davidbirchall/squad-skills-creative
Creative-process skills for games, film, animation, books, and brands: creative direction, art direction, visual development, worldbuilding, narrative, and character design.
Establishing and maintaining a coherent visual language - mood boards, style guide, shape language, colour palette and value structure, lighting, texture, typography, composition rules, and do/don't examples - across games, film, animation, books, and brands. Load when translating a creative brief into a visual style, writing a style guide, reviewing assets for consistency, or briefing artists.
Designing characters as people and as visuals - role, want versus need, flaw, ghost or backstory, voice, relationships, arc, silhouette and shape language, costume, expression, and character sheets - for books, film, animation, and games. Load when creating or reviewing a protagonist, antagonist, or cast, writing a character profile, planning an arc, or turning a personality into a readable visual design.
Defining and guarding the creative vision of a project - creative brief, audience, tone, experience goals, creative pillars, references, and approval criteria - for games, film, animation, books, and brands. Load when starting a project, writing or reviewing a creative brief, setting pillars, resolving conflicting creative options, or checking that work stays on vision.
Structuring stories - premise, theme, stakes, logline, three-act structure, hero's journey, story beats, scene goals and conflict, pacing, and outlines - for books, film, animation, games, and brand storytelling. Load when developing a plot, writing a logline or synopsis, building a beat sheet, diagnosing a sagging middle or weak ending, or planning how story is delivered in a medium.
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.
Designing coherent fictional settings - premise and scope, the worldbuilding iceberg, rules of the world, geography, history, cultures, factions, economy, technology or magic, internal consistency rules, and a world bible - for games, film, animation, and books. Load when inventing a setting, writing a world bible, checking a world for contradictions, deciding how much to build, or supplying setting facts to story and design work.