# Pitchdog Illustration

> Create, rebuild, refine, or audit pitch.dog's tiny editorial visual poems: full-bleed cool pastel fields, sparse imperfect ink, one restrained accent, huge negative space, an ordinary act, and one impossible relationship, with exact human or dog identity when references exist. Use when the user invokes `$pitchdog-illustration`, explicitly requests pitch.dog illustration style, asks for metaphor thumbnails, family-character likeness work, candidate QA, a coherent illustration series, website placement, or final production handover in this system. Do not apply it to unrelated illustration work.

- Skill: `bomkino/pitchdog-illustration` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 84 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add bomkino/pitchdog-illustration`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/bomkino/pitchdog-illustration/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Design & Media
- Author: bomkino (https://skillmd.com/u/bomkino)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/bomkino/pitchdog-illustration

---


# pitch.dog Illustration

Make one tiny visual poem. Find one impossible truth, draw only what it needs, and stop.

This is not a pastel filter, mascot system, portrait style, prompt suffix, or licence to make everything cute.

## Establish authority

Use this order when instructions conflict:

1. Safety, consent, privacy, rights, and explicit current user constraints.
2. Current locked finals, preserving each file's recorded acceptance status,
   and current subject evidence.
3. The current visual law in [visual law](references/visual-law.md).
4. Exact subject identity, pronouns, relationships, and scale.
5. The locked metaphor and its two-second comprehension.
6. Tool-specific prompting and implementation choices.
7. Earlier reference work and optional polish.

Treat source photographs as identity evidence only. Never let photographic lighting, scenery, realism, or breed shorthand become the rendering brief.

Read `assets/reference-manifest.json` before pixel judgment. In the
`canonical-full-resolution` profile, bundled images are source-pixel authority.
In `chatgpt-portable`, they are sRGB display-calibration derivatives; use each
`sourceSha256` and `canonicalPixelSource` for exact identity, colour, or
artefact adjudication. **Actual-pixel size** means 100% of the file being
reviewed; it does not make a portable derivative canonical resolution.

Use the bundled references in three active tiers:

- **Current execution authority:** `assets/references/approved-22/` and `assets/references/approved-22-contact-sheet.png`.
- **Approved website breadth:** `assets/references/website-30/` and
  `assets/references/website-30-contact-sheet.png`. Use them to understand
  narrative jobs, range, and prior metaphor territory; do not let weaker or
  older production traits override current law. Records `28-go-get-em` and
  `30-lost-page` are explicitly prohibited as current Juno identity or scale
  authority; preserve their metaphor/placement evidence and rebuild Juno from
  current `approved-22` anchors if either job still exists.
- **Conceptual ancestry:** `assets/references/golden-six/`. Learn wit, relationship, and editorial economy; current law overrides their yellow cast, white stages, clutter, and larger motifs.

Read [reference system](references/reference-system.md) before using bundled images. Do not copy a composition or noun-swap an approved metaphor.
Use [approved catalog](references/approved-catalog.md) when captions, mechanisms, or subject-specific precedent matter.
Use [website approved catalog](references/website-approved-catalog.md) before proposing new site illustrations.

## Choose the operating mode

| Mode | Job |
| --- | --- |
| **Create** | Conceive and generate one new illustration. Default. |
| **Series** | Build several related illustrations, one complete image at a time. |
| **Identity** | Establish or repair an exact human or animal character lock. |
| **Refine** | Make one surgical edit when the concept is alive and the failure is bounded. |
| **Audit** | Diagnose a supplied candidate without generating or changing it. |
| **Placement** | Map illustrations to website, deck, editorial, or campaign jobs before making them. |
| **Handover** | Package finals, metadata, checksums, contact sheets, and status truth. |

Infer the mode. Ask one question only when missing rights, identity evidence, output dimensions, or a high-consequence choice makes a responsible default impossible. Otherwise state any consequential assumption and work.

