Working sheets · updated as we iterate

Design review

THE OPEN QUESTION — one-piece vs separate head

DECIDED (2026-09-05): vectors stay ONE-PIECE — at vector scale it reads more professional. The PLUSH construction question stays open: the comparison likely reflected graphics quality more than the design itself, so the seamed-head call is deferred to the physical sampling stage.

The family as deployed

Bead eyes, plain narrowed muffs clear of the face.

Family under the reference row

The state after the form pass — before the bead-eye tweaks.

Muff study

Reference crop beside the render during the headphone-cup iterations.

The reference row (#52)

The five friends the base is drawn against.

Archetypes — Astro reference beside the four costumes

Astro (#33) as the anchor: suit + helmet surround with the cream face opening. Then Explorer, Magician, Hero. Hero's helm is the weakest read — flagged for iteration.

Bead eyes — final ratio

The earlier 'beads' read as rings — the highlight was nearly half the eye. Now: solid sphere, small sharp glint (~1:5), faint lower glow. DECIDED 2026-09-05: this is the eye.

The back — DNA codes (view="rear")

Same character objects with view="rear": panel erased, face locked, DNA slot active. Codes are PROPOSED per personality (Wisp sparse, Spark dense, Pebble steady) — to be directed. Note: this preview sheet shows front ears on Wisp/Spark; the live engine resolves the plain rear ear variants correctly.

DNA embroidered direct on the fabric (per the ICONKIND DNA board, #51)

No panel: satin-stitch pills straight on the back, in TONES OF THE FRIEND'S OWN COLOUR, left-anchored like lines of stitching with a soft under-shadow. Three iterations against the board (scale, then alignment). Codes remain proposed.

The eight — Breeze, Gleam, Orbit added

Reference row above (#51). Below: the three new friends front + back. Breeze (teal, bear ears), Gleam (yellow, antenna), Orbit (navy, quiff). DNA now the centred rounded-almond shape per the reference — rows longest in the middle, tapering, all centred on one axis.

DNA refined — every position drawn, blanks faint

Per Graham: sat higher, rounded pills, and NO missing bars — empty positions render as a faint light pill so the block is the SAME footprint on every friend (aesthetics as important as the code). Length still encodes the value.

Headwear — the crown must wrap the skull

The explorer and magician hats were drawn narrower than the head, so the skull showed around them. Rule now applied to all headwear: the crown traces the head silhouette and sits a few px PROUD of it; brims go wider still and sit in front. The wizard cone's base is as wide as the skull, so the cone IS the crown.

The Explorer refined — the Plush Explorer lead

Reference (#73) at left, then the kitted lead and a scale ramp to 44px. Tan bush hat with GOGGLES ON THE BRIM and a satchel AT THE HIP — the signature in every explorer reference on the board. Now fully kitted: olive field jacket with cuffed sleeves, trousers, field boots, tan-leather satchel with a brass buckle. No chest strap and no belt bar (both read as planks across the arms). Skin is a new natural FAWN. The sleeve stops short so the body's own arm-tip shows as the paw — so paws stay the right colour on any body.

Simplified — smaller eyes for every kind, cleaner Explorer

Bead eyes reduced across the whole family (one radius drives all of them). Explorer: cream paw discs gone (the bare arm-tip is the paw), trouser pills gone (tall boots run up under the jacket hem), collar gone. Badge margins evened by lifting the jacket shoulders and flattening the neckline — it was 4px above the badge and 13px below.

Toned badge for costumes; satchel clear of it; eyes smaller again

Costumed characters now wear a SOFT badge — the same plaque as a translucent wash, so it takes the kit's colour instead of fighting it; the emblem stays full strength. Plain friends (third) keep the cream badge. The satchel has moved out to the hip, clear of the badge. Fourth: the DNA back, now previewed with true compositing.

Explorer settled — no white, longer sleeves, small case at his side

Soft badge now has NO plaque at all: the emblem is worn straight on the kit, and the compass face is warmed off white to brass-on-canvas. Sleeves back to the longer cut. The specimen case is smaller and simply stands at his side — no explicit grip — though the handle stays an open arch so it never reads as a solid blob. Scale ramp to 44px.

Mouthless — trial, four ways

With mouth, then mouthless at three eye heights. Mouthless at the ORIGINAL height leaves the lower face blank — the mouth was doing balancing work. Dropped to 131 it composes again and reads serene and iconic; at 138 the eyes sit too low and drift wide. The Explorer is now mouthless-131 so it can be judged in context; the rest of the family still has mouths. Note the cost: removing the mouth removes the expression axis — calm / happy / curious / content all collapse to one face.

The face zone — one eye line serves both looks

The cramping was never the head silhouette (which runs to y~153) — it was the CLOTHING LINE cutting across the chin. So the room is made in the costume, not by shuffling the eyes. Two rules: (1) the eye line NEVER moves, so a character does not change proportion when it starts talking; (2) costumes must keep their centre neckline at or below y=150. Eye line 129, mouth zone 142-150, badge nudged down to clear it. Whole family tunable from three numbers in the generator.

The nine, mouthless

The portrait face is now beads only across the family — the designer look. Expressions (calm, happy, content, curious, sleepy) all still exist at the same eye line and are one value away, for scenes and narrative.

The Explorer, front and back

His rear view: goggles are on the front of the hat, so from behind you get the strap and its brass keeper — the more authentic read anyway. The case mirrors to the other hip. The jacket back has a higher neckline (the front dip exists to give the mouth room, and there is no mouth back here) and is otherwise left plain, because the rear rig paints the DNA code LAST — so the code lands on the jacket. The kit carries the code, which is what a collector card wants.

Dungarees — the family garment, four colourways

Built as a colour SET rather than a one-off, because any friend can wear any pair. Two rules from the face-zone work pull in opposite directions here: the bib must sit at or below y=156 to clear the mouth zone with air to spare, and it must be tall enough to CONTAIN the chest badge (160-202) rather than crossing it — a seam through the badge reads as a mistake. Bib runs 156-206, leg denim starts below. Straps buttoned over the shoulders, turn-ups at the ankle with the foot left bare.

The nine, dressed

This is the point of the garment: nine colours become a cast. Colourways chosen against each body rather than assigned in order.

The codes — derived from traits, pending direction

PLACEHOLDER, but not arbitrary. Each code is now a reading of the character's own stated traits (from the ICONKIND DNA board) against five fixed axes, so there is something coherent to react to. Row 1 ENERGY still→lively · row 2 HEART private→warm · row 3 MIND instinctive→thoughtful · row 4 COURAGE careful→bold · row 5 ROOTS wandering→grounded. A score of 1-9 per axis spreads across that row's three positions, so total ink = strength on that axis: Spark's ENERGY and COURAGE rows are full, Pebble's ROOTS row is full, Wisp's and Orbit's MIND rows are full.

Because every position renders (blanks as faint pills), a trait-derived code cannot wreck the block's shape — the footprint is constant whatever the numbers say, so meaning and aesthetics are not competing. To re-direct a character, change its five numbers; nothing else moves.

Props — a held item, not a worn one

New rig slot. Worn things belong in `costume` and move with the body for free; a prop is what a character is DOING something with — and for the Explorer that is the whole premise. Held on his left (viewer's right) because his case hangs on the other hip; a prop and a bag on the same side read as a pile. Painted last, because whatever you are holding is in front of you — and erased in the rear view, because from behind your own body hides it. The Adventure Log narrator now carries the map, as he does in every reference on the board.