Chapter 2: Deliverable Types

Created by Sarah Choi (prompt writer using ChatGPT)

Deliverable Types for Costume Concept Artists (Silhouettes, Turnarounds, Breakdowns, Callouts, Variant Packs)

Why Deliverables Matter

Costume concept art lives or dies on handoff. A strong idea that is poorly packaged creates expensive ambiguity downstream; a clear, well‑scoped deliverable turns vision into shared instructions that design, animation, rigging, materials, cloth sim, UI, marketing, and vendors can execute without guesswork. Whether you operate on the concepting side or the production side, your deliverables are the contract that preserves identity, role, and readability across engines, platforms, and schedules.

Indie vs AAA: Scope, Depth, and Surfaces of Collaboration

In indie pipelines, deliverables combine into compact, multi‑purpose pages because the same artist often touches ideation through implementation. The emphasis is on decisiveness, reuse, and systemization: silhouettes that double as UI icons, turnarounds that also show seam logic, and variant packs that remix trims to stretch budget. In AAA pipelines, specialization increases granularity and review rounds. Deliverables become modular packets that travel to dedicated teams—tech art, cloth, outsource, licensing—each requiring deeper measurement, metadata, and approvals. The intent is the same across both spaces, but the fidelity, audit trail, and number of stakeholders expand with team size.

Silhouettes: Establish the Read Before the Detail

Silhouette sheets prove the character’s identity and role at a glance. A good silhouette page presents a family of poses or neutral stands that test mass distribution, negative space, and accessory placement at gameplay scale. Effective sheets include a range of distance tests (tiny thumbnails to mid‑range crops) to ensure the outer contour carries the design without interior detailing. For concepting, silhouettes let you explore multiple options quickly and converge on a direction the team can approve with minimal polish. For production, they anchor decisions about cloak lengths, backpack masses, and shoulder widths that affect collision, camera occlusion, and weapon reads. When the silhouette holds, downstream teams build with confidence; when it doesn’t, no amount of texture can save the design.

Turnarounds: The Orthographic Truth

Turnarounds—front, side, back, and any special views—translate expressive sketches into manufacturable forms. They clarify proportion, layering order, seam flow, and attachment routing with enough precision that modeling, tailoring, and rigging can reproduce them without interpretation. In indie, a single page often bundles the full ortho with a few strategically placed section cuts or exploded views to show hidden closures. In AAA, orthos are augmented with measurement bars, body‑type variants, accessory callouts, and rigging notes such as bone anchors or cloth pin constraints. The turnaround is where romantic brushwork becomes stitch logic: darts at the waist, gussets under the arm, slit placements on capes, and hem clearances for run and crouch cycles. It is also where you freeze naming conventions for parts, so materials, shaders, and outsource files speak the same language.

Breakdowns: Materials, Layers, and Mobility

Breakdown pages answer “what is this made of,” “how does it layer,” and “what can move.” A thorough breakdown enumerates each garment or plate with material intent (fabric type, weave direction, thickness proxy, roughness/metallic expectations) and explains how layers overlap at stress points. It distinguishes deforming zones from rigid inserts and marks anchor points for straps, holsters, and harnesses across common poses. In indie contexts, breakdowns often lean on a controlled palette of trims and fabrics that can be reused project‑wide, with shorthand labels that map to a shared library. In AAA, the breakdown expands into micro‑detail scale, wear maps, shader parameters, and per‑LOD notes to avoid specular shimmer or pattern aliasing. Mobility diagrams—simple line passes over run, jump, and crouch thumbnails—prevent late‑stage surprises when cloth sim and animation meet.

Callouts: Remove Ambiguity, Preserve Momentum

Callouts are the marginalia that turn art into instruction. Well‑written callouts are short, specific, and action‑oriented: they identify exact relationships (“double‑needle topstitch, 6 mm apart”), state intent (“cape edge remains crisp—stays biased with interfacing, not sim”), and warn of risks (“avoid moiré—scale plaid to 2× for marketing camera”). On the concepting side, callouts communicate design purpose so production doesn’t over‑optimize away identity. On the production side, they document decisions for audit and outsourcing, capturing why a choice exists and under what conditions it may flex. In indie, callouts carry more jobs—brief, spec, and QA checklist combined—because fewer people touch the asset. In AAA, callouts cross‑reference task tickets, shader presets, and cloth profiles so each department can pick up exactly what they need.

