Game Assets

Meowa Game Assets

Plan a game or create game-ready visual and audio assets. For game concepts, systems, balance, market research, or structured design documents, use the Game Designer module. For assets, establish the final asset contract first, choose the smallest suitable capability, and combine modules only when the downstream command accepts the upstream output.

Establish the asset contract

Determine these requirements before selecting a command:

• Runtime asset type: sprite, prop, UI, texture, tileset, map layer, animation, video, sound, music, or spoken line.
• Art representation: pixel or HD.
• Final dimensions, sprite-cell size, count, aspect ratio, transparency, and file format.
• Deliverable structure: one asset, a variant pack, sprite sheet, directional set, layer set, animation, or reusable atlas.

Treat preset-defined dimensions and output counts as fixed contracts. Do not imply that prompt wording can override them.

Write simple natural-language prompts

Meowa capabilities use advanced generative models that understand ordinary natural language. Describe the required asset as simply and clearly as possible. Include only details that materially affect the deliverable, such as the subject, action, viewpoint, material, or relationship between elements.

Do not use legacy diffusion-style prompt engineering: no long keyword stacks, separate positive and negative prompt blocks, repeated quality terms, token weights, sampler syntax, or excessive camera and rendering jargon. These additions can interfere with the model's own interpretation and reduce consistency. Start with the shortest sufficient prompt, inspect the result, and add one necessary constraint at a time only when the output proves it is needed.

Apply game-art fundamentals

Pixel art

• Treat the pixel grid as part of the design, not merely as image resolution.
• Keep animated characters, monsters, and similar frame-based assets at 128×128 or smaller whenever practical. Larger pixel assets raise animation cost and often reduce generation or frame-edit consistency. Reserve larger pixel canvases mainly for maps, character illustrations, portraits, and other assets that do not need frame animation.
• When padding a 64px pixel character for animation, prefer a final canvas no larger than 128×128. Padding may be set independently on the top, down, left, and right, but a pixel-animation canvas above 256px on either axis is invalid and must not be submitted.
• When visual inspection is available, inspect the character bounds, facing direction, and intended motion before choosing animation padding. Leave some top space for jumps and some forward space for attacks; use only enough room for the action rather than making every canvas unnecessarily large.
• Treat pixel assets generated by Meowa as already perfectly pixelated. Do not run standalone pixelation on them again.
• Use pixel-native generation, editing, cleanup, and animation paths for pixel assets.
• Preview only at integer zoom with nearest-neighbor sampling. Never smooth or shrink pixel art merely for display.
• Inspect transparency and every sprite-sheet cell at native resolution.

HD art

• Treat resolution tiers as canvas and detail choices, not guarantees of one universal pixel dimension unless a preset defines it.
• Preserve smooth contours, material rendering, lighting, silhouette, and transparent-edge quality.
• Choose aspect ratio and composition for the asset's gameplay use rather than for presentation convenience.
• Do not treat ordinary downscaling as pixel-art production. Use pixel conversion only when conversion is explicitly requested, and validate the result as a new pixel asset.
• Inspect actual output dimensions and alpha after generation or editing.

Shared production rules

• Use transparency only when the runtime asset needs it; backgrounds and repeatable terrain materials may intentionally remain opaque.
• Keep style, scale, camera, palette, light direction, and anchor conventions consistent across related assets.
• For HD Isometric and HD Hex tiles, preserve the generated transparent canvas and center anchor, use smooth sampling, and take the footprint from the generation mode: standard = 1×1, tetraploid = 2×2. Never infer footprint from the outer PNG size. Read the exact placement contract in Maps, tiles, and textures before assembly.
• Treat source images and downloaded references as inputs, never as generated deliverables.
• Meowa animation with background removal delivers both removed-background and retained-background final animations; keep both.
• Prefer a specialized capability over a generic image path.
• Validate the asset at its intended gameplay scale, not only in a large preview.

Follow common pixel and HD workflows

Pixel workflow

1. Characters and props: use preset-driven pixel-gen-run when exact sprite dimensions or the highest available pixel quality matter. Select the target resolution first, describe one readable asset, and add a reference image when art direction or identity must match an existing game.
2. Custom-size assets: use custom-size-pixel-gen-run when the user needs one object at a width and height that no fixed preset provides, or wants to regenerate one source image as pixel art at a specified size. Do not use it for asset packs. Prefer text-only generation for stability; reference-guided generation is less reliable, especially for complex sources. Read the prompt and reference guidance in Pixel and HD assets before running it.
3. Large pixel assets: use large-pixel-gen-run for larger scenes, illustrations, portraits, buildings, and other compositions that do not fit a small sprite preset.
4. Low-cost sprite batches and prototypes: use the general pixel canvas through pixel-universal-gen-run when speed, volume, and low cost matter more than exact per-sprite sizing or maximum fidelity. Its built-in 4:3 xlarge mode is optimized for asset packs and provides a freer canvas for generating many differently sized assets at once. Its pixel quality is still lower than preset-driven pixel generation.
5. Pixel Universal Generation: the same command is the pixel-art counterpart to a general Nano Banana-style image workflow. It uses a large 4:3 canvas and supports a normal composition or a top-down game view. Typical uses include converting HD artwork into a new pixel composition, generating pixel scenes or character illustrations, and designing multi-stage building-upgrade artwork.
6. Animation: animate only after the character or prop design is stable. Before running, follow the high-quality animation workflow in Animation and video; it defines prompt preparation, automatic prompt enhancement, explicit Pixel/HD selection, intelligence tiers, and mandatory transparent motion space.

Do not run standalone pixelation after any Meowa pixel-generation command. Pixel outputs are already perfectly pixelated.

HD workflow

1. Characters and props: use an HD preset when the deliverable needs a controlled asset family, count, or composition, and use references for style or identity consistency.
2. General or batch generation: use nano-banana-run or image-2-run for scenes, illustrations, portraits, sprite sheets, and batches of art assets. Default both to a shared 1K, 1:1 square canvas so a prompt or composition can move between them. Start Image-2 with standard for inexpensive prompt testing, then rerun an approved prompt with detailed. These paths prioritize composition freedom and throughput over a preset asset contract.