Extract Visual Style 2

Extract Visual Style 2

Purpose

Turn visual evidence into a reusable, production-ready visual system. Explain how the images work, not merely what they contain. Preserve evidence discipline, content/style separation, character/background/coexistence controls, and prompt modules, then extend them into project-level color, lighting, space, composition, material, effects, compositing, and acceptance systems.

Do not generate images or videos unless the user explicitly requests generation in the same request.

Route the task

1. Always read references/output-contract.md.
2. Classify the source and read the matching medium reference:
   • animation, anime, illustration, motion comic, painted animation, or stylized CG: read references/animation.md
   • live-action film, television, commercial, documentary, music video, or photographic AI-video target: read references/film.md
   • hybrid work: read both
3. Select one operating mode:
   • Quick extraction: concise style identity, stable core, important conditionals, and requested prompt.
   • Full transferable system: complete character, background, coexistence, film/motion, prompt, evidence, and confidence structure.
   • Project style bible: when the user asks for a visual bible, art-direction guide, project style specification, series consistency system, or team generation standard, also read references/project-style-bible.md.
   • Calibration: when generated results are supplied, diagnose and replace faulty rules instead of accumulating negatives.
4. Honor the requested scope. Explicit exclusions such as no concrete content, no aspect ratio, no artist names, no prompts, analysis only, or background only are hard limits.

Audit the evidence

Inspect every supplied image or usable frame before drafting. For video, sample materially different moments when tools permit. If only stills, posters, trailers, publicity images, or secondary sources are available, state that limit next to the affected conclusion.

Use these adequacy labels:

• one sample: provisional single-sample style
• two to five varied samples: tentative shared style
• six or more varied samples covering different subjects, environments, lighting conditions, and shot sizes: stronger series-level evidence

For each important rule, record:

• visible evidence
• sample coverage
• stable, conditional, or scene-specific status
• observed, inferred, proposed, or unknown status
• confidence: high, medium, or low

Never infer a specific camera, lens model, sensor, stock, LUT, software, or production method from appearance alone. Verify production facts or describe only the visible effect.

Separate four kinds of information

Privately classify source information before writing:

1. Content: identities, objects, locations, actions, story events, costume specifics, logos, and text.
2. Transferable style: shape grammar, edge behavior, color roles, lighting logic, texture, space, composition, motion, and finishing.
3. Production locks: user-approved aspect ratio, delivery size, medium, compositing purpose, continuity requirements, or model constraints.
4. Scene locks: content or geometry required only for a particular scene or shot.

Keep scene locks out of the global style core. Keep production locks visible in project specifications, but omit them from content-free prompts when the user excludes them.

Build the style architecture

Organize every rule into three layers:

1. Stable core: repeated across most suitable samples and safe across the project.
2. Conditional variants: changes with character identity, location, time, weather, shot size, emotional function, or narrative emphasis.
3. Scene-specific locks: required only for one scene or shot and never presented as universal style.

Do not average away meaningful differences. A coherent project does not require identical brightness, palette, texture density, or motion in every scene; it requires consistent governing logic.

Map the visual systems

Analyze only relevant systems, but keep their responsibilities distinct:

• Project identity: the few invariants whose loss would make the work feel like a different project.
• Rendering and shape: medium, construction, silhouette, line, edge, anatomy, and abstraction.
• Color: base environment, local/material color, accents, complexion, value, and saturation hierarchy.
• Lighting: source, direction, quality, exposure, shadow, practical motivation, atmosphere, and subject landing zone.
• Space: depth layers, scale references, perspective, occlusion, reveal, path, enclosure, and navigability.
• Composition and lens: shot-size tendency, camera height, focal tendency, negative space, symmetry, framing, and focal placement.
• Material: surface structure, roughness, reflectance, wear, age, moisture, translucency, and prohibited substitutions.
• Character: proportion, face, identity variation, hair, clothing, local color, and texture.
• Background: geometry, grouping, detail density, palette, atmosphere, depth, and environmental motion.
• Coexistence and compositing: shared light, color temperature, grain, sharpness, overlap, scale, subject zone, and clean-plate usability.
• Effects physics: source, attachment, propagation path, intensity, falloff, environmental response, and temporal behavior.
• Motion and time: subject motion, camera motion, cadence, acceleration, settling, focus, blur, texture stability, and cutting rhythm.

For each rule, name the owning system. Do not let color perform the job of anatomical structure, fog perform the job of depth everywhere, grading replace production design, or effects lighting ignore the surrounding material response.