Creative scene

Creative — Scene Explorer

Show the product living in the real world — believable usage moments, not floating studio renders. The job is to make a viewer picture themselves using it. Realism and emotional plausibility beat technical perfection.

When to use

• Lifestyle hero images, social content, editorial, "in-context" ecommerce shots.
• Selling the experience or outcome, not just the object.
• You need people, environment, or a moment of use around the product.

When NOT to use

• Clean catalog/PDP angles on a plain background → creative-shot.
• Pushing a discount/bundle → creative-offer.
• No look locked and brand consistency matters → creative-explore first.

Inputs (ask only what's missing)

• Product + how it's actually used (ergonomics matter for believability).
• Target user who appears or is implied in the scene.
• Locked visual direction if available.
• Aspect/medium: web hero (wide), social (square/vertical), gallery.

Workflow

1. Define 3-5 usage moments: who + where + when + doing-what. Concrete beats generic ("barista, morning cafe, steaming milk" not "person using product").
2. Structure each scene prompt: backdrop → subject + product → light/lens → constraints. Favor photoreal-natural styling: candid, real texture, natural light, believable depth of field.
3. Generate with your image tool. Save to ./creative/scene/<moment>.png.
4. Verify believability + hero: is the product clearly the focus? Are hands/ergonomics plausible? Regenerate weak ones (bad hands, product too small, staged-feeling).
5. Present moments; recommend the strongest for the medium.

Worked example

Product: insulated water bottle. Audience: trail runners.

## Moment "Dawn Trail"
who: runner, late 20s, mid-stride   where: forest trail, first light
when: cool blue-hour → warming   doing: pausing to drink
prompt: "forest trail at dawn -> runner pausing, bottle to lips, breath visible
-> 50mm, shallow DOF, soft directional light -> candid, real sweat/texture,
bottle clearly visible and in focus"
[ref: ./creative/scene/dawn-trail.png]

## Moment "Desk Companion"
who: implied (hand only)   where: tidy work desk   when: midday
doing: reaching for the bottle beside a laptop
prompt: "minimal wood desk, daylight -> hand reaching for bottle next to laptop
-> 35mm, natural light -> candid, real texture, bottle hero"
[ref: ./creative/scene/desk.png]

Recommendation: "Dawn Trail" for the hero (aspirational, on-audience); "Desk" for broader appeal.

Quality bar

• The product is unmistakably the hero and in focus — not lost in the scene.
• Lighting, texture, and ergonomics are plausible; no uncanny hands or impossible grips.
• The moment matches the actual audience and use case.
• Aspect fits the target medium without awkward cropping.

Common pitfalls

• Floating/staged feel — natural light and real texture sell realism; studio-perfect kills it.
• Product demoted — the environment overwhelms the hero. Keep it central and focused.
• Mangled hands/anatomy — common generation failure; regenerate or switch angle.
• Real identifiable people without consent — use generic or implied (hands, back-of-head) subjects.

Handoff

Winning scenes → creative-polish for finish (grade, fix artifacts, conform aspect). Reuse the creative-explore stub for cross-asset consistency.

Tooling

Needs a text-to-image tool. Without one, deliver the structured scene prompts for the user to render.