cardstock-diorama-myth

Cardstock Diorama Myth Animation

A Claude Code / Claude.ai skill that turns a single request — a myth, a premise, or nothing at all — into a finished, narrated mythic short film in a layered cut-paper diorama style: stacked matte cardstock worlds, a strict three-colour palette, exposure that swings, paper-wipe transitions hiding every seam, a storyteller's voiceover, and one assembled MP4.

Built for the Unsora MCP — all generation runs on Unsora (create_image, create_video, create_voiceover), and assembly runs locally with ffmpeg, giving full control over block windows, voiceover placement, and the mix.

What it makes

Animation-movie storytelling, not an explainer: gods, monsters, heroes, folklore, origin myths and transformations, told in ten-second story beats. The signature look:

• Flat matte cardstock worlds with visible cut edges and soft contact shadows
• A strict three-colour palette and no others, with deliberate exposure swings
• A tiny figure dead-centre of a huge symmetrical set; a top-down concentric "ring" hero shot
• Scenes joined by invisible paper wipes, native paper foley and impact SFX
• A mythic narrator (~12–18 words per block, some blocks deliberately silent)
• Ends by landing on a face

The look is treated as a specification, not a vibe — palette, exposure and pacing are numbers, stated in the prompt and then measured against the output with the bundled QC script.

When to use it

Ask for a myth, legend, fable, folktale or fairy-tale short; a cut-paper / papercraft animated story; "tell the story of X" as a video; or say "run the cardstock diorama myth animation" — the skill can propose myths itself.

Not for fact-driven explainers with charts and statistics.

Pipeline

Defaults: 16:9, 1 minute (6 blocks; 8–12 recommended for a real arc), 720p, English narration, no subtitles, no music — seedance's native paper foley carries the sound.

Requirements

• Unsora MCP connected and authenticated (create_image, create_video, create_voiceover, list_voiceover_voices, and the matching wait_for_* pollers)
• Local ffmpeg and ffprobe — not optional; they are the assembler
• Web search for the lore pass on real traditions
• Recommended: python3 with numpy, pillow, scikit-learn and curl for the automated QC pass

Install

Place the skill folder in your Claude Code skills directory:

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
git clone https://github.com/sadekxD/cardstock-diorama-myth.git ~/.claude/skills/cardstock-diorama-myth-animation

Then invoke it from Claude Code, e.g. "Tell the story of Icarus as a cut-paper short" or "run the cardstock diorama myth animation".

Repository contents

• SKILL.md — the complete skill definition: operating mode, story engine, narration rules, paper-wipe joins, the full phase-by-phase pipeline, failure handling, and delivery format
• references/style-dna.md — the full cardstock visual system: paper logic, exposure swing, camera and motion vocabulary, the style-key prompt, the block-prompt template, and the per-block checklist
• references/palette.md — the palette maths, five tested palettes plus one documented failure, and palette-by-myth-world guidance
• references/unsora.md — exact Unsora call templates for every phase, the job/polling model, moderation and IP map, cost arithmetic, and every ffmpeg command for the assembly
• scripts/qc.py — measures frames and clips against the palette, exposure and wipe targets
• scripts/palette.py — solves a new three-colour palette at the right luma values