## Follow the mode path

### Create and Series

For each illustration:

1. **Recover the job.** Name audience, medium, placement, subject, emotional truth, dimensions, and protected facts.
2. **Inspect authority.** Open the contact sheet, two to four relevant current finals at actual-pixel size for the active profile, and subject evidence. Keep style and identity inputs labelled separately.
3. **Lock identity.** Record decisive silhouette, proportions, colour geometry, clothing, pronouns, scale, and relationship cues. Read [identity and relationships](references/identity-and-relationships.md) whenever a real person, animal, or group appears.
4. **Write a real metaphor field.** Use eight to twelve compact verbal
   thumbnails; ten is the default, not a padding quota. Kill literal, familiar,
   decorative, overstuffed, unequal, and caption-dependent premises. Read
   [metaphor engine](references/metaphor-engine.md).
5. **Lock one relationship.** Define familiar thing, impossible behaviour, ordinary act, emotional truth, and remembered silhouette.
6. **Generate one candidate.** Use a clean, labelled prompt and the strongest available image tool. Generate the image, not merely a prompt, unless the user asks only for prompting. Read [prompting and tools](references/prompting-and-tools.md).
7. **Inspect at actual-pixel size.** Also test at thumbnail scale. Compare directly with current finals and at least one conceptual ancestor.
8. **Decide:** promote, revise once, or kill. Use [QA and rejection](references/qa-and-rejection.md). Never iterate because work already exists.
9. **Record the decision.** Preserve rejected evidence and the reason. Put candidates in `qa/`; never make existence imply approval.
10. **Finish the final.** Add caption, metaphor rationale, placement, alt text, dimensions, status, and SHA-256 checksum.

For a series, complete this loop before beginning the next image. Reopen a current authority image after every promotion; reopen the contact sheet after every third.

### Identity

Build a written [character lock](templates/character-lock.md) from labelled
identity evidence before concept work. If the user requests an identity anchor,
generate and inspect it as a separate deliverable; do not mistake that anchor
for an illustration or approval. Then enter Create or Refine.

### Refine

Inspect the supplied image at actual-pixel size, compare it with the relevant identity
and style authorities, and name one bounded failure. Preserve the source. Edit
only that failure and restate all invariants. Inspect the revision at actual-pixel size
and thumbnail scale. If the concept, identity, and composition are not already
alive—or if two systems are wrong—kill the candidate and return to Create.

### Audit

Remain read-only. Inspect at actual-pixel size and thumbnail scale, compare directly
with authorities, and return one verdict using [QA and rejection](references/qa-and-rejection.md):
`PROMOTE`, `REVISE ONCE`, or `KILL`. Cite observable evidence. Do not generate,
edit, promote, publish, or invent owner acceptance.

### Placement

Read [website inventory](references/website-inventory.md), the current content
authority, and the approved catalogs. Return `make`, `reuse`, `move`, `hold`, or
`leave empty` for each proven narrative need. Do not generate unless the request
also authorizes Create or Series.

### Handover

Do not generate unless an actual missing asset is in scope. Audit finals,
status, dimensions, metadata, checksums, contact sheet, rejected evidence,
privacy, and package integrity using [production and provenance](references/production-and-provenance.md).

## Hold the visual law

Every current-style image needs:

- one full-bleed cool pale pastel field;
- a clean field without added grain or noise;
- sparse, slightly imperfect near-black ink;
- one restrained signal accent with semantic work;
- a small lower or lower-middle motif;
- roughly 80% calm negative space;
- one familiar thing;
- one impossible behaviour;
- one ordinary act of care, curiosity, nerve, attention, or practical wit;
- one remembered silhouette;
- two-second comprehension without caption rescue.

Identity colours may remain truthful; they are not permission for decorative palette growth. White may exist inside a subject or object, never as a floating stage or card.

Preserve texture already intrinsic to approved source art. Do not add, amplify,
or copy that texture into new work; its presence in an older reference is not a
requirement. Do not alter approved originals to make them conform retroactively.

Reject yellow, amber, sepia, mustard, or cream AI cast; glossy vector polish; 3D volume; pet-portrait realism; cinematic light; scenery; multiple jokes; filler; arrows; symbol soup; generic cuteness; greeting-card sentiment; corporate mascot energy; and children's-book sweetness.

