From grimoire
Creates production-ready character design sheets for animation, games, or comics: orthographic turnarounds, expression sheets, proportion guides, and costume/accessory callouts.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/grimoire:design-character-design-sheetThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
Create a production-ready character design sheet with orthographic turnarounds, proportion guides, expression sheets, and callout details to enable consistent character reproduction across a production team.
Create a production-ready character design sheet with orthographic turnarounds, proportion guides, expression sheets, and callout details to enable consistent character reproduction across a production team.
Adopted by: Disney Feature Animation, Pixar, DreamWorks, and every professional animation studio require production character design sheets (also called model sheets or character bibles) before animation begins. The Disney Nine Old Men (Thomas & Johnston, "The Illusion of Life") institutionalized model sheets in the 1930s as the solution to inconsistent character appearance across different animators. Game studios (Riot Games, Blizzard, Ubisoft) require turnaround sheets before any 3D modeling or rigging begins. Impact: Without a standardized design sheet, each artist draws the character from their own mental model — producing inconsistency across frames, scenes, or game assets. A complete character sheet is the contract between the character designer and the production team. The more detail in the sheet, the less correction is needed in production.
The silhouette is the most important design element:
Draw the base front-view standing pose first:
Turnarounds show the character from multiple angles without perspective distortion:
Critical rule: orthographic views have no perspective foreshortening. The character is the same height in front and side view. Use horizontal alignment guides across all views simultaneously — if the belt buckle is at a certain height in the front view, it aligns exactly at the same height in the side view.
Draw costume details consistently across all views — if there's a pocket on the front-left, show its position on the back and side as well.
For complex costume, accessories, or hair:
Hair volume reference: draw the hair from the back (often the hardest angle to reproduce consistently). Mark where the hairline starts, how the volume distributes.
Character expression sheets show the same face across emotional states:
Caricature rule: exaggerate expression intensity to the character's style — a cartoon character's happy is more extreme than a realistic character's happy.
Scale comparison: draw the character next to other main characters or a standard scale reference (door at 7', human at 5'10") to establish relative size hierarchy.
Pose variations (optional for animation): include 2–3 characteristic action poses that capture the character's movement quality — how does a heavy character hold their center of gravity vs. a nimble one?
Color reference: include a small color flat of the character with material notes (matte fabric, shiny leather, translucent skin). If the production uses a style guide, reference those colors.
On the final sheet, add:
npx claudepluginhub jeffreytse/grimoire --plugin grimoireConstructs proportionally accurate human figures using Loomis and Bridgman methods. Use when drawing characters with correct anatomy.
Generates a single polished bust/portrait of a character for dialogue UI, character-select screens, lore cards, or codex entries. One character, locked composition, VN-style.