Frames and breakouts
FoundryInk has two little pieces of flair that make you unmistakable on a busy page. A frame is a decorative border you wrap around your avatar, your profile, your studio, a project, or a room. A breakout is an image, often a small animation, that sits on top of an asset's cover and deliberately spills past the edge of the card, so a character looks like it is climbing out of the frame everywhere your work shows up on Browse. Both are pure decoration: a frame never touches the picture underneath, and a breakout never changes your cover, it just rides on top of the card. This page shows how to equip a frame, make your own, fit it just right, and set up a breakout that plays the way you want.
1Two kinds of flair
Both are stickers that sit over something, never baked into it. A frame is a transparent-centred border image: it draws around the edge of a surface and leaves the middle untouched, so your avatar or banner shows straight through the hole. A breakout is the opposite spirit: an image pinned to a cover card that is allowed to bleed out past the card's edge, so a character can wave, crawl, or lean right out of the frame. Neither one alters a single pixel of the art beneath it, which means you can add, adjust, or remove them any time with nothing to lose.
2Equip a frame
Frames are in your settings. Anywhere you can wear one, you get a small preview tile and a single button: Choose a frame when nothing is on, or Change frame once one is. In your account settings there is a Profile frame, an Avatar frame (it wraps your avatar wherever it appears), and a Chat frame. A studio's settings add a Studio frame and Fan avatar frames for your community, a project has a Project frame, and a community room has a Room frame. So one frame can dress your avatar, your profile card, your studio page, a project, and a room header.
3The frame picker
The button opens one picker used everywhere. Down one side is a Live preview that shows the frame on your own avatar or banner, so you judge it in place, not on a swatch. Tabs sort the catalog: Trending, System (the platform's built-in set), Studios you follow, and Yours. There is a search box, Search frames by name, for when you know what you want. Pick one and hit Equip this frame; the button flips to Equipped with a tick. To take it off, choose Use no frame (or Remove current frame).
4Make your own frame
The Yours tab has an uploader for your own art. The kindest way to start is the Template button: it downloads a correctly-sized guide for that surface (a banner is a wide strip, an avatar is a circle) so you draw into the right shape. Keep the centre transparent, so your face or cover shows through the hole, save a PNG or WebP, give it a name in the Frame name box, and hit Upload. The name is optional; leave it blank and it takes the file's own name. Your own frames can be renamed, shared with your followers, or removed whenever you like.
5Fit it just right
After upload you land in a small fit editor, and there are two flavours depending on whether the frame is yours. If you own it, Adjust fit sets the frame's own default placement and saves it on the frame with Save fit, so everyone who equips it starts from your intended look. For any frame you have equipped, even a System or shared one you did not make, Adjust placement tweaks just your copy: it saves a personal override without touching the shared frame, and confirms with Placement saved. Both editors work the same way: drag the art to move it, pull a corner to resize or stretch it, Fill snaps it back to cover the whole surface, and Reset starts over.
6Frames on a banner
A profile or studio banner already fades into the page: a single soft fade runs up from the bottom so your name and buttons sit on a clean backdrop instead of a hard photo edge. When you equip a banner frame, it draws behind that fade, and the very same fade simply widens to cover the frame's overflow. That means a framed character peeks in from the side and melts away with the banner as one piece, rather than floating on an obvious second gradient. The frame brings no fade of its own; it borrows the banner's.
7Break out of the card
A breakout belongs to one asset. Open the comic or asset in your studio and go to its Breakout tab. You get a mock Browse card, your real cover and title, with a draggable box on top. Hit Upload image (a GIF works beautifully, so do PNG, WebP and JPEG) and a friend, a mascot, or a hand appears over the card. Grab the Card template to compose against a true-size card so you know exactly where the edge is and how far to spill past it. Then drag to move and pull the corners to resize; placement saves on its own, and there is a Save placement button too. A snap guide helps you sit the image flush to an edge when you want a clean lean rather than a float.
8Loop or play once
If your breakout is animated, the Animation dropdown decides how it runs. Loop (the default) plays your GIF over and over, good for an idle wave or a flicker. Play once runs the animation a single time and then holds on the last frame, good for a gesture that should happen and then settle, like a character climbing out and sitting on the edge. A Pause and Play toggle lets you preview either behaviour right in the editor before you commit.
9Where readers see it
This is the payoff. Your one authored breakout is redrawn on every Browse surface your asset appears on: the vertical feed, the poster cards in the catalog, and the big hero spot. FoundryInk anchors your placement to a shared cover shape, so the same setup lands correctly whether the card is tall (the feed), wide (the hero), or a slim poster. You author it once and it follows your work around Browse, making your card the one that catches an eye mid-scroll.
Questions people actually ask
Never. Both are decorative overlays that sit on top. A frame draws around your avatar through a transparent hole, and a breakout rides on top of your cover card. The picture underneath is untouched, so you can add, adjust, or remove either one at any time and lose nothing.
No. There is a built-in System set, plus frames that studios you follow have shared. You can go your whole life on those. Making your own is there when you want something nobody else has, and the sizing template makes it a five-minute job.
Adjust fit is for a frame you own: it sets the default look everyone gets when they equip it, saved on the frame. Adjust placement is for any frame you have equipped, including System and shared ones: it nudges only your personal copy, without changing the shared frame or anyone else's placement.
Because a banner has a single soft fade that dissolves it into the page, and an equipped frame shares that same fade rather than adding its own. It keeps the cover and frame reading as one header. Keep the important part of a banner frame near the top, where the banner is still crisp.
On any asset that is not rated mature or explicit. Breakouts are deliberately blocked there, and a cover hidden behind a content mask never shows its breakout. Otherwise it is one breakout per asset, set on that asset's Breakout tab.
Play once is best effort. On browsers that can read an animation's individual frames it stops on the last one; on browsers that cannot, it safely keeps looping instead of disappearing. It is doing the safe thing. Design your final frame so it still looks right if it happens to loop.
Everywhere on Browse that the asset's card appears: the feed, the catalog posters, and the hero. You set it once and FoundryInk fits that one placement to each card shape, so a single setup follows your work around.
Go make a card that pops
A frame around your avatar so people know you at a glance, and a character crawling out of your cover so your work stops the scroll. Both are overlays with nothing to lose, both take five minutes, and both are the kind of small, playful touch that makes a page feel like yours.
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