Silkscreen Travel Poster — Style Prompt

Opaque, hard-edged flat inks pulled one colour at a time through a screen: 4–6 inks per poster, stepped colour bands instead of gradients, thin paper-white gaps where the registration slips. Information is revealed the way the print is made: one layer, one beat. References (grammar only): - 1930s–40s WPA national-park screen prints: 4–6 flat inks, lit and shade faces, stepped-band skies, a dark information band, concentric sun rings. - Fifty-Nine Parks (contemporary): restraint, paper as a colour, a series on one template with a new palette per poster. - The physical process: hinged screen, squeegee pushing an ink bead across mesh, split-fountain pulls, drag streaks, pinholes, off-register slivers.

Never copy a real poster's composition, park name, lettering or logo, and never name a real agency.

A scene style: it does a practical job (a guide, an event poster, a destination series) for any place, event or product with a few facts. See §11 for the jobs.

1. Essence, and what it is not

A poster being printed on camera. Every colour is an opaque ink laid by its own pull; later ink covers earlier ink completely. No halftone, no fluorescent ink, no line work: a shape's edge is where one flat ink stops. Gradients are forbidden: skies and haze are stepped bands (a flat colour, thinning stripes, the next colour).

What makes it read as silkscreen and not as flat vector art: - Registration: every layer offset 1–3 px at 1080p; a knocked-out shape leaves a crescent of bare paper. - Overprint edge: a faint multiply ghost ~2 u off under each ink, leaving a darker sliver where ink laps over ink. - Ink thickness: a light rim top-left, a dark rim bottom-right, fills only; fresh ink has a wet sheen that fades within a second. - Paper: cream stock with fibres; mottle and pinholes in paper colour, visible only on ink.

Not risograph (translucent fluorescent overprint with halftone grain), not ukiyo-e (key-block line work with bokashi), not woodcut (carved line), not low-poly (3D facets). This style is opaque, line-free, flat and banded.

2. Materials & rendering

• One Path2D per ink layer, filled in the current transform's units; knock-outs are holes in the path. Any shape can be printed.
• Pull reveal: a ragged squeegee front as a clip (a ~30 u drag tail); blade, bead and a sliver of handle ride on it.
• Ink bead: a round tube with lit half, dark underside, rolling glints and viscous strands; a split fountain puts several colours in one bead.
• Screen: a hinged frame with mesh, emulsion and tape; its shadow is a ring (even-odd), never a full rectangle.
• Shapes: ridges with a jagged lit facet, pines as one outline of drooping tiers, water as a flat body with glint bars. Hard edges everywhere.
• Poster templates: a portrait sheet (1000×1500 u: paper border, art area, a dark info band at the foot holding a name, a number, a rule and a row of stats; columns sized by content), or a full-bleed print (16:9, art to every edge, the name printed into the sky, a dark info panel such as a ticket stub printed last). In a full-bleed film the camera stays inside the print.
• Texture budget: fine paper tile, mottle multiply ~55 %, pinholes ~75 %, light encode grain. More reads as risograph.

3. Colour logic

• One palette per poster, ≤ 6 inks, assigned by role: light sky, deep sky / bands, far, mid, near (darkest; also the info band), and one bright accent (sun, route, highlights, key number). An optional lit-face ink.
• Values step from far (light) to near (dark); depth is value, never blur.
• The accent is rare: the sun or light source, the one route or product, the most important number.
• Paper is a colour: an unprinted area is the brightest thing on the sheet (water, snow, a beam of light).
• A series = one template, a new palette per item (time of day, season, colourway, neighbourhood). Re-inking the same geometry in another palette is a statement.
• Text inks are chosen by contrast against the ink underneath (WCAG), never by a fixed key; a night palette must not swallow a header.
• Examples (sky1 → near, accent): dawn #F6CD98 #EE9A73 #9A7FA8 #3E7079 #1E3B3F #FBE6B4; harbour noon #E8F0F2 #7FB3C8 #D9C7A3 #2F6E8E #173247 #E8553D; winter #EEF1F4 #B8C9D9 #8B9BB0 #4A5D78 #1F2A3C #F2B134.

4. Type & subtitles

• Condensed display for names and values (e.g. Big Shoulders Display, League Gothic), auto-fit; a geometric sans for letter-spaced labels (e.g. Outfit 600).
• Headers are printed into the sky, tracked out; the info band is printed last.
• The poster text is the subtitle. No narration is needed; if there is a voice, subtitles are a printed strip (a band pull), never a floating caption.
• Reading rule: each text stays ≥ chars/12 + 1 s (min 1.5 s) after its last item lands, and ≥ max(1.8 s, speech + 0.6 s) with a voice. Compute it from the content, round up to the beat.
• On a wall shot, labels stay ≥ ~18 px and values ≥ ~30 px at 1080p; close-ups on a band keep the whole band in frame with ≥ 5 % side margins.