Variant Packs: Systemize Style, Support Live‑Ops

Variant packs articulate how a base costume branches without breaking world logic. A good pack organizes changes by rationale: rank upgrades, regional swaps, seasonal events, monetized skins, or progression wear. It keeps identity anchors stable—silhouette class, emblem grammar, and key trims—while allowing palette shifts, fabric substitutions, and accessory exchanges that fit the fiction. For indie, a tight variant matrix—perhaps three palette lanes and two accessory sets—stretches content while keeping authoring cost predictable. For AAA, variant packs anticipate tiered rarity, marketing tie‑ins, and platform‑specific requirements; they include compliant logos, legal notes for licensed fabrics, and guidance for trailer shots and figurines. Across both, the variant philosophy is teachable: a page that explains why alterations are allowed helps dozens of artists extend the design coherently over time.

The Collaboration Map: Who Consumes Each Deliverable and How

Silhouettes primarily serve design, UI, and marketing by locking the character’s big read and iconable shapes. Turnarounds serve modeling, rigging, and cloth sim by defining structure and deformation logic. Breakdowns serve materials/shaders and lookdev by specifying reflectance, micro‑detail, and aging. Callouts serve everyone by capturing decisions and risks in place, linking intent to implementation. Variant packs serve production, live‑ops, and licensing by forecasting content cadence and safeguarding brand coherence. Each deliverable should also expose a short risk ledger—known collision zones, pattern alias risks, palette hazards under night or fog—so QA and production can plan mitigation early.

Packaging and Metadata: Make the Page Usable

Deliverables become durable when they’re predictable. Use consistent page architecture—title block with character ID and body type, version string, date, author, and contact; a materials legend with tokens that match shader library names; and a numbered index so reviewers can refer to sections quickly. Keep vector insignia and trims separate, link to shared paths, and include a readme manifest that enumerates files and dependencies. In indie, this organization keeps chaos in check. In AAA, it allows many teams to swarm an asset without stepping on each other.

Validation: Prove the Read and the Buildability

Before you ship a deliverable, stress test it. Do a grayscale thumbnail pass to validate value hierarchy. Run a 50‑pixel/50%/5‑second glance check to simulate gameplay recognition. Drop the ortho into a rough 3D blockout or mannequin to confirm proportion and clearance. Annotate one sprint pose and one crouch pose to validate cloak and strap behavior. If a risk appears, document the mitigation in the callouts and flag the stakeholder on the collaboration map who must sign off.

Roles on Concepting vs Production Sides

Concepting artists own problem framing and proof: they define the silhouette, propose palette/value safety, author the first turnaround, and write callouts that capture identity logic. Production artists own manufacturability and consistency: they translate paint into stitch, seam, and shader truth; expand breakdowns with measured parameters; normalize naming; and police deviations that threaten readability or role. Hand‑offs between the two are healthiest when accompanied by a concise risk note and a change log, so the history of decisions survives schedule pressure.

Definition of Done by Deliverable Type

A silhouette sheet is done when the outer contour sells identity and role at gameplay distance without internal detailing. A turnaround is done when a modeler can build it and a rigger can plan deformations without contacting you. A breakdown is done when lookdev can match the surface intent and cloth sim can set weights and constraints from the page alone. A callout pass is done when the page answers “how” and “why” for any non‑obvious choice. A variant pack is done when downstream teams can produce two or more additional looks that feel canonical, and marketing can plan a campaign without new art.

Common Failure Modes and Fixes

When silhouettes fail, the fix is not more interior detail but clearer mass and negative‑space design—reblock the cape, shift shoulder height, or remove accessory clutter. When turnarounds fail, it’s usually missing seam logic or unclear scale—add measurement bars, draw section cuts, and annotate closures. When breakdowns fail, it’s often a mismatch between painted look and shader reality—convert adjectives to parameters and micro‑pattern scale. When callouts fail, they’re vague or exhaustive—write precisely where it matters and link to canonical references instead of repeating them. When variant packs fail, identity anchors drift—create an anchor list and enforce it across all variants.

Final Thought

Deliverables are not red tape; they are multiplication. Each page turns one artist’s intent into the work of many. Design them to be read by busy experts, stress‑test them like products, and keep the collaboration map visible. Do that, and your costumes will move through indie and AAA pipelines with fewer questions, faster approvals, and a longer, healthier life in the game.