---
name: visual-development
description: Exploring and proving the look of a project before and during production - thumbnails, concept and environment studies, colour scripts, keyframes, lighting studies, key art, and look-dev decisions - for games, film, animation, and illustrated books. Load when exploring visual options, building a colour script, designing key environments or keyframes, pitching a look, or locking a final visual direction from a style guide.
---

# Visual development

Chain: `creative-direction` -> `art-direction` -> `visual-development`. Draws on `character-design` for cast looks and `worldbuilding` for place.

## Purpose
Explore visual options within the art direction, test them against story and pillars, and converge on approved looks that production can build.

## Inputs
- Style guide and pillars (`art-direction`, `creative-direction`).
- Story beats and locations (`narrative`), setting facts (`worldbuilding`).
- Character sheets in progress (`character-design`).

## Framework
1. **Define the questions**: what must exploration answer (e.g. "what does the capital look like at dawn?").
2. **Diverge cheaply**: many small thumbnails and value sketches; judge composition and readability before adding colour or detail.
3. **Environment and prop studies**: establish scale, landmarks, materials, and storytelling details that reflect the setting's history.
4. **Colour script**: a strip of small frames, one per sequence or beat, showing colour and light changes that support emotional arc. Check contrast between consecutive beats.
5. **Keyframes**: fully rendered moments that fix mood, lighting, and character-in-environment relationships.
6. **Lighting and atmosphere**: key/fill/rim logic, time of day, weather, and what light directs the eye to.
7. **Converge**: select, combine, and refine; record why options were rejected.
8. **Lock and package**: approved look with annotated callouts for production.

## Output
```
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT PACKAGE
Questions explored:
Thumbnails / options (selected + rejected, with reasons):
Colour script (beat -> palette, light, emotion):
Keyframes:
Environment / prop studies:
Lighting notes:
Open issues and what production must still decide:
Status (user decision):
```

## Quality checklist
- Each image answers a stated question.
- Colour script follows the emotional arc and has no flat stretches by accident.
- Keyframes respect style-guide rules and setting facts.
- Compositions read at thumbnail size.
- Rejected options and reasons are recorded.

## Anti-patterns
- Rendering before the idea is proven in thumbnails.
- Beautiful keyframes that ignore story, scale, or production limits.
- Drifting from the style guide without updating it.
- One option shown only, leaving no real choice.
- Colour chosen per image, not per sequence.

## Handoff
- Approved looks update the style guide (`art-direction`) and go to production.
- Request missing story beats from `narrative`, character designs from `character-design`, world details from `worldbuilding`.
- Pillar-level disputes return to `creative-direction`.

## See also

Optional, if installed: material-shader-workflows (the creative-technology plugin) for the broader discipline this skill applies. This skill stands on its own.