| name | manga-visual-design |
| description | Create or revise the visual-design layer for manga projects: shared DESIGN.md, black-and-white style presets, character sheets, reference authority, direct-render style locks, scene/prop briefs, and style-drift gates. Use for character design, style bible work, or when references are causing monochrome manga drift. |
Manga Visual Design
This skill owns the visual contract. It is separate from page rendering. Character sheets, scene sheets, prop sheets, and style tests are design assets, not substitutes for a story script.
Shared DESIGN.md
Every manga project must have one canonical design/DESIGN.md. If it does not exist, create it from references/DESIGN-template.md and choose one black-and-white preset. All manga-facing skills must read that project file before writing prompts or rendering pages.
For black-and-white manga, write the reference rule explicitly: color references are identity and construction references only. Ignore hue, saturation, lighting color, colored gradients, and palette. Preserve silhouette, age, body mass, face construction, costume layers, prop geometry, material wear, and spatial structure.
Reference Authority
The default final-page reference set is character-only. Character sheets are allowed to anchor identity, age, silhouette, body mass, face construction, costume layers, carried objects, dirt, and damage states. They must not donate color, lighting, page layout, or sheet composition.
Scene and prop sheets are design assets first. Use them to stabilize language in DESIGN.md, briefs, and prompts. Do not pass them into final page renders unless the user explicitly chooses stricter object or environment control. The direct-render test showed that character-only references let the model compose stronger pages, while excessive reference images can pull the page toward design-sheet logic.
The authority order is: project DESIGN.md, page script story function, character references, exact text policy, then optional scene/prop references.
Design Assets
Write character design briefs under design/characters/, scene design briefs under design/scenes/, and prop/effect briefs under design/props/. Use the templates in templates/.
Each brief must answer how the design serves story pressure. A beautiful design with no narrative job is not production-ready.
When generating design images, use the pipeline wrapper from manga-adaptation-pipeline/scripts/render_with_gpt_image2.sh. Design prompts must include DESIGN.md, but they should not pretend to be final pages. Use design sheets for stable identity and construction; use page prompts for story action.
For black-and-white direct renders, prefer hard ink character sheets with clean white background and no rendered labels. If labels are needed, keep them outside the image file in the brief. Text generated inside design sheets tends to leak pseudo-writing into page props.
Page Style Carryover
Every final page prompt must paste or restate the active style lock from DESIGN.md. It must explicitly say pure black-and-white ink, white page field, heavy expressive linework, sparse solid blacks, hatching only, no color, no gray wash, no soft gradients, no digital airbrush, no glossy 3D lighting, and no decorative fake text.
Drift Gates
Reject designs that introduce color wash into a monochrome project, glossy digital paint, soft gradient lighting, photoreal texture, 3D rendering, clean vector line, cute/chibi proportions, fashion-poster posing, or generic fantasy prettiness. Also reject designs that cannot be recognized as the same character after rain, injury, small panels, side views, back views, or damaged clothing.
For direct English pages, reject prompts that ask the model to render dense labels on talismans, ledgers, shop signs, or small slips unless the text is truly plot-critical. Prefer blank surfaces, ruled lines, abstract seals, or later manual lettering.
