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Phase 4 · Create

Build Your Story

Three pathways. Same arc. Anchor the look, build one scene by hand, save the recipe, scale to the rest, polish and publish. Pick the medium that best serves your story angle.

Duration · 2h 15min – 4 hoursPathways · 3Output · Finished video / comic / game + Creator's Note + AI Audit
Pick your pathway

All three pathways follow the same shape: Anchor → Craft One → Reflect & Automate → Scale → Finish. Pick the medium that best matches the story angle you wrote in Phase 2.

🎬

A Reel

Best for personality-driven moments. Vlog (selfie) or documentary (observed) framing. 5–8 second scenes with a character voice.

~4 hours · 4 steps · native-audio video
📓

A Comic Book

Best for sequence-driven stories. Pick an art style (BD, manga, watercolour…), generate panel-by-panel, letter the bubbles last.

~2h 15min · 4 steps · 6–8 panels
🎮

A Game / Simulation

Best for stories that turn on a hard choice. Brief the AI in plain English, never look at the code, iterate by playing.

~2h 30min · 4 steps · 3 real decisions
Step 0 — the evidence-based portrait

In Phase 1 the machine guessed what your person looked like — and that Day One image stays out of your story. Now you know things. Before you enter any pathway, generate the portrait your story will actually anchor on: built from your evidence list, not from the machine's assumptions.

AGenerate from evidence

Every period detail in this prompt should trace back to a line in your Phase 2 evidence list. Verified reference images (museum, archive, heritage website, teacher-approved) may be attached as inputs — the Day One image may not.

Evidence-based portrait prompt
Create a portrait of [CHARACTER NAME], a [age] [role] living in [time/place], connected to [museum object]. Build the person ONLY from this evidence list: [paste your Phase 2 evidence list — FACT and INFORMED GUESS lines only] PERIOD DETAILS (each one backed by an evidence line) - Clothing: [details — cite F/IG number] - Setting: [details — cite F/IG number] - Condition / age / bearing: [details — cite F/IG number] Where the evidence is silent, choose the plainest historically plausible option — do not invent drama. STYLE Realistic and historically plausible. Dignified, specific, not a stereotype. NOT ALLOWED Modern clothing, modern objects, fantasy elements, anything anachronistic for [TIME / PLACE].

BCheck it against the evidence

  • Clothes, tools, setting fit the time and place — and you can say which evidence line supports each.
  • The person looks specific and dignified, not a cartoon type.
  • Nothing looks too modern.
  • You can say what is evidenced, what is inferred, and what the image still guesses.

This portrait is the input for your pathway's reference sheet. Keep the Day One image sealed — the two meet in the Two Portraits comparison when your story is finished.

LOW-AI ROUTE

Write a portrait in words instead: a five-line description of the person, every line citing an evidence number. It anchors a hand-drawn comic, a script or a paper game exactly the way an image would — and the final comparison against the Day One guess works the same.

What every pathway has in common

The same five-beat arc

  1. Anchor — lock the character (and for visual formats, the look) before you generate anything else.
  2. Craft One — make the first scene/panel/version by hand. No automation yet.
  3. Reflect & Automate — turn the recipe you just learned into a reusable skill (or a project doc, if time is short).
  4. Scale — use the recipe to build the rest. Audit before each generation.
  5. Finish — polish, add the Creator's Note + AI Audit, ship.

The same deliverable shape

You hand in three artefacts together:

  • The video / comic / game itself.
  • A Creator's Note — your story angle, evidence list, why this format.
  • An AI Audit — what AI got wrong, what you fixed, what you accept as honest uncertainty. Every claim in the finished piece is tiered ESTABLISHED / INFERRED / UNKNOWN — a story with no unknowns has invented something.

Session rhythm — 30-minute blocks

No unbroken independent work block runs past 30 minutes. Each step in a pathway opens with a stated task and a stated end point, and closes with something produced — a saved image, an approved plan, a working version. Teachers: put a visible break or check-in between blocks.

The dignity check — before anything is shown

This person was real. Before your story is shown to anyone, every group answers:

  • Would they recognise themselves in this?
  • Am I using their suffering to entertain?
  • Can I defend every word I put in their mouth?

If you cannot defend it — cut it, or mark it unknown. You are giving a voice to someone who did not get one. That is worth doing carefully.

CHECKBefore you start
  • You picked the format that fits your story, not the one you find easiest.
  • You have your character description, evidence list, and story angle from Phase 2 ready to paste.
  • You have generated your evidence-based portrait (Step 0 below) and it passed the check.
  • Your Day One image from Phase 1 stays put away — you'll need it untouched for the Two Portraits comparison at the end.
  • You know the deliverable is three artefacts together, not just the visual.