# Prologue production plan — candidate milestone complete

## Built for review

- Four speaking characters with matching bust and animated map candidates.
- Ten bust states: Ganoes neutral/proud/scowl/surprised; commander neutral/grimace; fiddle soldier neutral/wry; Surly neutral/cold smile.
- Five four-direction walk models, including reusable Claw guards.
- Ganoes tiptoe and both soldiers leaning as special pose studies.
- Two masonry/floor treatments, square tower portal and corrected demon-on-pike vane.
- Opening panorama fading into a separate top-down tiled map.
- Speaker-name dialogue panel, two bust layout sizes, text pagination, manual/autoplay, optional narration and original-paragraph reference.
- Scripted arrivals, turns, departures, smoke and ending; no player movement, collision or pathfinding.
- Coordinate overlay, cast gallery, animation GIFs, 22 engine captures and a silent 1080p review film.

## Review order

1. Approve or revise character identity, apparent age, clothes and major silhouette.
2. Assess small sprites and animation at game scale before commissioning more directions/poses.
3. Choose portrait size and dialogue layout.
4. Refine tower integration, battlement geometry, texture density and distant-city geography.
5. Polish selected art and choreography; add sound and music only after the visual staging is settled.

## Source discipline

The book is authoritative. Read ahead freely where later descriptions help current continuity. Keep the scene’s age and equipment appropriate; record interpretation where text is silent. Use the original text for dialogue. The review build preserves all 58 spoken fragments in 48 source speaking paragraphs; narration can be displayed separately and original attributions remain accessible with B.

New art comes from built-in ImageGen. Aseprite handles modest cleanup/export. All generated masters and exact prompts are versioned in art/source. No candidate becomes approved through subsequent generation or integration. The earlier distorted sprite and erroneous flags/mountings remain excluded.

See REVIEW_START_HERE.md for the current package and ART_STYLE.md for exercised dimensions.