Chapter 4: Research Packets

Created by Sarah Choi (prompt writer using ChatGPT)

Research Packets (Taxonomy, Spec Notes, Sound/Motion Refs)

Research packets translate scattered references into a coherent, reviewable dossier that guides both concepting and production. For weapon concept artists, a strong packet is the contract for how an idea should look, move, sound, and age—without ever crossing into construction or modification instructions. Organized well, it becomes a portable knowledge base: the document a lead drops into a channel to align art, design, animation, audio, VFX, and QA in a single pass.

What a research packet is—and isn’t

A research packet is a curated, annotated bundle that collapses discovery time for the team and sets boundaries for style and plausibility. It is not a folder dump, a blueprint, or a how‑to manual. Its job is to define the taxonomy of the idea (what family of thing we are making), record the externally readable specifications that affect silhouette and interaction, and gather sound and motion references so timing and impact feel inevitable. Done right, a packet can be skimmed in minutes and used for months.

Fieldwork as the packet’s foundation

Fieldwork makes your packet credible. Museum visits, living‑history events, maker spaces, industrial labs, and ranges (where lawful and accompanied by qualified professionals) expose you to hand clearance, sling path interference, latch travel, sight lines, and the honest wear that never shows up in catalogue photos. When photography is restricted, contour sketches, sectional notes, and written observations about motion and material feel are enough to anchor your packet in real behavior. Record dates, venues, permissions, and contact names. Bring a neutral marker card for white balance, a scale strip if permissible, and a notebook to log vantage points and distances. Ethical fieldwork is slower than image scraping, but it yields reusable insight that travels across projects.

Research ethics and scope boundaries

Your packet must remain depiction‑only. Avoid including dimensions, tolerances, disassembly steps, or modification advice. Do not speculate about restricted capabilities or share sensitive performance details. Respect local laws and venue policies; if a collection bans close‑range photography or posting, honor those rules and mask identifying details as requested. Attribute sources clearly and maintain a permissions ledger for all third‑party materials. When referencing weapons tied to living cultures or sacred practices, consult practitioners, credit lineages, and frame motifs with context so your work remains respectful. Ethics are not bureaucracy—they are what keep your references trustworthy and your project welcome in expert communities.

The packet’s backbone: taxonomy that drives design

Taxonomy is the naming system for your design space. It places the new weapon inside a family with recognizable behaviors and constraints, and it provides a way to discuss variants without confusion. Start at the genre level, then move into function and mechanism families that are visible at the surface.

In mil‑sim contexts, taxonomy might cover platform families, control layouts, mounting standards, ancillary subsystems, and typical wear patterns. In sci‑fi, translate those roles to speculative analogs: energy carrier type, containment/enclosure scheme, emitter architecture, thermal path strategy, and diagnostic interface language. Fantasy benefits from craft‑lineage taxonomies—blade or head types, tang and guard constructions, scabbard architectures, and ornament schools. Post‑apocalyptic work organizes around salvage logic: donor ancestry, fix strategy (clamped, stitched, wedged, brazed), and plausibility under recoil, heat, and motion.

Taxonomy pages should use photos and silhouette blocks to show differences at a glance, with short captions that state what changes for human factors and readability. The point is not encyclopedic coverage, but a shared grammar your sketches and block‑ins will obey.

Spec notes that inform silhouette and interaction

Spec notes are external, visually inferable facts that affect modeling and animation. They should be precise in language but avoid prescriptive dimensions. For concept artists, spec notes push designs toward believable proportion and control placement; for production artists, they de‑risk topology, rigging, and LOD planning.

Write spec notes as narrative constraints rather than measurements. Note optic centerline conventions to protect sight pictures, safe‑zone widths around controls for gloved operation, typical throw ranges for latches and selectors, and expected insertion and retention cues for magazines or energy cassettes. Mention material behavior that changes thickness or edge treatment: composite layup direction that drives ribbing, ceramic shrouds that prefer radiused transitions, or leather overwraps that compress near fasteners. Record known spacing rhythms—fastener pitch bands, vent slot families, gasket step hierarchies—so trim‑sheet planning can begin early. If the project has first‑person components, include field‑of‑view constraints and hand blocking notes to prevent future retakes.

Anatomy sheets as the packet’s index

An anatomy sheet is the one page that makes your packet scannable. It labels visible modules and their jobs in plain language, shows hand placement and sight corridors, and marks hazard reads—hot surfaces, motion arcs, pinch points—without offering fabrication or disassembly steps. For sci‑fi, it might map a power cassette’s insertion path, a field regulator’s access panel, and the thermal handshake between emitter and heat sink. For fantasy, it clarifies tang geometry, guard and pommel relationships, scabbard throat logic, and how ornament respects structure. For post‑apoc, it charts where reinforcement plates, clamps, and stitch welds are likely to appear to survive recoil and thermal cycling. The anatomy sheet is a legend for the entire packet; it turns pages of references into a usable system.

