Halftone Dossier — Style Prompt

A retro print case file: cream archive paper, overprinted halftone dots in a few flat inks, huge heavy headlines with misregistered shadows, rubber stamps that slam, and thick-outlined characters. The film is a file that is read out one exhibit at a time. References (grammar only, never copy): Ben-Day-dot pop-art printing (Roy Lichtenstein era comics) for dot density as shading; riso/offset overprint zines for multiply layers and misregistration; police mugshot height charts and case-file folders for the framing device; Japanese variety-show telop captions for the keyword-highlight caption bar.

1. Essence, and what it is not

• The whole film is paper. A warm cream sheet with low-frequency mottling, fine grain, a vignette and a fold; dark scenes are printed on it too, never glowing.
• Shading is never a gradient: it is halftone dots whose size follows a density field. Two or three dot layers at different screen angles overprint (multiply); that is the "printed" feel.
• Bureaucratic apparatus: case numbers, file chips, numbered exhibits, height charts, name plates, stamps. Their seriousness is the frame; the subject can be grave or trivial.
• Loud but readable: one idea per 2–4 s card, one big headline, one visual gag or exhibit, one caption line.

Not Risograph (no grainy two-ink riso texture as the whole look, no zine collage), not Swiss motion (no grid-driven kinetic type on white), not Rhythm Game Show (no candy sets, no rhythm-game rounds). Dots, paper and stamps must be visible in every frame.

2. Materials & rendering

• Paper layer (canvas, multiply over everything, built once): an upscaled random tile for mottling, per-pixel noise with a slight warm bias, a radial vignette, a faint centre fold.
• Grain layer (per frame): a few hundred paper-coloured specks and fewer ink specks, reseeded every 2 frames: dust on the print, not film grain.
• Halftone: a rotated grid of circles drawn as one path; step 20–26 px; screen angle different per layer; radius = density × step × k with k 0.6–0.72 (around 0.7 dots merge into solid ink). Density fields: radial (halos, blooms, corner glows), edge (dots crowding the frame border), linear ramps ("lit from above"). The second layer is multiplied so inks overprint.
• Halftone-filled numerals and shapes: a flat fill overprinted with a darker halftone clipped to the glyph; giant numerals may bleed off the frame.
• Line boil: turbulence displacement (small, ~5 px) reseeded ~10×/s plus a fine ink-grain mask that eats a little of every fill. Characters and hand-drawn props only; never on text, halftone, HUD or captions.
• Characters: chunky shapes with a heavy ink outline (~7 px), flat fills, a lighter belly or face area, glossy eyes (ink ellipse + two highlights) that can squint, blink or close into a happy arc. One head rig shared by all body poses.
• Stamps: a double rounded rectangle and bold text through a coarse ink-grain + displacement filter so edges are rough and the ink mottled; ~93 % opacity, tilted ±10°.
• Props: starbursts, speech bubbles, confetti, radial rays, sticky notes, folders, clocks: all flat fill + ink outline.

3. Colour logic

• A paper ground, one dark ink, and four or five flat spot inks. The dark ink (navy, black-brown or deep green) carries every outline, body text and the caption bar, and is the fade-out colour.
• One ink is the overprint shadow colour (misregistration offsets, caption shadows); one is the highlight for keywords and numerals; one warm red is reserved for stamps and alarms.
• Flat inks only. No gradients, no transparency ramps; tone comes from dot size and overprint.
• Night or "secret" scenes switch to a dark ink ground with a lighter dot layer of the same family, still multiplied by the paper.
• Characters may own one or two local colours (fur, clothing) that appear nowhere else.
• Example palettes: cream / navy / cobalt / hot pink / yellow / red; manila / sepia-black / teal / mustard / vermilion; off-white / forest green / tomato / sky / ochre.

4. Type & subtitles

• Headlines: a black-weight serif (e.g. Noto Serif SC 900 for CJK; a black slab for Latin), 100–230 px, left-aligned near the margin, with a misregistration shadow (+8/+8 px in the overprint ink, multiplied).
• Display / numerals: a fat rounded display face (e.g. Bagel Fat One) for names, big numbers, times.
• Interjections: a playful hand face (e.g. ZCOOL KuaiLe), paper fill with a thick ink stroke and an offset shadow.
• Data / HUD: a heavy monospace (e.g. JetBrains Mono 800) for case numbers, dates, rulers, file names.
• Captions and stamps: a black-weight sans.
• Cards are the subtitles. A headline per beat, plus a caption bar: a dark-ink rounded pill with an overprint-ink offset shadow, paper-coloured text, the keyword in the highlight ink. It pops in after the headline and holds ≥ max(1.8 s, speech + 0.6 s). With narration, the caption bar carries the spoken line.
• HUD: case number and a chapter chip top-left, a status (REC dot, date) top-right; colours invert on dark scenes.
• Latin runs 2–3× longer than CJK: smaller headlines, 1–2-word stamps (GUILTY, CLOSED), a tighter per-character stagger.

