Papercraft Stop-Motion Explainer

Read the portable workflow. For scene/prompt planning read paper staging. Route a single image prompt, image series, short animation prompt, or storyboard request directly to that artifact; do not force a full film workflow.

Knowledge and direction

Identify the exact topic, source facts, audience, desired learning outcome, and output type. Preserve technical terms and causal meaning. A visual metaphor helps explain a mechanism; it must not turn into a false scientific claim.

Reuse requested duration and ratio. If unspecified, a 30-second, 16:9 general-audience concept is a reasonable starting point. Offer distinct directions only when useful: pop-up-book journey, paper laboratory, layered cross-section, miniature nature theater, or mechanism board. Each should identify one learning outcome, a paper mechanism that conveys it, and the signature visual moment.

Build the paper world

Design characters only if they help the explanation. Specify paper construction, silhouette, joint/hinge design, replaceable facial parts, gestures, and repeatable identity cues. Keep the central knowledge object readable.

Plan foreground occluders, midground mechanism, background scenery, and a distant paper plane when the shot benefits from depth. Record each layer's material, thickness, cut/fold edges, shadow, movement, and educational role. Use real paper mechanics such as pull-tabs, sliders, rotating discs, page folds, and pinned joints. Motion is stepped with small pauses and rebounds, not a smooth CG melt.

Create an asset list by function: characters, scientific objects, information cards, environment, and moving mechanisms. For a complete production, prepare one to three preview briefs or images when useful and authorized. Respect any preview approval requested by the user; otherwise continue under the existing end-to-end scope.

Prompts and timeline

Write a compact storyboard with columns: time, knowledge beat, visual action, paper movement, camera/transition, sound cue. Each shot explains one knowledge step, with a readable pause for a necessary label. Keep ratio, material, light direction, identity, and domain vocabulary consistent across image-series prompts.

For a short image-to-video prompt, begin from the actual image and animate a few paper mechanisms with restrained push-in or lateral parallax. Preserve thickness, cut edges, texture, and layer shadows. Compile final rendering prompts using the bundled H3 mode guide, with truthful references and local clip timing.

Sound, generation, and review

Map paper flips, cardboard slides, joint taps, soft pops, and rustles to actual motion. Match any requested music to the topic and cultural context rather than automatically using the same whimsical score. Keep speech intelligible. If narration is requested, preserve its approved wording, measure its duration, and adjust the timeline or script within the user's scope; do not silently speed up the voice.

Use available generation/editing tools, then inspect both educational accuracy and paper construction: readable mechanism, separate layers/shadows, hinged or stepped motion, plausible camera movement, and a clear ending takeaway. Check narration tails, clicks, audio gaps, and music balance. Deliver requested artifacts and state missing rendering capabilities or unresolved scientific/visual issues.