Chapter 2: Silhouette + Value Checks for Color‑Blind Safety

Created by Sarah Choi (prompt writer using ChatGPT)

Silhouette & Value Checks for Color‑Blind Safety for Character Concept Artists

Why silhouette and value are your first accessibility tools

Most players read characters at a glance, under motion, and through post‑effects. For the ~8% of players with color‑vision differences (CVD) and anyone on low‑contrast displays, silhouette and value are the primary carriers of meaning. If your design communicates class, threat, team, and interaction via shape and luminance alone, hue becomes a welcome bonus rather than a single point of failure. This article shows how to build silhouette‑first, value‑robust characters across heads, hair, outfits, palettes, and decals—balancing budgets, readability, and inclusion for both concepting and production.

The readable stack: shape → value → material → hue

Design your reads in a fixed order. Shape (macro silhouette and gesture) announces role and motion. Value (light–dark contrast) separates masses and preserves facial landmarks. Material (spec/roughness patterns) adds legibility under lighting changes. Hue then enriches identity but never carries critical information by itself. Build boards that prove each layer can stand alone. When hue fails (CVD filters, night scenes, fog), the other layers should still hold.

Establishing value rails and contrast budgets

A value rail is the allowed luminance range for a palette channel or garment family. By limiting overlap between rails, you avoid mid‑tone mush where edges disappear. For example: Primary cloth 30–45% luminance, Secondary armor 50–65%, Accent trims 70–85%, Emissive highlights 90–100% (small area only). Rails are not rigid; they’re guardrails that keep the composition readable across biomes. Note these rails on your palette sheets so texturing adheres to the same intent without inventing new values that collapse separation.

Macro silhouette checkpoints (all slots)

Start with a black‑on‑white silhouette pass for the whole set—front, profile, and gameplay three‑quarter. Heads and hair should form a readable cranial ellipse with a clean eyeline notch; outerwear should not merge with backpacks or capes at the neck when reduced to silhouette. Bulky gloves must flare or bevel away from sleeves; boot shapes must step away from trousers at the ankle. If two adjacent slots produce a flat tangent or single blob at distance, introduce negative space (vents, hem cutaways, collar chamfers) or shift volumes between Slim/Standard/Bulky fit classes until the silhouette breaks cleanly.

Value‑only plates and “hue‑off” verification

Every hero board should include a value‑only render (grayscale or desaturated with preserved luminance) at the target gameplay size. If class, faction, and role are still obvious, your value rails work. Follow with a hue‑off verification strip: four thumbnails of the same pose under neutral, warm dusk, cool overcast, and interior hard key. Move the lighting, not the textures; value separations that survive these shifts will survive shipping.

Heads: facial landmarks that hold without hue

Faces must communicate attention, emotion, and team even when skin tones and makeup hues converge. Emphasize the brow ridge, eye sockets, nose bridge, philtrum, and mouth corners via value structure (cast shadows, occlusion) that remains in grayscale. Eyewear and face covers should respect eyeline windows; design their rims with local contrast (rim lighter or darker than adjacent skin) instead of relying on color. Facial hair and brows should resolve into chunked shapes that read as dark‑on‑light or light‑on‑dark at gameplay size, avoiding mid‑value fuzz that vanishes under TAA.

Hair: readable masses and controlled sheen

Hair is often painted primarily by hue; shift to massed value design. Group strands into clumps whose tops and undersides step in value so the hair volume reads against collars and headgear. Keep specular streaks broad and few; micro sheens glitter and then disappear, harming readability and creating accessibility noise. For dyed tips, ensure the terminal value differs from the neighbor garment, so the edge persists even when the dye hue is indistinguishable in CVD.

Outfits: paneling and trim that survive grayscale

Panel breaks, quilting, and seam families exist to separate planes. Assign alternating value steps between adjacent panels, and let material contrast (matte vs. satin, brushed vs. polished) carry separation when hue cannot. Capes and skirts should avoid sitting at the same average value as torsos; add a band of trim or a shadowed facing that creates a value step at the waist/hip. Armor plates should include baked recess shading or paintwear edges that remain legible in grayscale thumbnails.

Palettes: redundancy by design

Build identity with redundancy. Faction language should combine a unique silhouette motif (collar profile, cape cut, crest geometry), a value signature (dark torso + light arms, or vice versa), and then a hue scheme. In your palette sheets, show deuteranopia/protanopia/tritanopia simulations beside grayscale and ensure the identity still reads. If two factions crash in CVD, widen their value rails or trade a hue‑dependent accent for a pattern or emblem that persists.

