The Storybook Cover

The Storybook Cover

Produce ONE image: a portrait coloured-pencil cover with a cast hero, in the fixed style world below. Follow every line. Replace only the FIELDS block; the style itself is not negotiable.

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 purpose: {what this cover fronts} e.g. an AI design studio's keepsake portfolio cover
• The scene, upper and lower: {above · below, each named concretely} e.g. above: a deep-indigo night sky with tiny stars and pale cloud ribbons over a meadow of softly glowing cursor-flowers, misty rounded hills far off, a few warm paper lanterns drifting · below: a mossy path with small glowing tufts
• The hero: {one chibi figure — hair, clothes, prop, posture, gaze} e.g. a chibi designer with soft tousled hair and round glasses, in an oversized lavender hoodie, kneeling on the path, holding up a gently glowing play-wedge lantern, gaze on the lantern
• The tiny companions: {three to five small drifting things} e.g. three pixel fireflies · two drifting easing-curve ribbons
• Title + year: {the title · the small year and where it sits} e.g. Design Works · 2026 at its shoulder
• The signature: {a name and its corner} e.g. vibary.ai, lower left

Draw exactly this hero and no other figure. Print only these words. The style may not invent a character, a companion or a slogan.

The style world — fixed

• Portrait 2:3, drawn as coloured pencil on rough watercolour paper — visible tooth and layered-stroke grain throughout — and framed by an uneven cream torn-paper border on all four sides.
• The scene layers: the upper roughly two-thirds carries the named sky-and-world; the lower third carries the named ground. Distances blur toward low saturation; the named sky things drift small and light. Colours stay soft and breathable — nothing sharp, nothing loud.
• The hero stands or kneels just below the middle, about a quarter of the page tall, drawn chibi-soft with a simple kind face, wearing and holding exactly what the fields say, posed and gazing as cast.
• The companions — only the named ones — float within reach of the hero, none larger than half the hero's head.
• The title sits in the upper zone in a round, blunt, childlike hand with pencil-fuzzy edges, in a deep low-sat colour that belongs to the scene, spanning about a third of the width. The year notes small at its shoulder; the signature writes smaller still at its named corner.
• Colour law: at most four low-saturation colours plus the cream border; shadows are flat, one shade deeper in the same hue; no realistic lighting, no hard-edged blocks, no gradients beyond pencil blending.

Every cover must

• ✓ cast exactly the described hero, companions and words
• ✓ keep the two-layer scene split and the torn border
• ✓ hold the pencil grain — paper tooth visible everywhere
• ✓ stay within four soft colours and flat same-hue shadows
• ✓ read as kind — nothing sharp, nothing rushed

Never

• ✕ a second figure, a crowd, or an invented face
• ✕ realistic light, hard shadows, or high saturation
• ✕ digital-clean edges — every stroke keeps its fuzz
• ✕ companions grown into subjects
• ✕ words beyond title, year and signature

The result

A cover that opens like a story already underway: your small hero holding their light in a world drawn soft, the title written the way a favourite book remembers itself.