Explainer Assets

Explainer assets — generating components and source art properly

Every asset in an explainer is either a component (chips, bars, cards, stamps — styled DOM), a prop (vessels, pages, cabinets, gauges — inline SVG), a character (host mascot, population minions — SVG factories), or an environment layer (parallax worlds — data-URI or inline SVG). Each has its own build discipline. The difference between "styled div" and "crafted object" is a fixed sequence of cheap moves — never skill, always order.

The universal build order (any prop, every time)

1. Silhouette first. Flat single-fill shape at the FINAL footprint (left/top/width/height and viewBox locked before any detail). Get the read at thumbnail size — if the silhouette doesn't say "bucket," no amount of detail will.
2. One light source, top-left, film-wide. Then: 2-tone via linear-gradient(180deg, lighter, base) on the body, top gloss (inset 0 2px 0 rgba(255,255,255,.3-.5) or a highlight path), bottom shade (inset 0 -3px 0 rgba(0,0,0,.1)).
3. Depth cues — the 3 that sell 3D: a DARKER inner-opening ellipse for any mouth/rim (this single ellipse is what makes an opening read as 3D); a soft base-contact shadow ellipse; inter-unit shadow lines between stacked parts (drawers, sheets).
4. Detail pass — 3 to 5 accents max: bands/hoops with a 1px white highlight edge, label plates, grain lines, corner ticks, a specular curve. Stop before it gets busy; Kurzgesagt props are simple shapes with perfect light.
5. Motion hooks LAST, planned not patched: the class the timeline will target, a wrapper <g> for any transform the animation will own, and the pivot decided NOW (see svgOrigin below). An asset built without motion hooks gets rebuilt.

Component systems before one-offs

Never style one chip. Build the SYSTEM in CSS once — every variant inherits:

• The sticker recipe: hard down-right ink drop (3px 3px 0 var(--ink)) + top gloss inset + bottom shade inset + inset 0 0 0 1-2px rgba(255,255,255,.14) die-cut rim. Translucent insets ride ANY background color, light or dark — one rule elevates every variant.
• One radius scale (sm 10 / base 13 / lg 16), one shadow angle, one light direction.
• Text-safe rule: on components carrying animated text (SplitText chars), gloss must be inset box-shadows (paint UNDER text) — never a positioned ::before overlay (paints OVER the glyphs and dims them).
• Stamps get ink-bleed: same-hue soft text-shadow (glyphs) or shared drop-shadow filter (SVG marks).
• Drawn line-art (arrows, boxes): ONE selector — filter: drop-shadow(0 1.5px .5px rgba(0,0,0,.17)) on all .drw strokes gives every arrow a 2-tone underside and reveals WITH DrawSVG (filters are independent of dashoffset).

Character factories

Characters are JS functions returning SVG strings, not static markup — one edit upgrades every instance.

• Singleton host (one instance, e.g. the flying mascot): MAY carry uid-suffixed <defs> gradients ('bwg'+uid) for iridescent wings, radial antenna balls, body sheen. Expose a faces API (host('aha'|'sad'|'happy', size)) — swap eyes/brows/mouth blocks, keep everything else.
• Multi-instance minions (inlined 10-50×): must be id-FREE — plain fills only (wing vein stroke, top highlight ellipse, stripe highlight lines, cheek dot) or gradient ids duplicate across the document and break rendering.
• Class-hook contract: wrapper classes the CSS animates (hwrap bob, hwl/hwr wing flutter, heyes blink) are API — never rename during an asset pass without updating CSS + JS + docs together. New decorative transforms go on INNER wrapper <g>s so they compose with (never fight) the CSS animation on the outer hook.
• Ground-contact shadow under every character; badges/accessories as optional factory args.
• Props characters hold get full prop treatment (the pencil: gradient hex body + facet lines + specular, crimped ferrule, eraser cap with darker rim, wood taper with grain, graphite cone — same anchor/axis as the arm rotation expects).

Environments (parallax worlds)

• Three layers with fixed roles: far (sky gradient, sun/moon, haze band, 2-tone volumetric clouds = tinted base ellipse + 3 white circles + bright top ellipse, far hills), mid (hero landmarks — hive/buildings with real detail, layered-petal flowers), near (blurred foreground foliage, CORNERS ONLY so it never covers captions, leaf midribs + side veins).
• Every layer needs a variant per scene mood (warm/paper/cold/dark) — same shapes, recolored; dark gets moon + fireflies.
• Ambient characters (drifting minions, dust motes) live in margins and the top strip only — their full drift path must never cross a text band.

SVG engineering contracts (each one has broken production)

• Pivot planning: a px transformOrigin on an SVG group is BBOX-relative — rebuilding the group's geometry silently moves the pivot (a gauge needle swung off-stage for a full scene this way). For fixed pivots in SVG user-space always use GSAP's svgOrigin:'x y', decided when the asset is built.
• Selector inventory before touching anything: grep the script for every class/positional selector; .bkt3 path means the FIRST <path> must remain the tweened body — lead with <ellipse> shadows, never a decorative path.
• Footprint freeze: re-crafting keeps left/top/width/height/viewBox identical; overflow:visible lets back-sheets/stacks peek without moving the box. Placement changes are a separate, deliberate pass.
• Decorate timeline-driven props with pseudo-elements (::before ruled lines, tape, cracks, meniscus) — they ride the transform with zero new choreography. Track which pseudos are "taken" per class; collisions are silent.
• Hide with autoAlpha (visibility:hidden), not bare opacity/scale — invisible elements must not leave phantom boxes that fool overlap audits.
• Files need <meta charset="utf-8">; HTML entities in DOM text, \u escapes in JS strings.

Quality gates for any new/changed asset

1. Reads correctly at 100% AND at thumbnail scale (the silhouette test).
2. One light direction across the whole frame — a new prop lit differently is a defect.
3. No flat fills on anything bigger than an accent.
4. node --check the script block + full selector-survival checklist after any DOM surgery.
5. Overlap audit (0.5s steps) after placing it — an asset isn't done until it coexists with everything else on stage.