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

Phase	What happens	Tools
S — Story	Use the given myth, or propose 4–6 and wait for a pick	reasoning + web search
L — Lore	Research the actual tradition: variants, names, iconography, the ending	web search
P — Palette	Lock one three-colour palette for the whole film	free
1 — Style key	Generate the cardstock style key at the run's aspect ratio	create_image (nano-banana-pro)
1b — Casting	Sheets for the protagonist, creatures, recurring places, the talisman	create_image (nano-banana-pro)
2 — Beat sheet	N beats on the mythic arc, ~12–18 words each, 1–2 wordless	free
3 — Block prompts	N prompts in the diorama language, wipe-bookended, sheets bound	free
4 — Clips	N × 10s clips, style key + sheets on every one	create_video (seedance-2.0)
5 — Voice	One storyteller (ElevenLabs Eleven v3), one take per voiced block	create_voiceover
6 — Assemble	Concat clips, place + mix the takes, deliver one MP4	ffmpeg (local)

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: