Sarah Clarity Studios

Chapter 3 – Cutaways, Exploded Views, Callout Sheets

Created by Sarah Choi (prompt writer using ChatGPT)

Cutaways, Exploded Views, and Callout Sheets for Story — Space Planning, Circulation, and Furnishing (for Environment Concept Artists)

Why diagrammatic art is storytelling, not just documentation

Cutaways, exploded views, and callout sheets are the clearest way to show how a place works. A single image can reveal the route a visitor takes, the hidden spine of services, the logic of furniture placement, and the props that carry the day’s rituals. When diagrams are treated as narrative art rather than engineering leftovers, they become tools that align concept intent with production, design, lighting, audio, and level scripting. This article explains diagram types, what each is best at, and how to build a diagram pipeline that reads instantly while staying faithful to space planning, circulation, furnishing, workflows, and adjacency.

Choosing the right diagram for the job

Each diagram answers a specific question. A sectional cutaway shows how vertical layers interact, how stairs and ramps meet floors, and how light, air, and view travel through the volume. A plan cutaway clarifies adjacency and the choreography of doors, spines, and service paths with furniture sized to real clearances. An axonometric cutaway preserves scale in all directions and is ideal for multi‑room assemblies, stacked programs, and roof removal while maintaining plan legibility. A perspective cutaway adds mood and depth where story beats matter but should keep section honesty so the viewer trusts the distances. Exploded views pull assemblies apart just enough to explain relationships and assembly order; they are strongest when each layer answers “what this piece does” rather than floating as garnish. Callout sheets are the close‑range storytellers that turn a room into a kit of parts, capturing station logic, prop families, signage, and small wear cues that signal use and time.

Section language that sells circulation and services

A good section reads like a comic panel. The cut plane should slice through door swings, stair runs, and key furniture so the reader can follow a figure from entry to destination in a single glance. Floors should carry a consistent thickness and show structure honestly so heights and headroom are credible. Voids like atria and light wells benefit from a slightly brighter fill to imply air and from arrows that mark stack ventilation or acoustics. Service cores for toilets, risers, elevators, and shafts should be diagrammed as continuous spines with clean chases and the fewest jogs possible; when a jog is needed, call it out and explain why. Level tags, sill heights, and handrail lines give human scale; if a corridor widens at a node, the section is where that widening proves itself.

Plan cutaways that teach adjacency and workflow

Plans succeed when doors, furniture, and circulation cooperate. Draw the public spine from front door to heart as a continuous ribbon with turning radii that match human movement. Mark the service path that reaches storage, prep, and waste without crossing guests. Size tables, benches, machinery, and counters to true clearances so the plan proves it can breathe. Use furniture blocks that show approach sides and reach zones; a sink should tell you where someone stands, a counter where trays land, a machine where a cart parks. Overlay the plan with a soft trace of morning, midday, and evening states if the story hinges on time, letting storage bulge near loading in the morning and seating reclaim space in the evening.

Axonometric and sectional perspectives for stacked programs

Axonometrics carry complex buildings without distortion and are ideal for stacked programs like shopfront below, workshop behind, and living above. Pull the roof and a wall away as if on hinges and let the cut plane pass through stairs and toilets so vertical movement and services remain visible. Sectional perspectives preserve mood while remaining measurable; use them to communicate how a café mezzanine overlooks a kitchen pass or how a gallery wraps around a light court. Keep furniture volumetric and simple so the viewer reads use rather than ornament; detail only the few hero stations that carry the story beat.

Exploded views that explain assembly and set dressing

Exploded views work best when the separation distance is just far enough to see edges and fasteners. For interiors, explode from the ground up: base slab with drains and conduit, partitions keyed to a grid, built‑ins with mounting cleats, furniture kits, then small props and signage. For exteriors, lift the roof as a single module to reveal trusses, ducts, and lights; peel the façade into structural frame, secondary framing, and skin so window families and mullion rhythm remain obvious. Label only what changes or matters to another team: a removable section of counter for cinematics, a ceiling panel that hides a story object, a door with a special swing for gameplay, a storage wall that converts between event states. Treat props as ecosystems by exploding bins, crates, and carts into stacks that imply replenishment, cleaning, and waste cycles.

Callout sheets that turn rooms into kits

A callout sheet translates narrative into repeatable parts. Break the room into stations and give each station its own inset: a prep bench with sink, a nurse station with sightline cones, a ticket window with queuing rails, a tool bay with a pegboard pattern. For each, include a small orthographic sketch with dimensions that matter, a materials swatch with wear logic, and a short sentence on what arrives, what leaves, and where the mess accumulates. Include prop families and states—new, in service, tired—so production has permission to mix age. Add signage conventions and mounting heights once and reuse the same table across rooms and levels to maintain continuity.

Visual hierarchy, line weight, and color language

Legible diagrams share a quiet discipline. Cut lines are the darkest strokes; profiles behind lighten by one step; background structure fades a further step to keep focus at the section. Circulation, services, and airflow read as separate channels by color and stroke: walking routes in one hue, service routes in another, exhaust and supply in a third, each with distinct arrows and line styles. Furniture and props retain material value logic rather than cartoon colors so the diagram remains a believable preview of the scene. Use color sparingly to mark story beats, interactives, and hazards; a single accent for “touch this” does more work than a rainbow. Text faces should be unambiguous at small sizes; avoid all caps for long notes; keep callouts short and specific.

Notation for gameplay, VFX, audio, and cinematics

A diagram is shared currency across teams. Add symbols for cover height, grapple points, vaultable rails, stealth shadows, and sniper sightlines to keep level design inside the same map as architecture. Tag VFX at water, steam, sparks, and dust sources with arrows that show direction of travel and spread; note wind vectors and rain entry for cloth and foliage simulation. Call out audio emitters and acoustic properties so reverb volumes and occlusion planes match section logic; a hard, tall atrium and a soft, low classroom should not sound the same. Indicate camera mount positions, dolly routes, and lock‑off angles if cinematics will frame through the set, and ensure those views are physically possible from your geometry.

Scale, dimensioning, and human reference

Scale is subtly taught by the things people touch. Dimension only the distances that drive behavior—clear widths, riser and tread, counter height, work surface depth, queue length—and keep a consistent unit system per project. Place human silhouettes at representative tasks with reach arcs and field of view cones so a stranger can test the layout with their eyes. Include a quick massing box for large furniture pieces so prop swaps do not break circulation later. Where animals, robots, or vehicles matter, add their envelopes and turning radii; the same diagram can then serve animation and collision.

Time and state, shown cleanly

Spaces change across a day. Show state toggles as overlays rather than new drawings: a faint wash for “event setup,” a dashed outline for “night locked,” a second pass color for “storm routing.” If props migrate, add ghosted silhouettes with an arrow rather than redrawing the whole station. Annotate what triggers the change—closing bell, delivery window, power failure—so scripting has hooks. Keep the number of states small and the visual language consistent; clarity beats completeness.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

Diagrams fail when they are beautiful but unverifiable. If a stair looks elegant but the riser‑tread cadence would exhaust a real body, adjust the geometry before adding labels. If a door opens into a collision with furniture, move the furniture or change the swing. If an exploded view floats parts with no anchoring hardware, add cleats, brackets, and fasteners so assembly is implied. If callouts become a wall of text, split into a second sheet and let images carry the nouns. Remember that every arrow should trace a path that could be walked and every note should point to a feature that exists in geometry.

A workflow from sketch to handoff

Begin with a thumbnail storyboard of the user journey, the service loop, and the escape route. Choose the minimum set of diagrams that will answer all teams’ questions—often one section, one plan, one axon, one exploded, and one callout sheet per room type. Block the set in grayscale with correct line hierarchy, then introduce restrained color for routes and states. Drop in human figures and key props early, dimension the critical clearances, and run a quick plausibility pass with level design and tech art to catch stairs, doors, and shafts. Publish layered source files where masks separate structure, furniture, props, routes, services, and notes so downstream teams can toggle channels. Archive a legend page that defines line styles, arrows, and symbols; reuse the legend across the project so a player who reads one sheet can read them all.

Using diagrams as living documents

As sets evolve, keep diagrams alive. Update clearances when new hero props arrive, refresh exploded stacks when a ceiling grid changes, and revise callouts when safety or accessibility standards shift. Track version dates on title blocks so teams do not chase ghosts. After shipping, diagrams become documentation of what was built; the same clarity that guided the team will help future episodes, DLC, or sequels remain coherent.

Final check

Lay the sheets side by side and ask three questions. Can a new teammate trace the public path, the service path, and the egress without asking you? Can they place the essential furniture and props at correct clearances from the drawings alone? Can they tell where the story beats happen and what assets or VFX make them visible? If the answers are yes, your diagrams are not just attractive—they are faithful, legible, and ready to be built.