Image 2.5 Hand-Drawn Styles Compared: 5 Artistic Directions Tested on One Scene
The osmanthus blossomed in Nanjing, which gave me an excuse to see if AI could produce distinct hand-drawn textures on the same subject.
I found an open-source project, hand-drawn-styles, which packages styles into ready-to-use prompt recipes. This article does two things: compares the results of 5 hand-drawn styles on a single scene, then picks Nordic paper cut — the one with the biggest visual contrast — to build a 6-panel short story. That's all.
Bottom line: On the exact same scene, these five styles deliver five completely different purposes. Nordic paper cut had the biggest visual departure and exceeded expectations most; Ghibli is great for relaxed everyday scenes; warm gouache is brighter and punchier; ink-line storybook reads like a travel journal.
The real surprise was crayon: the recipe explicitly asked for the "clumsy feel of a 5-year-old child", but it returned a well-composed, proportionally balanced designer illustration. The paper texture and crayon grain were all there, but that genuine, crooked clumsiness is something it simply refuses to draw.
📚 Table of Contents (click to jump)
- The Fixed Scene
- 5 Styles Quick Comparison
- 5 Styles Compared: What Each Excels At
- Building a Short Story with Nordic Paper Cut
- How to Install and Use
- FAQ
The Fixed Scene
An adult woman with short hair, wearing a beige knit sweater and a cyan-green skirt, standing under an osmanthus tree in autumn Nanjing. She gently cradles a small cluster of osmanthus still attached to the branch, leaning in to smell the fragrance. White walls and grey roof tiles in the background hint at an old city setting. Vertical 3:4 aspect ratio, no text.
All five versions keep the same subject, outfit, pose, and proportions, changing only the artistic style.
Specific details were written for the osmanthus as well: tiny golden-yellow four-petal blossoms in clusters with deep green oval leaves, preventing the model from drawing oversized cherry blossoms or generic decorative flowers.
5 Styles Quick Comparison
If you are picking a style for your project, use this overview table to find the right fit:
| Style | Core Texture & Feel | Best Use Case | Common Pitfalls |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ghibli | Smooth watercolor, soft sunlight | Everyday scenes, anime mood, environmental storytelling | Background details can easily become overly busy |
| Warm Gouache | Matte gouache, directional brushwork | Luminous, cheerful scenes, children's book illustrations | Looks close to anime styles unless brushwork is emphasized |
| Ink-Line Storybook | Black ink contours, pale paper edge | Travel journal art, text-and-image pairing | Line work can get crowded; background can become complex |
| Nordic Paper Cut | 3D layered paper strips, hard shadows | Hero visuals, covers, mood-driven object sequences | Cannot render facial micro-expressions; faces fragment easily |
| Crayon Photo | Realistic paper fold grain, crayon gaps | Rough tactile textures, nostalgic vignettes | Cannot produce genuine child-like distortion; composition stays rigid |
5 Styles Compared: What Each Excels At
1. Ghibli Style: Easiest Way to Step into an Autumn Mood
The first impression here is comfort. Sunlight falls naturally across the knit sweater, and the relationship between the figure, the osmanthus, and the courtyard wall feels organic — like a quiet pause in an animated film.
It works well for slice-of-life storytelling: the character has movement, and the background establishes the environment. For continuous stories, foliage density can be reduced slightly to focus attention on expressions and gestures.
💡 Core prompt recipe:
Ghibli anime hand-drawn style, smooth watercolor with soft natural sunlight, low saturation warm palette, simplified background details
2. Warm Gouache: More Pronounced Brushstrokes for Bright Scenes
The gouache brushwork stands out clearly here, with directional brush marks visible across the hair and clothing. The overall palette is luminous, and the character's expression feels lively.
It looks somewhat close to Ghibli on this scene, but the difference lies in coloring technique: Ghibli is smoother, while this style highlights matte pigment and visible paint strokes. Placing these two side by side makes the contrast obvious.
💡 Core prompt recipe:
Warm gouache storybook illustration style, visible directional brush strokes, bright lively palette, matte finish
3. Ink-Line Storybook: Perfect for a Page with Text
This line art is the most distinctive: hair, clothing folds, and facial features are defined with ink lines, with a pale paper border preserved around the edges.
It feels like an illustration from a personal travel journal. It fits naturally if you plan to place a short caption beneath the image. Clothing lines are slightly dense, and the background is a bit busier than the recipe requested, but the page aesthetic is solid.
💡 Core prompt recipe:
Journal ink-line storybook style, clean black ink contour lines, light watercolor wash, preserved pale paper border edges
4. Nordic Paper Cut: Highest Visual Contrast, Exceeded Expectations Most
I didn't expect much before running this, assuming a niche style like paper cut would just yield a generic flat silhouette. It turned out to be the biggest surprise among the five: hair is constructed from curving paper ribbons, osmanthus flowers and leaves have genuine dimensional layering, and there are crisp shadows between the figure and background wall.
If you need one striking image for a cover, this is the clear pick — the textural difference remains unmistakable even as a tiny thumbnail.
