# Art

> Building solo, the real bottleneck isn't code. This slot starts by deciding what won't be made.

- Headline number: 1 condition
- Status: wip
- Rendered page: https://aitryed.com/en/built/moon-studio/future-1/art/
- Other language: https://aitryed.com/ko/built/moon-studio/future-1/art/index.md
- Site guide for agents: https://aitryed.com/en/llms.txt

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**An empty slot. What is written here is only "what has to exist before this slot counts as filled."**

## First — building solo, the real bottleneck is not code

The premise of this slot.

*Building a game alone* makes people picture **the coding being hard.** In practice what blocks you is usually **the art.**

The reason is simple.

| | Code | Art |
|---|---|---|
| Handing it to an AI | **Works reasonably** | **Works less well** |
| Time per item | Minutes to hours | **Hours to days** |
| How many you need | As many as features | **Characters, animations, effects, UI — all of it** |

And art has to **match in style.** Ten good pieces are **unusable if the styles disagree.**

## What travels — "value before colour"

A rule from the wuxia game.

Choosing colours, people start with **hue** — *blue family or red family.*

What actually matters on a game screen is **light and dark (value)**.

Because **players separate objects by *difference in brightness*, not by colour.**

| Situation | Result |
|---|---|
| Different hues, **similar brightness** | **Character and background do not separate** |
| **Different brightness** | **They separate even in similar hues** |

So **value is fixed first and colour goes on afterwards.** Reversed, you get **a screen that is pretty and unreadable.**

## What has to be re-decided — "what will *not* be made"

The most important question in this slot.

Building alone, **you cannot make all of it.** Which leaves two options.

| | Result |
|---|---|
| **Start without deciding** | Exhaustion stops you **somewhere arbitrary** — and where you stopped was never chosen |
| **Decide first, then start** | **What is absent is intentional** — and what is present is finished |

Deciding what will not be made is hard because **it means admitting the game's limits.**

But **the limits arrive whether you decide or not.** The only difference is **whether you chose them or were pushed into them.**

> **Choosing what is absent makes it a style. Being pushed into absence makes it unfinished.**

## The detailed record starts here

An empty slot. What's written here is only **what has to exist before this slot counts as filled.**

## What travels — value before colour

From [the wuxia game's art](/en/built/moon-studio/wuxia/art/index.md). **Value comes before hue.** Secure the value difference between character and floor first, and only then does anything — lineage colour, effects — go on top of it.

Colour-blind support gets solved in the same place. Separate hue alone and some people see nothing; separate value too and it reads even when the colour doesn't. **That's a question of what gets decided first, not of accessibility bolted on later.**

## What has to be re-decided — what won't be made

Building solo, art blocks before code does. So the first thing this slot has to produce isn't a list of what to make but **a list of what not to make.**

On the wuxia side this was left without a conclusion. Honestly stated, it is **still undecided** — which makes this the slot most likely to be filled last in the next game too.