Nothing Leaves the Shape
A whole landscape built inside one silhouette on bare ground — with the container closed, so the shape still reads as itself from across a room. Five fields.
Two runs of the same template. The same law on a whale, tail to the left as asked. Masts and a crane jib come close to the outline and none of them cross it. The divergence between the runs is style rather than structure: this one is noticeably more rendered - modelled cloud, textured stone, painted water - where the first stayed flat. The template says flat vector, and this run treated that as a starting point.
One closed turtle, ground empty to all four edges, and no eye drawn on it to explain what it is - the head, flippers and shell are carried entirely by the edge. The reference run of this style grew a cupped hand, a wave ribbon and a sprig of leaves out of its silhouette, which put four holes in the only thing holding the picture together. One divergence: the field asked for the head to the right and the run mirrored it. The second turtle underwater is mine, not a slip - the fields put it there.
Generated for this library
Input
Theme protecting a coastline
Container a sea turtle, seen from the side
Inside high up: open sky, gulls, wind turbines out at
sea · middle: a curving shore, dunes with marram
grass, a white lighthouse, low houses · below:
shallow water, eelgrass, a second turtle, wading
birds, a reef
Palette turquoise, deep teal, sand, warm green, white
Ground flat bone white, completely empty
Returned 1 illustration · 2:3 · flat vector on bare paper
shape the turtle readable as a turtle at a squint - head,
flippers and shell carried entirely by the edge
closure the outline unbroken; no flipper, wave or branch
growing past it
inside three bands, horizon lines continuous across the
whole width of the shape
ground bone white and empty to all four edges
detail nothing drawn inside the silhouette to explain what
the silhouette isYou fill in 5 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1The theme
- 2The container — one thing, nameable in a word
- 3What is inside, from the top down
- 4The palette
- 5The ground
Nothing Leaves the Shape
Produce ONE image, 2:3 portrait: a complete landscape built inside a single silhouette on bare 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 five lines only
- The theme: {what this is about}
- The container — one thing, nameable in a word: {a shape}
- What is inside, from the top down: {high up · through the middle · below}
- The palette: {four or five colours}
- The ground: {one flat colour}
The closure law
The silhouette is the picture. Everything else is filling. And the way this format fails is not by drawing the inside badly — it is by letting the inside get out.
The outline is one closed shape and nothing crosses it.
- No element inside grows past the edge. Not a branch, not a wave, not a hand, not a bird.
- No element outside touches the shape. The ground is empty to all four edges of the image.
- There is no second shape. One container, not a container plus a ribbon plus a spray of leaves.
A reference run of this style built a fine coastal scene inside a head-and-shoulders profile — and then grew a cupped hand out of the lower right holding coral, ran a wave ribbon out of the lower left, and put a sprig of leaves in the corner. Four holes in the one thing that made it a picture. The outer shape stopped being nameable and became a blob with a good illustration in it.
Squint at the result. If you cannot say what the shape is in one word, it has failed, and no amount of detail inside will fix it.
The edge law
The outline does all the identifying. What makes it a turtle, a whale, a mountain, a bottle is the boundary against the ground and nothing else.
- No features drawn inside the shape to explain it. No eye, no brow, no mouth, no nostril, no ear. If a face needs an eye drawn on to read as a face, the profile is wrong — fix the profile.
- Nothing is outlined, stroked or keylined. The shape is defined by where the colour stops.
- The edge is clean and deliberate at every point, including the fiddly parts. A silhouette is judged at its most complicated corner.
Inside
The interior is a continuous scene, not a collage.
- Bands, top to bottom, as the fields give them: distance and sky high up, the main subject through the middle, what is underfoot or underwater below.
- Horizon lines run the full width of the shape and meet its edge on both sides. This is what makes it a world rather than a pile.
- Things overlap and sit in front of each other. Scale decreases with distance.
- No floating icons, no symbols dropped in, no repeated motif used as wallpaper.
Style
- Flat vector. Clean shapes, no outlines, no rendering.
- Colour does the depth: paler and cooler with distance, more saturated up close.
- Soft gradients within a band are fine. No texture, no grain, no photographic elements, no 3D.
- The palette from the fields, and nothing outside it.
Ground
One flat colour, completely empty, running to all four edges. No texture, no vignette, no shadow under the shape, no glow behind it.
Never
- ✕ anything crossing the outline, in either direction
- ✕ anything at all on the bare ground
- ✕ a second shape, ribbon, banner or spray of decoration
- ✕ eyes, mouths or features drawn inside the silhouette
- ✕ a keyline or stroke around the shape
- ✕ a drop shadow or glow behind it
- ✕ scattered icons instead of a continuous scene
- ✕ a horizon that stops before the edge of the shape
- ✕ text of any kind
The result
One shape you can name from across a room, holding a whole world that never once tries to get out of it.
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. Describe the interior top-down in bands — that ordering is what stops it becoming a pile of icons.
- Paste it into any image-capable agent or model, in one message. One run returns the illustration.
- Squint at it before shipping. If you cannot name the outer shape in one word, or anything at all is sitting on the bare ground, the container has failed.
What you swap
- The theme
- protecting a coastline
- The container — one thing, nameable in a word
- a sea turtle, seen from the side
- What is inside, from the top down
- high up: an open sky with gulls and a line of wind turbines out at sea · through the middle: a curving shore, dunes with marram grass, a small white lighthouse, low houses · below: shallow water with eelgrass, a second turtle, wading birds and a reef
- The palette
- turquoise, deep teal, sand, warm green, white — on bare paper
- The ground
- flat bone white, completely empty
Before it runs
- A shape with a strong outline. Anything you can recognise as a black shape on a wall works; anything that needs a drawn detail to be identified does not.
- A scene that fits the shape's proportions. A tall thin container cannot hold a wide horizon, and forcing it is what makes things spill out.
- The discipline to leave the ground empty. Every element you add outside the shape costs you the silhouette.
When to reach for it
Campaigns with a cause behind them, conference keys, report covers, anything where a subject has to feel like a world. Templates in this style ask for a silhouette used as a container and then let the scene grow a hand, a wave and a branch outside it, which puts holes in the only thing holding the picture together.
What changes
- One closed silhouette on bare ground, filling most of the frame, holding a complete landscape.
- Nothing crossing the outline in either direction — the ground stays empty, the world stays in.
- The shape identified by its edge alone, with no features drawn inside to explain what it is.
- The interior organised in bands — distance above, the subject in the middle, underfoot below — rather than scattered as icons.
- A silhouette you can name in one word while squinting, which is the test the format lives or dies by.
Pairs with
- Every Path ArrivesA full-bleed storybook world you can actually travel through — every route joining two named places, and three sizes of thing so the eye lands before it wanders. Five fields.
- Nothing Glows AloneA neon-lit night scene on near-black, where every light source is named with what it lights — so the colour lands on surfaces instead of floating as bright shapes. Five fields.
- One Pen, Not FiveA black-ink event poster on white — a scribbled scene, a fat brush headline, asides in the margins — with the tool count fixed so it reads as one hand. Six fields.