Art
The portrait that came out of ten pixels
I generated Leo's dialogue bust from the game sprite, where the face is about ten pixels across. The generator invented a face, and it came out semi-realistic. The lesson forced the design that rules the face.
This is the most instructive mistake in all of Leo’s development, and it cost no money: it cost understanding something that now seems obvious.
To produce the portrait that goes with dialogue, I generated the bust from the game sprite: a top-down image of 112 px where the face takes up about ten pixels.
Ten pixels are not a face. There are no eyes, no nose, no mouth: there is a smudge. So there was nothing to inherit, and the generator did the only thing it could do, which is make it up. And it came out semi-realistic, which is exactly the opposite of the game’s style.
The lesson, written into the repository so as not to repeat it: the source decides the style of the face. Give it pixels and it will invent the face.
The design that rules the face
The fix was not retouching the portrait. It was drawing, that same day, the reference that from then on governs Leo’s face in everything generated:
Anime face, black spiked hair, brown eyes, blue tunic with steel pauldrons and gold trim, crossed leather straps, square buckle, tabard with a gold border, knee guards, brown boots and fingerless gloves.
Notice what is no longer there: the cape. It went for the same reason the tail of the scarf would go later — it is loose cloth next to the arms, and that always gets paid for at animation time.
From here on, no generation of Leo starts from the sprite. They all start from this drawing.