Sound references: designing the weapon’s voice

A weapon’s sound teaches mass, material, and mechanism before the player even sees it. In your packet, collect legally usable audio references that correspond to visible actions: latch disengage, selector change, cassette insertion, gas venting, ceramic ping, leather creak, or blade draw. If you can record original Foley at a shop or maker space with permission, note microphone positions, environment, and materials. Avoid capturing or distributing sensitive real‑weapon audio from restricted contexts; when in doubt, work with sound design to synthesize cues that preserve ethics and legality.

Annotate audio clips with the surface event visible in your anatomy sheet. Pair each sound with a tiny spectrogram or amplitude envelope and a sentence describing its character—sharp metallic tick, damped polymer thunk, pressurized hiss. This vocabulary becomes a shared target for audio and animation timing. Keep references short and searchable, and maintain a rights log like you do for images.

Motion references: choreography that matches the hardware

Motion makes the design believable. Gather slow‑motion captures of analogous mechanisms—ejecting housings, selector detents, cable retraction, latch throws, sling interactions—and record timings. If you cannot record, sketch motion arcs and range of movement based on field observations. Keep human‑factors honest: measure reach envelopes with gloved and bare hand silhouettes, preserve clean sight lines through reloads, and avoid motions that cross hazards your own anatomy sheet identifies.

Translate motion into beats the team can agree on. A reload might read as tilt‑draw‑insert‑seat‑confirm; a transform might read as unlatch‑slide‑rotate‑lock. For each beat, note the visible state change that VFX or UI can hook into—emissive flicker at charge confirmation, latch flag that flips, or indicator window that swaps color. Motion references should not teach mechanisms to fabricate; they should choreograph readable state changes on the surface.

Material and wear palettes that anchor the look

Even when precise materials are still open, define material families and the way they age. Polymers show sheen shifts and stress whitening at corners; metals record dents, heat tint, and galling at threads; composites chip, fuzz, and delaminate at abuse points; ceramics craze and glow at thin lips; leather stretches and darkens with oils. Include small lighting studies re‑graded to your project’s value range so paintovers and texture bakes align. For production, these micro‑targets become sanity checks for shader setup and texel budgets; for concepting, they keep highlights and scratches honest.

Photo and diagram studies inside the packet

Include orthographic overlays with clean line hierarchy, module blocks, and part labels that match your anatomy sheet vocabulary. Add a separate human‑factors layer with hand silhouettes, sight corridors, and hazard zones. These pages let modeling block in planes and topology confidently and give animation early visibility into reach and clearance. Place material swatches and wear micro‑studies alongside so the reads survive mixed lighting and camera distances.

Cross‑discipline notes that travel with the packet

The most useful packets carry brief, targeted notes from each partner discipline. Animation can mark grip subtleties and timing constraints; audio can flag surfaces that should emit distinct cues; VFX can point to emissive or particulate surfaces; tech art can caution against topology traps and propose trim‑sheet reuse; QA can highlight interaction clarity risks. Keep these comments short, visible, and dated. A packet becomes a living agreement when these notes are incorporated and snapshots are archived with change logs.

Layout and readability

Your packet should read like a magazine feature with predictable lanes: overview and intent up front; taxonomy spreads next; anatomy sheet and orthographic overlays; material and wear studies; sound and motion references; cross‑discipline notes; and a final ethics and permissions page. Use consistent type and color language across callouts. Include a scale stripe, a gloved hand silhouette, and a project FOV note to curb proportion drift. Keep white space generous; the urge to cram every example harms comprehension.

File hygiene, metadata, and versioning

File names should include date, subject, and version number, and your metadata should record source, permission terms, genre tags, mechanism family, material palette, and wear story. Maintain a rights ledger for images, sketches, and audio. Export a layered working file for artists, a flattened PDF for quick review, and a lightweight preview for chat threads. After each substantive review, add a two‑line changelog describing what changed and why. Archive superseded versions instead of overwriting so new team members can follow the design’s evolution.

For concept artists: faster iteration with fewer blind spots

Use the packet’s taxonomy and spec notes to constrain your ideation lanes. Because you’ve already solved hand placement, sight corridors, and safe‑zone logic, your silhouettes remain legible as you push expression. Paintovers use the same material and wear swatches, so the look remains stable even as shapes evolve. Early keyframes can borrow sound and motion notes to sell moments without inventing new behavior on the fly.

For production artists: predictable block‑ins and scale sanity

The overlays, anatomy sheet, and spec notes provide enough structure to begin topology and rigging without guesswork. Trim‑sheet proposals and fastener pitch bands let you budget detail. Hand and FOV references reduce retakes when the camera team sets up first‑person views. Because the packet annotates what detail collapses first, LOD planning preserves meaning as assets simplify.

Teaching the packet to be a library

A single packet scales into a library when you treat each section as a reusable module. A taxonomy spread becomes a template for the next weapon family. Anatomy sheets iterate on a shared legend and color language. Sound and motion references gather into tagged playlists. Over time, your studio accumulates a principle‑driven knowledge base that speeds up new projects while preserving originality and ethics.

Final thought

Research packets are quiet leadership artifacts. They distill fieldwork into principles, fix vocabulary across disciplines, and tune aesthetics to the realities of motion and sound. Built on ethical sourcing and clear anatomy, they let both concept and production artists move quickly inside firm boundaries. The result is work that looks, moves, and sounds like it belongs—without ever telling anyone how to build the real thing.