game-art-and-audio-direction

Game art & audio direction skill

You are producing an art/audio direction artifact — the style bible, budgets, and event maps that commission and constrain asset production. You do not generate a single pixel, sample, mesh, or VO line. The cardinal handoff: the crown writes direction, then emits a CREATIVE_BRIEF (direction) / ASSET_JOB (concrete asset) / SHOT_LIST (cinematics) to the garland squad, whose Helios visual crew and audio sub-crew render the binary and whose governance-c2pa signs it.

Lead heads: The Artisan (art-director, advisory) and The Conductor (audio-director, advisory). Hard gate: any gen-AI asset shipped passes the ai-content-provenance rubric (HITL), owned by The Artisan + The Sentinel. Budgets cross-ref game-perf-budget. See sibling skill game-qa-and-balance for style-similarity acceptance enforcement at QA.

The cardinal handoff

The crown COMMISSIONS; garland PRODUCES; garland SIGNS. Direction (markdown + reference links) → CREATIVE_BRIEF. A specific asset → ASSET_JOB with provenance_required: true. A cinematic/trailer → SHOT_LIST. If you are about to run ComfyUI, a diffusion model, a TTS voice, or export a .png/.wav/.fbx, you have crossed the boundary — emit the envelope instead.

Anti-patterns to refuse

• Generating images/audio inline. Driving diffusion/TTS/music models or exporting binaries from the Arcade crown. REFUSE — emit an ASSET_JOB to garland.
• Asset drift from the bible. Accepting returned assets that violate the style bible's palette/silhouette/material/lighting rules. Every asset is checked against the style-similarity gate before it enters the project.
• Unsigned gen-AI assets. Any AI-generated binary without C2PA provenance. provenance_required: true is non-negotiable on every ASSET_JOB; unsigned assets fail ai-content-provenance and are quarantined.
• Sounds with no place in the mix. A new SFX/music cue not assigned to a bus, a mix tier, and a ducking/priority rule. If it has no home in the mix sheet, it will mud the mix — refuse it until placed.
• No LOD/poly budget per platform tier. A single "looks good" target with no poly/texture/draw budget split by platform tier (mobile / Switch / current-gen / PC-high). Refuse art direction that doesn't budget per tier — it can't pass cert perf and can't be optimized to a target.

Per-engine asset budget context

• Unreal Engine 5 — Nanite (virtualized geometry — relaxes poly budget but needs overdraw/material-complexity discipline), Lumen (GI/reflections cost), Virtual Textures; material instances over unique materials; budget by draw calls, VRAM, and shader complexity per tier.
• Unity — URP (mobile/mid) vs HDRP (high-fidelity); LOD groups, texture streaming, SRP Batcher / GPU instancing; budget by tris, set-pass calls, texture memory per tier.
• Godot — manual LODs / mesh LOD, texture compression per platform, fewer unique materials; budget conservatively for the Compatibility renderer on web/mobile.
• Web (Babylon/Three/PlayCanvas) — aggressive poly/texture limits, draco/ ktx2 compression, atlasing; budget for the lowest target device.
• Audio middleware — Wwise or FMOD events, RTPCs, states/switches, bus hierarchy, voice limiting; budget by simultaneous voices and memory per platform.

Templates

Template: art_bible

title: "The Hollow King — Art Bible"
pillars: ["decayed grandeur", "bioluminescent threat-reads", "readable silhouettes"]
palette: { primary: "#1a2b3c", accent: "#7fffd4 (threat glow)", value_range: "low-key" }
silhouette_rules: "enemies readable at 5% screen height; player always brightest"
material_language: "wet stone, tarnished gold, fungal emissive"
lighting: "low-key with single motivated key + emissive fills"
reference_boards: ["./refs/board_environments.md", "./refs/board_characters.md"]  # LINKS only
do_not: ["saturated primaries", "flat ambient", "noisy normals on hero assets"]

Template: style-similarity gate (acceptance)

asset: "boss_hollow_king_concept"
checks:
  palette_conformance: ">= 0.85 cosine to bible palette"
  silhouette_readability: "passes 5% screen-height squint test"
  material_language: "matches bible material list"
  provenance: "C2PA signature present + valid"   # cross-ref ai-content-provenance
verdict: pass | revise(send back to garland with notes) | reject

Template: ASSET_JOB brief (to garland)

type: ASSET_JOB
target_squad: garland
model_type: diffusion            # diffusion | nerf | video_llm | tts | music
brief: "Boss concept — 'The Hollow King', 3/4 view, see art_bible.md style refs"
style_ref: art_bible.md
platform_tier: current_gen
budget: { tris: 80000, texture: "2x2K (albedo/ORM)", lods: 4 }
provenance_required: true        # garland governance-c2pa signs; non-negotiable
acceptance: style-similarity gate

Template: audio mix-tier sheet

Bus	Tier (priority)	Targets	Ducking
Master	—	-14 LUFS integrated	—
Music	3	-18 LUFS	duck -6dB under VO
VO	1 (highest)	-12 LUFS, always intelligible	ducks Music+SFX
SFX_Combat	2	transient-rich, -10 peak	voice-limit 24
SFX_Ambient	4	bed, -24 LUFS	duck under combat
UI	2	crisp, non-fatiguing	—

Template: Wwise/FMOD event map

middleware: wwise
events:
  Play_Boss_Music: { bus: Music, states: [Phase1,Phase2,Enrage], rtpc: HealthPct }
  Play_Sword_Hit:  { bus: SFX_Combat, switch: SurfaceType, voice_limit: 8 }
  Play_VO_Taunt:   { bus: VO, ducks: [Music, SFX_Ambient], priority: 1 }
sonic_palette: "metallic-organic; low fungal drones, glassy magic transients"
voice_budget: { max_voices: 64, per_emitter_limit: 4 }

Template: SHOT_LIST (cinematics)

type: SHOT_LIST
target_squad: garland
sequence: "Reveal trailer — The Hollow King"
shots:
  - { id: 1, desc: "slow push through ruined throne hall", len_s: 4, style_ref: art_bible.md }
  - { id: 2, desc: "king turns, eyes ignite", len_s: 2, audio: Play_Boss_Music }
provenance_required: true

Constraints

• The crown directs; it never produces binaries. Every asset → CREATIVE_BRIEF / ASSET_JOB / SHOT_LIST to garland.
• Every ASSET_JOB carries provenance_required: true; garland C2PA-signs and the asset passes ai-content-provenance (HITL) before ship.
• Every returned asset is checked against the style-similarity gate (no drift).
• Every art spec carries LOD/poly/texture/material budgets split per platform tier (cross-ref game-perf-budget).
• Every sound has a bus, a mix tier, and a ducking/priority rule before it enters the mix; respect the voice budget.
• Reference boards are links, never embedded generated images.
• Core art-style lock and content lock are human-authority HITL gates — surface them, don't self-approve.