## Build the metaphor before the prompt

Use this grammar:

> A specific subject performs one ordinary act on one familiar thing; the thing behaves impossibly; that changed physics reveals an emotional truth.

The subject is the actor, not the concept. The caption may name the turn; it must not manufacture it.

Prefer physical verbs: hold, fold, carry, listen, cool, mend, seat, shelter, loosen, wind, steady. Distrust abstract nouns, icon shorthand, inspirational transformation, and language more vivid than the drawable relationship.

Do not force every concept into a black obstacle, knot, path, bridge, door, storm, or light source. Repeated physics makes a series feel generated even when each frame is competent.

## Prompt with invariants

Structure production prompts in this order:

1. deliverable and intended use;
2. reference-image roles by index;
3. locked visual relationship;
4. composition and scale;
5. exact identity cues;
6. current visual language;
7. what must remain invariant;
8. explicit exclusions;
9. output size and file requirements.

For edits, say **change only X** and restate every invariant. Make one diagnostic change per iteration. If two or more systems are wrong, regenerate from the locked metaphor.

Never use a named living artist as a shortcut. Describe visible mechanisms and use pitch.dog's own licensed references.

## Decide without approval theatre

Default internal behavior:

- self-reject weak candidates;
- continue through the requested batch;
- promote only images that pass every gate;
- do not pause after each candidate for ritual approval;
- do not present avoidable options when one direction is clearly stronger.

Use an owner checkpoint only when the user explicitly requires one, intimacy or likeness remains genuinely ambiguous, rights are unresolved, or an irreversible public action needs authorization. Distinguish **agent-checked**, **owner-accepted**, and **published**. Never invent owner acceptance.

If batch autonomy has been granted, finish the batch. A later owner verdict can supersede any internal decision.

## Keep identity exact and humane

Preserve body, face, hair, coat, proportions, clothing language, mobility aids, age, skin tone, markings, pronouns, and relationships. Do not make a person thinner, younger, lighter, prettier, more feminine, or more masculine by model default. Do not turn an animal into a breed approximation.

Use only decisive cues. Exact identity does not require realism; over-rendering destroys editorial economy.

For groups, assign equal narrative dignity. Make scale relationships explicit. Shared work must be visually shared; no accidental heroine, mascot, sidekick, or diminished body.

## Review proportionally

Run these gates:

- **Metaphor:** one visible impossible relationship; no caption dependency.
- **Identity:** the specific subject survives at thumbnail and actual-pixel size.
- **Style:** current field, ink, accent, material restraint, and negative space.
- **Composition:** one remembered silhouette; no scenery or filler.
- **Soul:** specific attention, emotional truth, wit, warmth, and an earned stop.
- **Technical:** clean output, intended dimensions, no stray text, marks, limbs, halos, or crop failures.
- **Provenance:** correct status, source boundary, metadata, checksum, and preserved rejected evidence.

Soul is a judgment, not a numerical score. A technically correct image can still fail.

## Finish series and placements

Before expanding a website or campaign set, read [website inventory](references/website-inventory.md). Illustrations need narrative jobs, not a quota. Avoid duplicate metaphors and decorative repetition.

For production structure, metadata, manifests, and handover, read [production and provenance](references/production-and-provenance.md). Use the supplied [brief](templates/illustration-brief.md), [character lock](templates/character-lock.md), [thumbnail sheet](templates/metaphor-thumbnails.md), [candidate review](templates/candidate-review.md), and [final record](templates/final-metadata.md) when durable records help.

Read [anti-patterns](references/anti-patterns.md) when work feels polished but dead. Use [calibration](references/calibration.md) to learn mechanisms, never compositions.

## Stop correctly

Stop when the requested images exist, each passes actual-pixel and series-level review, exact identity survives, metadata and checksums are complete, and no stronger unresolved failure remains.

Built is not rendered. Rendered is not checked. Checked is not owner-accepted. Owner-accepted is not published.

The final test:

> It feels as if a sharp, tender human cartoonist found one impossible truth, drew only what it needed, and stopped.