# Creative Process

*How 1,337+ traits were painted, debated, broken, fixed, and finally shipped — the making of Mibera Maker.*

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## Overview

The Mibera art was not designed by committee or generated by algorithm. It was painted by hand on an iPad by a single lead artist — **Gumi (gumibera_)** — guided by a philosophical framework from **Jani (deepname99)** and shaped by collaborative feedback from a core team of roughly a dozen contributors. The process spanned 18+ months, from first sketches in July 2023 to final asset uploads in August 2024.

This document traces how the art evolved, what decisions shaped it, and why Mibera looks the way it does.

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## I. Finding the Style (July - September 2023)

### The First Vision

Gumi's earliest work explored a **scuffed, impressionist style** — deliberate in its roughness:

> *"Gonna drop a couple of backgrounds here for now though, kinda want to go for a scuffed/smeary style that focuses more on color and blocky shapes instead of anything well rendered. Lmk if this is like... too impressionist though."*
> — gumibera_, August 2023

The team's response was immediate and positive. The style was refined through a series of principles that Gumi articulated:

- **No outlines** — just blocks of color and a few defining strokes
- **Relatively detailed but bleary eyes** — the focal point of every Mibera
- **Simple brushstrokes over complex ones** — impressionist economy
- **Cast shadows that follow a general shape but aren't super defined** — suggesting rather than declaring
- **Less saturated base body** — so that colorful traits pop against the figure

> *"Thinking of going with a less saturated look so that way the traits that are saturated pop more n stuff."*
> — gumibera_, August 2023

### The Full-Body Pivot

One of the most consequential early decisions was the shift from **full-body character designs to portrait/PFP format**. Gumi initially explored full-body compositions but found that larger items and diverse clothing types didn't translate well to that scale:

> *"I found it very difficult to get the bigger items + a variation of shirt types to translate well to the new style. How do you all feel about just having the smaller items as opposed to both big and small? Would allow for much more trait diversity with clothes."*
> — gumibera_, September 2023

The portrait format unlocked the trait diversity that defines the final collection. Looking back months later, Gumi confirmed it was the right call:

> *"Going thru my old art since I need to make more space and holy fuck, some of these early mibera sketches. Still so relieved we didn't go the full body route."*
> — gumibera_, March 2024

### The Philosophical Ignition

On **August 14, 2023**, Jani delivered a breakthrough session that crystallized the entire project's identity. Before this, the visual style existed but lacked philosophical gravity. After Jani's manifesto — "MIBERA IS THE REFUSAL" — Gumi immediately understood what the art needed to become:

> *"Genuinely think that this is exactly what I needed to get this style change grokking right in my damn head. Mibera has fire in her eyes, she's not just a laid back docile bear rendered in a cutesy scuffed way."*
> — gumibera_, August 2023

This was the moment the art and the philosophy fused. Every trait decision from here forward carried the weight of "the Refusal."

---

## II. The Layer System

### Rendering Stack

The trait rendering order was established by Gumi in September 2023 and remained the architectural backbone throughout production:

```
Rating (top)
    ↓
Icon
    ↓
Bar
    ↓
Hat
    ↓
Glasses
    ↓
Item
    ↓
Shirt Top Layer
    ↓
Arms
    ↓
Eyebrows
    ↓
Face Tattoo / Face Accessories
    ↓
Nose
    ↓
Mouth
    ↓
Eyes
    ↓
Hair Front
    ↓
Shirt / Long Sleeve Bottom
    ↓
Body
    ↓
Hair Back
    ↓
Shirt Behind
    ↓
Mibera's Shadow
    ↓
Molecules
    ↓
Background (bottom)
```

### The Three-Layer Shirt Problem

Shirts were uniquely complex — they required **three separate layers** in the rendering stack: Shirt Top Layer (above arms), Shirt/Long Sleeve Bottom (below face tattoo), and Shirt Behind (below hair back). This allowed clothing to wrap realistically around the character rather than sitting flatly on a single plane.

### The Sleeve Crisis (May 2024)

In May 2024, Gumi discovered a critical conflict: sleeves that extended over the hand clashed with held items (blunts, cigarettes, phones, etc.):

> *"Need to edit all shirts that have sleeves that go over the hand. Sleeve should nottt go over hand since it just has conflicts with too many items."*
> — gumibera_, May 2024

This affected **90% of all shirts** and required a systematic correction pass — one of the largest single rework efforts in the project's history.

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## III. Key Design Decisions

### The Mouth Revolution (November 2023)

The mouth was the subject of the most significant design iteration. Early versions drew criticism:

> *"Mostly thing for me rn is the mouth is a focal point. It doesn't seem to blend in with the mibera... looks like black lipstick."*
> — balensci, November 2023

The team experimented with mouthless designs ("love them without mouths" — balensci), but the breakthrough came when Gumi tried a **dramatically smaller mouth** — a subtle stroke rather than a defined feature:

> *"The smol mouth was a good call it seems... really suits the character."*
> — deepname99, November 2023

This tiny change transformed the entire aesthetic. The small mouth shifted emotional expression to the eyes and eyebrows, making Mibera's face about suggestion rather than declaration — perfectly aligned with the impressionist style.