5. Motion quality

• 30 fps transforms; line boil at ~10 fps on characters, so the drawing breathes while positions stay smooth.
• Everything enters with overshoot (back ease, 0.3–0.45 s): rising from below the frame or scaling from 0. Nothing fades in.
• Per-character pop for headlines: each glyph drops 30–100 px and squashes in, stagger 0.05–0.08 s (0.02 s for small text).
• Stamp slam: ~0.09 s from ~2.6× to 1× (ease-in), then a small damped bounce; camera shake, flash and stamp sound on the same frame.
• Squash landings preserve volume (scale(1/sq, sq) with a damped cosine).
• Idle life: breathing, tail or hair sway, blinks at scripted times, twinkles, a blinking REC dot or clock colon.
• Dot wipe transitions: a coarse grid of circles grows to full cover and shrinks back (~0.44 s) with a diagonal delay; the scene switches while covered. Each cut may take its own wipe colour. A hard cut is the contrast tool, on a big hit.

6. Camera grammar

A 2D camera group over a flat, frontal page. A vocabulary, not a route. Opening and ending come from the topic.

Compose like a printed page: headline top-left, subject right-centre, caption bar bottom-centre, HUD in the corners. Transitions: dot wipe or hard cut; no dissolves.

7. Sound palette

• Synth pop-print toolkit: synth kick, snare, clap, hat; a square-ish 8th-note bass; triangle pad; a marimba-like pluck (fundamental + ~4× partial) for melody; pizzicato and finger snaps for sneaking; music-box bell for tenderness.
• Foley follows the print and the gag: stamp = pitch-dropping boom + click (a crackle for big ones), camera shutter, paper slides and folder flaps, typewriter or keyboard clicks, whooshes into wipes, pops on every glyph, boings and plops for characters, glass or ceramic for breakables, synthesized animal or creature voices (formant sweeps).
• Silence before the stamp: empty the music just before a verdict so the stamp lands alone. Other options: a snare roll + rising sweep into a reveal; stripping to bass and snaps for a secret scene; a bell arpeggio as a tag; a single sustained pad under a sad exhibit.
• Voice is optional; cards carry the film. If narrated: a dry, deadpan report voice, never breathless.
• Mix: SFX ahead of the music on impacts, soft-clip master, −14 LUFS, true peak ≤ −1 dB.

8. Native moves

A menu: use the ones your story needs.

• The accusation frame. A topic becomes "the case of X": list its counts. Fits content like: a cognitive bias on trial; a city's traffic problem; a plant that won't stop growing.
• Numbered exhibits. Each beat gets a giant halftone numeral behind it. Fits content like: five causes of a blackout; three clauses of a contract; the stages of a recall.
• The stamp. A verdict is a physical slam. Fits content like: APPROVED on a grant; EXPIRED on a policy; VERIFIED on a rumour check.
• The mugshot. Frontal subject, height chart, name plate, flash. Fits content like: a new species; a product teardown; the "suspect" in a bug report.
• Evidence board. Exhibits pinned and linked with string, then shaken. Fits content like: a supply chain; a family tree; a heist's timeline.
• Dot density = emotion. Dots swell into a halo, crowd the edges for tension, bloom radially for joy. Fits content like: a record broken; a deadline closing in; a reunion.
• Redaction. Black bars print over words and lift one by one. Fits content like: a leaked memo; a surprise party plan; spoilers.

9. Pitfalls of the medium

• Fonts not loaded before layout → per-character positions computed with a fallback font, glyphs overlap. Preload every family against the whole page source and the built text; runtime strings must use only characters that appear in the file. Use font-display: block.
• Boil on text or dots turns them to mush → filter only characters and props.
• Clip-path ids are global → every clipped numeral needs a unique id.
• Time-windowed scenes → an element invisible before its cue needs explicit opacity 0 for t < t0.
• A dot wipe short of full coverage at the cut shows the hard switch; make the max radius cover the grid cell's diagonal.
• A 100 % white flash reads as a dropped frame → cap at ~0.5.
• Dots too small (< ~14 px step at 1080p) alias into moiré after encoding.
• Too many inks lose the print feel → at most five plus paper.

10. Engine

Everything lives in demo/index.html: helpers (el, txt, tf, seg, easings, measure), per-character text (chars + charsPop), halftone (halftone() with radial/edge density fields), caption() bar, stamp (stampEl + stampAnim), a mascot rig with a setFace interface, scene(t0, t1, build), HUD chips, dot wipe (WIPES), paper + grain (buildPaper, drawFx), render(t). demo/render.mjs renders stills and video; demo/music.py synthesizes score and SFX. Line ranges and a minimal scene: DEMO.md.

11. Variation space

You decide what the file is about, its counts or exhibits, the characters (or none), the inks within the colour logic, the tone (farce or grave), the opening, the ending and the length (it grows with the number of exhibits; each needs time to be read).

All far from our demo:

• Structures: a declassified report whose pages are unredacted one by one until the real story shows; a missing-person file that works backwards from the last sighting; an insurance claim where each exhibit contradicts the claimant's statement.
• Openings: the evidence bag (one object on a dark ink ground, the file assembles around it); a fingerprint in huge dots that resolves into a face as we pull back; the phone call (a caption bar alone on paper, the file drops in after).
• Endings: the file goes into a drawer full of identical files; a redacted final page (the answer stays blacked out); the stamp misses (it lands on the table, the subject walks free out of frame).

How our demo was made (story, shots, score, end card, build): DEMO.md. Read it after your treatment exists.