However, the character in this recipe has closed eyes and a quiet countenance. Can a paper cut style handle active, continuous motions like sneezing or laughing in a story? Because this style performed best visually, I specifically chose it for a story continuity test below in Building a Short Story with Nordic Paper Cut.
💡 Core prompt recipe:
Nordic 3D paper cut art style, layered paper ribbons with relief shadows, hard-edged cast shadows, minimalist three-color palette
5. Crayon Photo: Got the Paper Grain, But Not the Clumsiness
The recipe explicitly called for the "clumsy feel of a 5-year-old child". In the actual image, paper wrinkles, intermittent crayon grain, and white space gaps look convincing, but character proportions and scene composition remain disciplined and well-trained like a professional illustration.
It replicates the rough physical grain of crayon well, but whenever you ask it to draw crooked, warped, or genuinely naive lines, it simply refuses to do so.
💡 Core prompt recipe:
Children crayon photo illustration style, rough granular texture, paper fold creases, irregular white space gaps
Building a Short Story with Nordic Paper Cut
Because the Nordic paper cut style was visually the most impressive, I wanted to see if it could sustain a continuous narrative: The Osmanthus Blossomed in Nanjing, My Mom Knew First.
Initially, I wrote typical character actions: smelling flowers, sneezing, holding back a laugh. The first generated paper-cut face immediately broke — layered paper textures fragment completely when forced to render subtle facial micro-expressions.
Since its strength lies in layered scene construction and cast shadows, and its weakness is facial expressions, I pivoted the storyboard: instead of battling face details, all action shifted to objects and lighting. Sneeze action in panel 4 is shown via the camera and fallen petal on stone steps; panels 1 and 2 use silhouettes and back angles, avoiding expression glitches while sidestepping character consistency headaches.
6-Panel Paper Cut Story Flow
Panel 1｜ Mom sent a voice note: Osmanthus is blooming, go take a look downstairs.
(Visual: Phone screen lit on desk at night, paper speech bubble floating above with cast shadows)
Panel 2｜ She grabbed her camera and headed downstairs.
(Visual: Apartment stairwell steps receding in depth, diagonal hard light from side window, girl in silhouette)
Panel 3｜ Autumn in Nanjing smells like sweet osmanthus.
(Visual: Osmanthus tree layered into foreground and background, tiny yellow petals drifting, light filtering through paper leaves)
Panel 4｜ Before she could press the shutter, she sneezed.
(Visual: Camera resting on stone steps, single blossom on lens cap, low-angle side light casting a long shadow)
Panel 5｜ A ginger cat sat by the tree roots, a blossom on its head.
(Visual: Ginger cat peeking through paper layers, blossom on head, dramatic enlarged shadow on the wall)
Panel 6｜ In the end, this was her favorite shot — because it missed focus.
(Visual: Picture-in-picture layout: blurred orange paper cat in frame, sharp real cat resting peacefully outside)
Running all 6 panels confirmed the takeaway: as long as emotion and motion are transferred to objects, paper cut can tell a story.
The phone and speech bubble in panel 1, backlit stairwell silhouette in panel 2, long camera shadow in panel 4, and the "picture-within-a-picture" cat in panel 6 all produced solid paper layering and shadow separation without facial distortion.
Its limits remain firm: every frame relies on large paper planes and clear cast shadows. It excels at quiet, mood-driven slices of life, but cannot handle rapid character dialogue or fast-paced physical comedy.
How to Install and Use
The easiest way is letting your Agent handle the setup. Send this message directly to Claude Code:
帮我安装这个Skill的轻量包：
https://github.com/threerocks/hand-drawn-styles/releases/latest/download/hand-drawn-skill.zip
解压后保留hand-drawn/的完整目录结构，并运行scripts/check_skill.py验证安装。It automatically downloads and extracts the files into your skills directory without manual Python environment management.
Once installed, ask it to write prompts using any style recipe:
用hand-drawn的3号吉卜力画风，生成生图提示词：
成年短发女孩穿米色针织衫，在南京的桂花树下闻花香。
竖版3:4，不加文字。请使用项目完整配方。Copy the generated prompt into ChatGPT or your image generation tool.
Note the scope of this project: hand-drawn-styles is not an image generation model itself; it is a prompt recipe builder that formats your descriptions into proven artistic frameworks. The README currently lists 21 hand-drawn recipes (Ghibli, crayon, watercolor, paper cut, and more) — pick the style you need and supply your scene content.
FAQ
What hand-drawn styles does ChatGPT Image 2.5 support?
How do I install and use hand-drawn-styles in ChatGPT?
How do I prevent character faces from breaking when creating continuous illustration stories with Image 2.5?
Why can't the crayon style produce a truly messy child-like drawing?
What subscription plan is required to generate images with Image 2.5?
📖 Further Reading: Want to try more creative workflows with Image 2.5? Check out our hands-on guide: ChatGPT Image 2.5: Turn a Rough Sketch into a Photorealistic Scene.
💡 Tip: Image 2.5 is built into ChatGPT image generation. Running into payment issues or want to upgrade to Plus / Pro for higher quotas? Check out our ChatGPT Subscription Top-up or view Pricing Plans.