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name: generative-painting description: Make hand-painted-looking generative paintings and short art films in code, in a chosen painting style — watercolour (translucent glazes, graphite and ink on paper, the "Beautiful Collisions" look), pointillism (Seurat-style divided-colour dots), charcoal with red conté, graphite or pen-and-ink sketch, woodcut / linocut print, or 2D cel animation — or several mixed plate by plate, with hard-cut collision editing, deterministic particle motion, a soft code-generated score, and a self-contained runnable engine (p5 + p5.brush + Vite + Playwright + ffmpeg) that exports lossless plates, MP4s, a WAV and automated checks. Also covers 16:9 1080p films, fixed-anchor on-screen text and pixel characters, repainting an existing film in another style with provably identical geometry, and adding brand-new painting styles. Use it whenever someone wants a painted or illustrated video, reel, loop, montage, launch film, animated artwork or generative painting of any subject (flowers, ocean, birds, cities, a product…), mentions watercolour, pointillism, stippling, dots, Seurat, charcoal, sketching, pencil, ink, woodcut, linocut, printmaking, 2D animation, botanical illustration or "Beautiful Collisions", wants an artwork remade in a different painting style, or wants to invent a new generative art style — even if they never name a style.

Generative painting

One engine, several painting styles. Every film is a sequence of finished plates (paintings drawn once by code, then held), edited with hard cuts, with rare deterministic particle motion and a quiet score. The style decides how a plate's drawing becomes paint, and it can be set per film or per plate.

All paths are relative to this skill's folder.

1. Choose a style

Style	Look	Best for	Read
watercolour	translucent glazes that bleed and mix like pigment; graphite and ink lines, hatching and speckle on varied paper; antique scientific illustration colliding with editorial design	botanical, archival, delicate or tactile subjects; pale papers, diagrams, grounds under text	styles/watercolour/STYLE.md
pointillism	thousands of distinct divided-colour dabs; form, light and edges built from dot density and colour families	luminous, textural, "made of dots" work; forms that dissolve into points; repainting an existing film	styles/pointillism/STYLE.md
charcoal	directional charcoal strokes and smudge on toothy paper, eraser highlights, one red conté accent	weight, tension, grief, aftermath, figures; things drawn on stroke by stroke	styles/charcoal/STYLE.md
sketch	graphite hatching and searching contours, or crisp pen and ink; red pencil accent	calm openings, notes, diagrams, cracks, counts; draw-on	styles/sketch/STYLE.md
woodcut	relief print: standing ink, carved paper, gouged greys, a misregistered red block, wood grain	force, violence, declaration: lightning, a charge, a hammer, stairs	styles/woodcut/STYLE.md
cel	2D animation: flat paint, hard cel shadow, thick-thin ink line, line boil on twos	gauges, clocks, machines, impacts; anything with moving parts	styles/cel/STYLE.md
mixed	any of the above chosen per plate, switched at cuts	montages about variety or change, emotional arcs, launches	references/choosing-and-mixing-styles.md

Look at each style's examples/ before choosing. If the user doesn't name a style:

• ask when the choice matters;
• otherwise choose watercolour for delicate or archival briefs and pointillism for luminous or textural ones;
• say which you picked.

references/choosing-and-mixing-styles.md has the decision table and the rules for when a cut should change material.

Run scripts/new-film.sh --list to see the installed styles. New styles plug in without changing the engine (references/adding-a-style.md).

