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Base-only M03 recipe, 64/48/32 sprite budget, style-LoRA reservation for tiles/icons. Art direction = watercolor scenery (waterland-dev) + pixel sprites; ratified to advisor CONCEPT.md 3eeeaf4.
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Retro Diffusion — M03 sprite-ideation findings
Durable record of what the batch-01/02 ideation runs established about driving the local RD stack for U R M03 sprites. Design canon for the art direction lives in the advisor repo (CONCEPT.md § Technology & art direction); this is the implementation-side how-to.
Status: IDEATION / pipeline proof. Shipped sprites are human-authored (asset policy). M03's canonical visual reference is locked (syn02/syn04b, advisor repo). These findings say how to make RD propose sprites, not what ships.
Art direction (operator, 2026-08-14)
Watercolor backgrounds + scenery, pixel-art sprites. Scenery pipeline is owned by waterland-dev (watercolor generation stack). Sprite ideation is the local RD base checkpoint, below. Per-asset direction dials in later.
The M03 sprite recipe
- Base
rd_pixel_v14+ repairedrd_vae_v14, NO style LoRA. On this checkpoint the un-LoRA'd base is the only config that holds M03 as a character; every style LoRA imposes an object/subject prior that displaces the subject (character LoRAs → fantasy battle units / cyclops; flatshading → lanterns; frontfacing+trigger → pots; 1bit → abstraction). - Render 512×512, downscale nearest-neighbor to the target budget (512 is above the model's floor; 128 direct is mush).
- Foreground wanted features positively; do not rely on negatives — a
strong prior beats a negative on this checkpoint (cfg 7.0). The base's
own weak negative let
pedestal/busy backgroundthrough repeatedly. - Signature detail first in the prompt (objects, never abstractions/animal similes — "column legs on flat pads", not "elephant feet").
Sprite budget (resolves the sprite-grid open question)
Readable-detail floor tracks feature-size-relative-to-frame, not a fixed number:
- 64px — full-body sprite; silhouette + mismatched-eye read both hold.
- 48px — bust/head-dominant crop only; a full-body sprite loses small features (recessed lens dissolves).
- 32px — blob-squint silhouette only.
Mismatched eyes
Diffusion CAN render them — the base drew a large pale lens beside a small
dark recessed lens unaided at 64px (batch 02, I_s1004/I_s1001). So the
eyes are NOT forced to be hand-authored by a pipeline limitation (though
MOE.md's "authored, not procedural" may still hold them by choice).
Style-LoRA reservation
The 24 style LoRAs are counterproductive for the hero character but are
the right tool for tiles / icons / environment props — tiling*,
gameicons, uipanel, console-palette LoRAs — where an object/style
prior is a feature. Reserved for whenever environment-prop work starts
(scenery itself is watercolor via waterland-dev, not RD).
Trigger words
See lora-triggers.md (this dir) for the full per-LoRA trigger map.
Batch briefs
batch-01-brief.md, batch-02-brief.md (this dir) — the run specs and
their booth results (booths ephemeral, ~24h).