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Cel Couture

Illustration: Varied-weight contour, Cel shading with one hard shadow tone, Elongated fashion proportions

Made by Claude · Claude Code · claude-opus-5-5

a young woman with one orange streak in her platinum braids, in a black sleeveless chef's dress, a white origami apron and long white gloves, one hand on her hip and the other raised like a presenter
a young woman with one orange streak in her platinum braids, in a black sleeveless chef's dress, a white origami apron and long white gloves, one hand on her hip and the other raised like a presenter
a sleek black cat with lemon-yellow eyes and a blue collar, sitting and glancing back, unimpressed
a sleek black cat with lemon-yellow eyes and a blue collar, sitting and glancing back, unimpressed
an old woman with a towering white beehive pierced by a fork, gripping a giant red rubber stamp like a mallet
an old woman with a towering white beehive pierced by a fork, gripping a giant red rubber stamp like a mallet
a corner newsstand: a narrow black kiosk under a blue awning, stacked with plain white newspapers and magazines
a corner newsstand: a narrow black kiosk under a blue awning, stacked with plain white newspapers and magazines
a young man in an electric-blue jacket and a white apron pointing with a long pencil
a young man in an electric-blue jacket and a white apron pointing with a long pencil
a vintage stand mixer in electric blue, with a white bowl and a steel whisk
a vintage stand mixer in electric blue, with a white bowl and a steel whisk

Pictures made with openai/gpt-image-2.5.

The prompt

{subject}, as a clean digital cartoon illustration with a fashion-illustration attitude: a confident black ink contour, about a three-hundredth of the picture wide on outer edges, thinning to a hairline on inner folds, every shape closed and crisp. Any subject becomes a few elegant simple shapes: people are elongated, about nine heads tall, with long necks and limbs, sharp brows, almond eyes and small noses; animals and objects take the same long, poised shapes. Each area is one flat bright colour plus exactly one hard-edged shadow tone, a darker step of that colour, away from a soft upper-left light. Colour: {palette}; everything takes these colours. {composition}, on plain flat white with nothing else in the picture. Show only the picture, flat and straight-on to every edge, never a photographed print. No text, sketch lines, texture, ground shadow, gradients, anime eyes, hair shine or chibi proportions.

Materials
Digital ink line, Flat digital colour
Techniques
Varied-weight contour, Cel shading with one hard shadow tone, Elongated fashion proportions, A cut-out figure on plain white

cartoon, fashion illustration, ink line, flat colour, cel shading

Slot recipes

How the prompt changes for each kind of picture.

  • Palette: a pure white ground for most of the picture, solid black for clothing, boots and the ink line, one electric blue at full strength for a single garment or object, natural skin tones from light to deep brown, platinum and soft peach for hair, and at most one small accent of lemon yellow or vivid stamp red, never pastel
  • Composition: one full figure or object standing alone near the middle of a wide 16:9 frame, filling almost its full height, with generous white space on both sides and nothing touching the edges

In the lineage of

  • Fashion illustration, tradition. The elongated nine-heads-tall figure, long limbs and a poised, eccentric attitude.
  • Cel animation, tradition. Flat colour with one hard-edged shadow tone per area, painted on clear cels.
  • Character model sheets, tradition. A single figure drawn whole on plain white so it can be cut out and reused.
  • Yesterday's Taste (2026), source. The music video whose launch-page world these pictures were made for.

A generated style is an aggregate of many influences. Credit goes to the artists and traditions it draws on; it is not a claim of authorship.

Remix with this style

Apply Cel Couture to any UI language and swap the palette: the preview takes this style's hero image.