Art Direction

---
name: art-direction
description: Establish and review a visual art direction with clear principles, references, constraints, quality bars, and consistency across assets.
---
# Art Direction

Use when a project needs a coherent visual language across multiple artists, assets, or scenes.

## Procedure
1. Define the emotional, narrative, brand, and product goals the visual direction must serve.
2. Build a reference set and explain what should be taken from each reference rather than relying on mood boards alone.
3. Establish principles for shape language, composition, palette, material, lighting, detail, texture, camera, and stylization as relevant.
4. Define constraints imposed by platform, performance, pipeline, accessibility, or production capacity.
5. Create representative target examples or briefs for difficult asset classes.
6. Review work against the principles and desired experience, not personal taste.
7. Update the direction when production evidence shows a rule is impractical or inconsistent.

## Quality gate
Different contributors should be able to make compatible visual decisions without copying one reference image.