5. Motion quality

• Pulls are linear and steady (a squeegee does not ease). Accent inks start half a beat after the main ink of their layer.
• Info items print left to right on subdivisions of the beat. There is no fade anywhere.
• Screen lift: the frame hinges up (vertical squash + growing shadow) in ~0.4 s.
• Palette re-ink: a wide squeegee travels diagonally over the sheet in ~0.35 s; geometry identical on both sides of the blade, only the inks change. Show only the blade, bead and a sliver of handle.
• Loose layers: in a multi-plane move, planes parallax by depth with paper gaps and thickness shadows, then snap into register on one hit.

6. Camera grammar

A vocabulary, not a route. Opening and ending come from the topic.

Close-ups on a portrait sheet keep its edge in frame (a full-bleed print has no edge to show); a squeegee across a close-up is tilted with the handle hidden, so it doesn't split the frame. Layers change by squeegee, posters through foreground silhouettes, a diagonal sweep that prints the next poster behind the blade, or a table move. No dissolves, no bare cuts.

7. Sound palette

• Acoustic, hand-played instruments: strummed guitar, slide guitar, harmonica, upright bass, cajon or brushes, banjo, fiddle, accordion, harmonium, ukulele. Choose the family from the place: folk, surf, bossa or brass band all fit.
• One pull, one hit: each ink lands on a musical event (a strum, a hit, a chord change); accelerate by subdividing, not by changing tempo. A registration snap is a loud downbeat.
• Foley by material: squeegee on mesh (band-passed noise with a ~220–280 Hz mesh grain; faster = brighter), wet ink squelch, screen clack and hinge creak, paper stamps, ticks for dashed routes, paper hiss, a wood-and-metal clamp, drying-rack clips.
• Ambience from inside the print: a finished scene may "wake up" (surf, street, crowd), J-cut in and L-cut out. Room tone under the table.
• Silence as a tool: the music drops out for a beat before the key facts; what remains is one ambience, and the first sound after is a decisive gesture (a clamp, a long slide up).
• Music ducks a few dB under foley. −14 LUFS.

8. Native moves

Each serves information order. A menu: use the ones your film needs.

• One ink, one beat. Facts print last, when they are read. Fits content like: museum hours; a ferry timetable; tasting notes.
• Split fountain. Several inks in one pull fill the frame with colour. Fits content like: a festival's night sky; a sunset beach bar; a rainbow of colourways.
• Palette re-ink. Same poster, another palette = time passing, a season, a variant. Fits content like: summer vs winter hours; three jacket colourways; day and night at a market.
• Registration slip → snap. Loose layers clamp into register with one hit, before the key facts. Fits content like: the date of a race; a launch price; a ticket sale opening.
• Paper as a colour. The unprinted sheet is the brightest element. Fits content like: a ski slope; a lighthouse beam; fresh snow on a roof.
• The route as a printed layer. A dashed accent line stamped segment by segment. Fits content like: a bus line; a marathon course; a delivery path.
• The series wall. Every print ends up hung together as the final lockup. Fits content like: a city's four districts; a band's tour dates; a product family.

9. Pitfalls of the medium

• Stroke edge effects draw internal lines on unioned paths → fills only (fill, then fill shifted inside a clip).
• A full-rectangle screen shadow muddies the print → ring shadow.
• Cool shadow facets next to water read as water → shadows in the near ink.
• Jagged ink beads read as paper edges → a round bead.
• Parallax alone reads as "the mountains are moving" → paper gaps and thickness while loose, snapped to zero with a sound.
• Silhouette wipes hold a dark blank → centre on the switch so full cover lasts ~1 frame.
• Very wide banners are slivers in 16:9 → about 4:1.
• Random coloured dots on the table read as confetti → a real workbench (planks, grain, muted stains, tape).
• Too many items at honest reading times overrun the length → print items side by side in the same pulls, or let secondary ones be read on the final wall.

10. Engine

demo/engine/silk.js prints any shape in this style from a Path2D: makeTextures, paperSheet, ink(ctx, {path, knock, paint}, {color, reg, clip, sheen, trap}), wipeRegion/wipeFront (ragged pull), squeegee (blade, beads, split fountain), screenFrame, inkFinish, bandSteps (the gradient substitute), shape helpers. demo/engine/poster.js (full-bleed print with partial pulls and loose layers, ticket stub, end card, pickInk contrast), demo/engine/scenes.js (places as ink parts in print order, any print size), demo/film.js (timeline, cameras, sweeps). API table and a minimal example that prints a new shape: DEMO.md.

11. Variation space

You decide the subject, the scenes and their planes, the palettes within the colour logic, the number of posters, the camera path, the opening, the ending, the instrument family and the length. Use cases are grammar for the order and duration of information; build your own timeline from the user's facts.

All far from our demo:

• Structures: one poster, many runs (re-inked for each of four nights, the line-up changing in the band); a street walk (one multi-plane truck down a street, each shop sign printed as we pass); a misprint story (registration drifts until the last pull lands true on the date).
• Openings: the empty screen (light through a blank mesh, a stencil being exposed); the accent first (a lone product in the bright ink on bare paper); the finished wall at night, then back to the table.
• Endings: the drying rack (prints clipped in a row, swaying); the poster in use (pasted on a bus shelter, rain starting); the last pull is paper (the squeegee runs dry, leaving a white silhouette).

A new place is a new scene in demo/engine/scenes.js; reusing the demo's places or timeline is not a way to make a film.

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