Art direction

Art direction is the set of visual rules that every picture in Arborwake follows. The user sets these rules directly in chat. When the user's words and an older design document disagree about art, the user's words win. The integrated design documents still decide the world setting: which places exist, how they connect and what each one is for.

The style anchor: Threadway B08#

On 29 October 2026 the user approved candidate B08 of the Threadway street as the prototype art. It is now the reference look for the whole game. B08 is flat toon pixel art:

• large flat areas of colour, with two to four tones for each material;
• crisp, chunky shapes;
• no texture noise and no painterly speckle.

B08 came from a Blender render with a hand-made pixel pass (see Environment art). Its palette became the shared palette for later scenes, rooms, VFX and interiors (see Palettes).

Fleshier, more anatomical designs belong to the expedition rooms. The permanent places stay civic, warm and solarpunk.

Cells#

• Cells are 2D, cute, slime-like and clearly cellular. They are never humanoid and never 3D models.
• Each cell type keeps its family palette. The named cast are recognisable without crossing families (see Character sprites).
• Cells in a scene are resident NPCs at cast scale, standing at map anchors. They are never large set pieces painted into the background.
• Action Tendrils appear only during actions and are drawn under the body. Ordinary walking uses the body's own animation.

On 1 November the user replaced the old "everything is 2D" rule for one place only. Threadway is now a live 3D environment with flat 2D cell sprites and a semi-fixed camera. The other maps stay 2D.

Readability rules#

• State changes must read at 1x. On 31 October the user rejected several before/after map states because the change was too small to see. The rule is now hard: the changed pixels must cover at least one third of one 512×288 camera view. Each place uses its own kind of change (structure, ground, growth), not the same lighting trick.
• Function must read. A district's buildings must show what the district does.
• Man-made structures are symmetric unless they are designed otherwise. Check symmetry in plan view, not only on screen.
• No hue reservations. Environment palettes do not have to avoid "cell colours"; nobody confuses a building with a cell.
• Grass is sparse and calm. On 1 November the user rejected a full moving lawn as "dizzying". The approved kit uses sparse tufts of three to six broad blades on flat lawns, with a 1–2 px held-pose sway.
• No words in effects. VFX carries meaning by animation alone (see VFX).

Development#

• B08 approval: 29 October 2026, recorded in codex/environment-art 95339ee9d.
• The grass kit was approved on 1 November ("Yes, it fits") and lives in claude/environment-art.
• The lighter oligodendrocyte ramp was accepted on 1 November (claude/cell-slime 8b791809).
• The lead's art audit of 1 November records the Threadway 3D decision and the layer rules for the 2D maps.

Gallery#

See also#

• Environment art
• Character sprites
• Palettes
• Review process

Sources#

1. 95339ee9d:art/environment/blender-study/README.mdcopy
2. 1ded4c01c:docs/art-audit/2026-11-01/AUDIT.mdcopy
3. 5ed726064:art/environment/blender-study/grass/README.mdcopy
4. 16c9aab43:art/characters/expansion/sources/r007-oligo-light/README.mdcopy
5. docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-02-lead-full-project-reconciliation-audit.md (working copy, not in Git)
6. docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-01-claude-workstreams-todo.md (working copy, not in Git)