papercut

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name: papercut description: Render a reel in the Papercut style: layered construction paper brought to life with paper grain, torn edges, stacked shade strips, drop shadows, rigid cut-out animation, a slow camera push, taped headline banners and word-by-word torn-tag captions. Use when the user says cut paper, papercraft, paper cutout, paper collage, construction paper, or asks for the default handcrafted explainer look.

Layered construction paper: grain, torn edges, stacked shade strips, a slow camera push and stop-motion paper boil.

This is one style of the motion-explainer library. It ships the same three things every style ships: a style.json manifest, a Remotion engine, and an fframes engine. The pipeline skills (motion-explainer, motion-script, motion-storyboard, motion-build, motion-qa) all take the style name as $MOTION_STYLE, so nothing else in the workflow changes when you pick this one.

When to use it

Reach for this style when the brief matches its DNA below. Read docs/style-guide.md first: it is the authority, this file is the index.

Style DNA

1. Every object is flat construction paper: one solid fill, fine paper-fibre grain multiplied at ~10%, a slightly irregular scissor-cut edge, and a soft drop shadow (0 x, 3-6px y, 6-10px blur, 30% black). No gradients or outlines.
2. Shading is stacked cut pieces: a darker underside strip and a lighter highlight strip, never a blend.
3. Orthographic views only, chunky and legible at phone size, light from the top-left.
4. Saturation is earned: muted dusty backgrounds, bright colour only on characters, captions and state signals.
5. The world camera drifts smoothly; only the banner and labels boil, stepped on twos.

Palette: cream #DACEC0, ink #1C1B17, tape #C3B284, hero #D67354, captions #3968AD, tags #C9573C

Kit components

Remotion, importable from ../lib/<file> (the kit is synced into each project's src/lib/):

component	what it is
<Paper lift torn>	the base wrapper: paper grain, rough or torn SVG filter, drop shadow
<Slab x y w h color shade hi>	the primitive: a cut-paper rectangle with a shade strip, a highlight strip and grain
<Disc x y d color>	a circular cut piece for portholes, wheels, rivets
<Pill x y text>	a small paper label chip
<Card x y w h lines>	a paper card with ruled filler lines
<PopIn at>	spring entrance with a small settle tilt
<Backdrop name>	a prepared paper set with a known floorY
<CameraPush>	the world camera move
<TapeBanner text>	the taped headline banner, one hard fact per beat
<WordTagCaptions captions>	torn tag captions, one per word, popping on onset
<CutSeries scenes cuts>	the transition engine between scene sets

Nothing boils in a vacuum

docs/style-guide.md section 2 is the Style DNA. docs/frame-breakdown.md is a worked ~28 s example; copy its event density, not its content.

Engines

engine	path	entry
remotion	remotion/	template/, kit/, sync_kit.sh, CATALOG.md, AGENT_BRIEF.md
fframes	fframes/	Cargo.toml, src/ (lib, tokens, kit, look, video, main), tools/ff.sh

Registered engines: remotion, fframes.

Scaffold an episode

# from the library root, with MOTION_LIB resolved
./core/new_episode.sh <series-dir> 01-slug Episode out-name --style papercut --engine remotion
./core/new_episode.sh <series-dir> 01-slug Episode out-name --style papercut --engine fframes

Or name the style in a series SERIES.md / episode.json as "style": "papercut" and let motion_style_of pick it up.

QA for this style

Check these on every contact sheet before calling a scene done; the rest of the checklist in motion-qa still applies.

• Everything reads as paper: grain, rough edge, drop shadow, stacked-piece shading, no outlines or gradients.
• The world camera moves smoothly; only the banner and labels boil.
• The banner is taped, 3-7 words, one fact per beat, never repeats the voiceover.
• Captions are one torn tag per word, tilted, popping on onset, in the 68-80% band.
• A visual event on every stressed word, with ambient motion always running.

Files

• docs/style-guide.md
• docs/style-prompt.md
• docs/motion-principles.md
• docs/asset-prompts.md
• docs/frame-breakdown.md
• remotion/CATALOG.md
• remotion/AGENT_BRIEF.md
• remotion/RECIPES.md
• style.json: the manifest (canvas, engine list, doc paths, audio roots)
• sample.png: one representative frame