Decals: minimum sizes and outline buffers

Decal typography and icons must remain legible under CVD and motion blur. Prefer blocky glyphs with high x‑height and avoid thin serifs. Add outline buffers (stroke or drop‑value) so letters do not merge with fabric patterning. Set a minimum pixel height for numerals and key icons at the gameplay camera; if the design needs finer print for close‑ups, include a LOD swap to a solid badge at distance. Where sponsor colors or team colors are fixed by brand, enforce contrast via value inversion or stroke rather than relying on hue opposition.

Pattern safety and anti‑moiré

Checks, herringbones, and micro prints can cause shimmer that masks form, particularly for players with visual sensitivities. Design scalable patterns: large‑cell repeats with generous line weights that compress into stable tones as mips drop. Offer a far‑LOD pattern variant on the same atlas with simplified geometry. When pattern must carry identity (tartan clans, rank tape), backstop it with shape cues (badge silhouettes, sash geometry) so identity persists when pattern collapses.

Emissives, bloom, and light sensitivity

Emissive trims are tempting readability crutches that can harm accessibility if overused. Keep emissive areas small and strategic, and test them in grayscale + bloom to ensure they don’t flood neighboring values. Use emissive primarily to mark interaction points (buckles, visors, gadget edges) rather than broad stripes that flatten the form. Provide non‑emissive alternates for competitive modes or photo‑sensitivity settings; note this state in your boards so UI can surface the toggle.

Acceptance tests you can run without a build

Before handoff, perform three quick tests. First, the 10‑meter test: downscale to the pixel size you expect in gameplay and judge read in grayscale. If role or team is unclear, increase value separation or simplify silhouette. Second, the CVD strip: run a mental or tool‑assisted deuter/protan/tritan sim on your plate and verify that class markers and decals remain distinct via value or shape. Third, the motion smear: apply a subtle directional blur to limbs and ensure key trims and number glyphs still separate from the base garment; if not, thicken accents or add outline buffers.

Budgeting for readability (time, pages, and materials)

Accessibility costs attention, not necessarily memory. Budget a small slice of each sheet for value‑carrying trims and outline masks; trade them against overly fine ornaments that won’t read. Reserve time to make value‑only plates and CVD simulations part of the standard concept deliverable. Cap materials that add hue‑only richness (pearlescents, iridescents) unless they also deliver value structure under neutral lighting.

Cross‑slot dependency notes

Some readability failures are slot collisions. Big collars that match the face’s average value will erase jawline reads; capes that merge with backpacks create back blobs; hair that sits at the same value as headgear destroys the crown contour. Use compatibility matrices not just for clipping, but for value conflicts: mark combinations that require a value swap (e.g., dark hood → light trim when paired with dark hair) or an auto‑outline applied by shader.

Documentation deliverables downstream teams love

Package your accessibility intent. Include a Silhouette Sheet (pure black fill), a Value‑Only Sheet (grayscale), a CVD Proof Strip (deuter/protan/tritan + grayscale), and a Contrast Map overlay where you annotate problem zones and their fixes. Keep palette rails and minimum glyph sizes on the same page as the hero render so decisions are never divorced from visuals. Name files with discoverable tags like CHAR_<Name>_ValueOnly, CHAR_<Name>_CVDProof, and Palette_P03_ValueRails so QA and tech art can search once and find the correct truth.

Heads, hair, outfits, palettes, decals: slot‑specific playbooks

For Heads, ship a portrait at gameplay scale in grayscale, plus a mouth‑open and eyes‑closed variant to prove landmarks persist. For Hair, include a side profile grayscale with collar adjacency and a tied‑back alternate when a hood is present. For Outfits, render front/back grayscale with added trim bands where adjacent pieces meet. For Palettes, show three remaps that keep value rails constant and document which channels are protected (skin/hair). For Decals, provide grayscale icons with stroke/no‑stroke variants and call out the minimum pixel height at gameplay distance.

Common pitfalls and corrective patterns

Relying on red vs. green for team reads; serif slogans on curved chest plates; eyeliner and lashes that vanish at gameplay distances; micro metallic flakes that become noise; capes and long hair merging into a single mid‑value mass; emissive trims that bloom faces into oblivion. Counter with shape redundancy, outline buffers, panel value alternation, chunked hair masses, and emissive discipline.

Closing: inclusivity by construction

Color‑blind safety isn’t an afterthought—it’s a design stance. When silhouette and value carry your message, you earn resilience across lighting, cameras, and audiences. Make grayscale and CVD plates part of your default package, declare value rails in your palettes, and encode dependency rules that avoid value collisions. You’ll ship characters that are more legible, more competitive‑fair, and more welcoming—without spending extra memory or compromising style.