---
number: 30
title: Attempts at styling by AI
date: 2026-09-22
summary: The record of the attempts to have an AI decide what a face in Spellgrove looks like — the sixty-four heads that were reverted in three days, and Rah's sketches cut into face parts that came out, in Kris's words, comically bad. Kept exactly as delivered, so the next attempt starts from what was actually seen. The faces will be hand-drawn by Rah next.
epic: character-composition-poc
status: delivered
artifacts: ["land-of-lor/docs/handoff/faces/"]
cta: [object Object]
---

Kris, on the evening of 22 September, looking at the last of these: *"That is comically bad.
It's incredible and it's funny. This has been such a journey to get here."* This page is the
journey, in order, with the samples exactly as they were delivered — nothing re-rendered or
tidied for the record.

## Sixty-four kinds of head — 19 September 2026, reverted 22 September

The brief: sixty-four heads, one per hexagram, as data — eight families by the upper trigram
(humanoid, insect, bird, dragon, wood, amphibian, stone, beast), varied eight ways each by the
lower trigram, built from at most six primitive meshes, no colour in the table. It was built in
a day: the table, the family scenes, the wire, the portraits, the tests, and the sign-off sheet
below. Kris's verdict, three days later: *"really unhappy with all of the attempts at making
faces."* The whole thing was reverted in one commit. The witch kept her hat.

![The sixty-four heads, the sign-off sheet, all in one neutral colour](/images/game/land-of-lor/2026-09-19-heads-sheet.png)

![Three players of three families, at the game's own camera](/images/game/land-of-lor/2026-09-19-heads-bodies-close.png)

![The witch under her hat, with a head from the table](/images/game/land-of-lor/2026-09-19-heads-witch-close.png)

A second brief was written the same day for Claude Design — a painted face on a tinted sphere
plus up to three primitive pieces, two decals per head for talking. It was never sent. The
painted-face half of that idea is what the next attempt used.

## Falon

Between the heads and the next attempt, Kris reached out to Falon, a local artist, and
offered to buy her sketches to use to inform the models. She didn't want her work used by AI,
and that stands. So the next drawings came from inside the house.

## Rah's sketches, cut into parts — 22 September 2026

Ten photographs of Rah's sketchbook. The ask: cut the eyes, the mouths and the hair out of her
faces as separate parts, solid black lines, cartoony; let a player pick one of each on the
account screen; save it at once and wear it on the head in the game. Built the same evening
and put on the web and the phone to be judged on the heads, not on a sheet.

What the parts were made of: each photo flattened and thresholded to a line mask, her lines
thickened, irises and whites laid under them as shapes, the one red blush band kept red, hair
as her outline traced into a silhouette with her strokes inside. A shader projects the three
pictures onto the front of the head sphere; hair is mirrored to the back. The tool that cut
them is `tools/faces/`, and can re-cut any part from its spec.

![A head with the parts on it, face on](/images/game/land-of-lor/2026-09-22-faces-head-front.png)

![The same head, three-quarter](/images/game/land-of-lor/2026-09-22-faces-head-quarter.png)

![The picker on the account screen — eyes, mouth, hair](/images/game/land-of-lor/2026-09-22-faces-account-picker.png)

![Three players in the Village, at the game's own camera, wearing them](/images/game/land-of-lor/2026-09-22-faces-village-close.png)

### The contact sheets — the parts beside what they were cut from

Kris asked for these to tell whether the problem was in the parts or in putting them on the
heads. It is mostly the parts. The threshold turns her fine pencil lines into lumps; the
small doodles (glare, closed, tears, glasses, the shark) are unreadable; the hair loses its
shape because anything drawn outside the head's circle is clipped, so the crown's flames and
the spikes are gone and every hair is the same brown helmet. The heads then flatten what is
left. Each row: her drawing on the left, the cut part on a head-coloured disc on the right.

![Eyes — her drawing and the cut part](/images/game/land-of-lor/2026-09-22-faces-contact-eyes.png)

![Mouths — her drawing and the cut part](/images/game/land-of-lor/2026-09-22-faces-contact-mouths.png)

![Hair — her drawing and the cut part](/images/game/land-of-lor/2026-09-22-faces-contact-hairs.png)

![The parts composed on a flat disc](/images/game/land-of-lor/2026-09-22-faces-contact-faces.png)

## What comes next

Not an AI. The faces will be drawn by hand, by Rah, and by us. The picker, the wire and the
shader were rolled back the same evening — nothing of this is in the game now — and the
handoffs and renders stay beside this page as the record.

*27 September 2026:* the next attempt is [deliverable 31](/deliverables/31) — Rah drew the
eyes, mouths and hair herself, digitally, and they are cut out exactly as drawn and put on
the head in a viewer, with nothing yet in the game.