### Color Variant Discipline

As the collection grew, Gumi recognized the risk of bloat through excessive color variants:

> *"Thiiinking we should maybe cut down on the number of color variants for the suits? Esp considering there are two types. When I made the decision to do that many colors at the time, I think we had fewer traits planned than currently exist."*
> — gumibera_, 2024

The decision was to keep one brighter color plus core variations — quality over quantity.

### The Trait Pause (Late 2023)

At a certain point, Jani called a freeze on new trait additions:

> *"Jani is now calling a pause on addition of any new traits. We can wait till everything is finished and then review."*
> — deepname99, late 2023

This was a crucial discipline moment. With contributors constantly suggesting new ideas, the pause forced the team to refine what existed rather than endlessly expanding scope.

---

## IV. Production Workflow

### Gumi's Setup

All trait art was painted on iPad using Procreate, working across multiple PSD canvases:

> *"There are two PSDs, one for hair and eyes and one for everything else. My iPad couldn't handle all of the layers on one canvas."*
> — gumibera_, September 2023

Files were uploaded to Google Drive and then distributed via Discord for team review.

### The Assembly Pipeline

The trait assets were systematically named using a convention that encoded tribe, rarity, and category:

```
SS{rarity}_{archetype}_{trait_name}
```

Where SS1 = most common, SS5 = rarest. Examples:
- `SS1_acidhouse_Surgical Mask`
- `SS4_freetekno_MF doom`
- `SS5_milady_Cfang Face`

This naming convention allowed the scoring algorithm to automatically calculate tribal coherence without human intervention.

### The Final Art Channel

In June 2024, a dedicated **final-art-assets** channel was created where Gumi systematically uploaded every completed trait, organized by category. This became the definitive source of truth — the transition from scattered WIP uploads to a structured archive.


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## V. The Tribe System in Art

### Balancing Act

Jani color-coded the trait spreadsheet by archetype to visualize balance across the four tribes (Freetekno, Milady, Chicago Detroit, Acidhouse). The balance wasn't forced to be perfect — Jani explicitly embraced asymmetry:

> *"There is SO MUCH BALANCE throughout this project, that maybe some IMBALANCE is needed. The resonance is sweeter with the presence of dissonance."*
> — deepname99

Gumi offered to create more traits for underrepresented archetypes if needed, but the philosophical position was that natural imbalance was a feature, not a bug.


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## VI. Cultural Reference Integration

### Pattern Sourcing

Many shirt patterns were adapted from **Bong Bears**, the predecessor NFT collection:

> *"Pulling patterns from Bong Bears and putting them on baggy shirts and bucket hats could work well with the 80s Manchester Style tribe look."*
> — tez33, 2023

### Dropped Traits

Not everything made the cut. The "lawsuit shirt" was dropped because it was visually illegible at scale. Certain color variants were culled to prevent dilution. Some earring designs couldn't be executed at the right fidelity ("couldn't get the paperclip stuff for the lips/nose to look right" — gumibera_).

### The Apple Pencil Nib

A small but telling detail from the production diary:

> *"Officially wore out my apple pencil nib rendering the hairstyles today, got some more coming in on Monday and then I'll be able to resume the art."*
> — gumibera_, late 2023

One artist. One iPad. One nib at a time. That's how 1,337+ traits were made.

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## VII. Timeline Summary

| Period | Phase | Key Activity |
|--------|-------|-------------|
| Jul 2023 | Genesis | First sketches, style exploration |
| Aug 2023 | Philosophical fusion | Jani's manifesto; art style crystallizes around "the Refusal" |
| Sep 2023 | First PSD delivery | Full layer stack, hair/eye colors, initial traits uploaded to Drive |
| Oct 2023 | Tribe system designed | Scoring logic, naming conventions, tribe balance assessment |
| Nov 2023 | The mouth revolution | Small mouth breakthrough; eyebrows created; earring development |
| Dec 2023 | Trait refinement | Spreadsheet becomes source of truth; Jani calls trait pause |
| Jan 2024 | Quality review | Large-scale trait review; sharpening older assets; core stems identified |
| Feb 2024 | Curation | Dropping redundant traits; quality over quantity philosophy |
| Mar 2024 | Art deadline | March 3 target for art completion |
| May 2024 | Sleeve crisis | 90% of shirts corrected for hand/sleeve conflict |
| Jun 2024 | Final asset uploads | Body tones, eyes, mouths, face accessories, glasses, hair — all systematically archived |
| Jul 2024 | Final accessories | Masks, hats, full outfits (SS4-SS5 tiers), eyebrows finalized |
| Aug 2024 | Last traits | Special mouths (Heart, Acid, Miberapilled, Tongue) added |

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