2. Shared workflow (every style)

1. Plan the shot list before code.
   • Default length is 26 s at 24 fps (624 frames), about 21 shots.
   • Columns: shot · frames · archetype · subject · ground/palette · material and mark treatment · sound.
   • Follow the rhythm template and the cut rule in references/editing.md:
     • a dense opener, which also closes the loop;
     • a near-empty breath;
     • alternating dark/pale and crowded/sparse;
     • two particle passages;
     • an "almost nothing" beat;
     • a hero plate and then a crop of it;
     • a 3-second monument;
     • a quiet archival close;
     • a repeat of the opener.
   • Every ordinary cut changes at least 3 of 6 axes.
   • This pattern is the house default, not a law: references/experimenting.md says what is fixed and what to vary.
   • Show the table to the user.
2. Scaffold: run scripts/new-film.sh --style <style> <project-dir> <film-id>, then npm run export once to confirm the machine works. Each style's demo exercises every feature.
3. Paint plates:
   • Write one file per painting in src/scenes/ and register it in src/scenes/index.js.
   • Start from the closest recipe in styles/<style>/scene-library/; the recipes copy straight in, and any scene works in any style.
   • Draw with the kit and helpers in references/drawing-kit.md. Build silhouettes before texture.
   • Run npm run plates -- --only <id>, then look at out/<film>/plates/<id>.png at full size.
   • Fix generic or empty plates before moving on.
4. Set style-specific settings:
   • Pointillism: PLATES[id].material (profile, coverage, dot size).
   • Watercolour: palette and paper choices inside each scene.
   • Mixed: PLATES[id].style per plate.
   • See the style's STYLE.md.
5. Add motion (optional): dust, radial, school or jelly particles (references/editing.md → Motion). The replay materials also have motion of their own: draw-on (the drawing appears stroke by stroke) and boil (the hand-drawn 2D line). See references/motion-in-the-medium.md.
6. Sound: the soft score is the default, about −22 LUFS (references/sound.md). Each shot declares a sound character.
7. Export and verify:
   • Run npm run export. It refuses to finish if any check fails.
   • Run python3 tools/cut_audit.py out/<film>.
   • Do the visual review in references/verifying.md.
   • Report concrete per-shot observations, and say plainly what you measured versus actually watched or listened to.

A single painting is the same flow with one shot covering all frames; the deliverable is the plate PNG from npm run plates.

16:9, on-screen text or characters: plates can be any size (plateSetup(…, 1920, 864)). Read references/widescreen-and-titles.md for the compositor, the phrase track, glyph-mask contrast, locked fonts and pixel characters.

3. Rules that hold in every style

• Integer frames are the source of truth. Plates are painted once and cached, so held frames are bit-identical. Particles are pure functions of time, with no per-frame re-randomising.
• All randomness goes through the seeded kit (p.random/k.R) so a plate's seed controls it. Never use Math.random() in a scene.
• By default there's no text inside frames. When a brief needs words, use a fixed-anchor phrase track or title cards (references/widescreen-and-titles.md), never text painted into plates.
• For square films, the 1080 MP4 is a Lanczos upscale of the 600 master. Always call it that. Call a film "rendered at 1080p" only when its plates really were.
• The default sound is quiet and low. Use the livelier score only on request.

4. Files

Path	Contents
engine/	the runnable project copied into every film: src/ (capture, pointillism, materials/ charcoal · sketch · woodcut · cel, kit, sea, ocean, particles, renderer, scores), scripts/export.mjs, tools/ (cut audit, ΔE, playback check)
styles/<style>/STYLE.md	how the style looks, how its material works, how it mixes, its hard rules
styles/<style>/demo/	the style's demo film.js and scenes (used by new-film.sh)
styles/<style>/scene-library/	finished paintings to copy and adapt
styles/<style>/examples/	contact sheets of finished films
styles/_template/	the starting point for a new style
styles/watercolour/style-dna.md, archetypes.md	palette families and composition archetypes
styles/pointillism/material.md, translating.md	material parameters and calibration; repainting a film
references/choosing-and-mixing-styles.md	which style for which brief; when a cut changes material
references/motion-in-the-medium.md	draw-on (with drawOnTail) and line boil
references/experimenting.md	invariants versus style laws versus defaults; the dials worth changing first
references/editing.md	rhythm, cut rule, archetypes, motion
references/drawing-kit.md	the drawing kit, p5.brush behaviour, determinism rules
references/widescreen-and-titles.md	16:9 at 1080p, phrase tracks, text contrast, fonts, pixel characters
references/sound.md	score characters and seeds
references/verifying.md	automated checks, compression, audit, review checklist
references/adding-a-style.md	how to add a new painting style