen cut.
- The palette from the fields, high-key and warm throughout.
- Small floating particles — petals, motes, light flecks — only in the space the character has moved through.
- No text anywhere.
Never
- ✕ a character entirely in front of the device
- ✕ an intact, undeformed screen surface
- ✕ nothing visible behind the glass
- ✕ a body clipped by the edge but not continuing correctly beyond it
- ✕ interface pieces floating flat, face-on, or not from the opening
- ✕ background elements coming forward past the device
- ✕ the device parallel to the picture plane
- ✕ text, labels or real app names
The result
An emergence you can verify: a foot still behind the glass, a shoulder cut by its edge, a hip pushing the surface out of shape, and two interface tiles tumbling out through the same hole.
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 five FIELDS lines. The third is the skill — name actual body parts for each of the three depths, not a general description.
- Paste it into any image-capable agent or model, in one message. One run returns the poster.
- Ask what is behind the glass before shipping. If the answer is nothing, the character is standing in front of a phone.
What you swap
- The frame it comes out of
- an oversized phone standing at a slight angle, filling the left half of the frame
- The character, and what they are doing
- a young person in a mint cardigan, mid-leap toward the viewer, holding a takeaway cup out at arm's length
- What is behind the plane, what crosses it, what is in front
- behind: their back foot and the trailing edge of the cardigan, dimmed by the glass · crossing: their left shoulder and hip, clipped hard by the screen's edge · in front: the cup, the outstretched arm, the leading knee
- What the screen shows, and what escapes with them
- a soft app grid on pale blue — a coffee card and a music tile lift off it and follow them out through the same opening
- The setting and palette
- a sunlit tram street with cherry blossom, thrown soft — cream, mint, pale blue, warm gold
Before it runs
- A body position with real depth. A figure standing square has no part that can plausibly be behind anything.
- A device big enough to clip a torso. If the screen is smaller than the character, there is nothing for them to be half inside of.
- Willingness to hide part of your character. The parts you lose behind the glass are what make the rest of them convincing.
When to reach for it
App launches, campaign keys, product stories, anything that wants a character escaping a device. Templates in this style return a figure standing neatly in front of an intact phone with UI cards floating nearby, which is a poster of a phone and a person, not an emergence.
What changes
- One warm soft-3D scene: a large device at an angle and a character coming through its screen.
- The crossing proved by occlusion in both directions — parts of the figure behind the plane, parts in front, and a limb clipped by the edge.
- A screen surface that gives way where the figure passes through it, rather than staying a flat sheet.
- Interface pieces that leave the screen through the same opening, in the same direction, at the same depths.
- A background that stays behind the device, so there is only one thing breaking out.
Pairs with
- Follow the Tube All the WayA glowing 3D knot poster — one tube of constant diameter, with every crossing assigned an over and an under, so the form can actually be traced. Five fields.
- Bolted to the SkyA mascot built as real signage — a face on a plate, one wider name plate under it, and visible hardware holding both to the pole. Six fields.
- Cut, Not FilledA copperplate-engraved city poster in one ink — where every tone is line density, nothing on the page is a flat fill, and the bare paper is a shape rather than a margin. Six fields.