Draft 3 — Watercolor (Current)

Model: Nano Banana 2  |  Style: Warm watercolor/ink wash

Key changes: Full style pivot from B&W sketch to warm watercolor. Golden-amber Ollie with pill-shaped pupils and star sparkles, green-eyed sphere Dot. Dense underwater environments with coral, fish, seaweed. Dreamlike spiritual quality with emotional lighting architecture.

Review: Gemini 2.5 Flash art direction review — 43 STRONG, 6 WEAK, 1 REMOVE out of 50 reviewed. Average score 46/50. Four perfect 50/50 images.

Draft 2 — Curated B&W

Model: Nano Banana 2  |  Style: Charcoal sketch on white paper

Key changes: Visual review and curation of Draft 1. Removed 14 problematic images (humans, empty scenes, scary/skull content, human walking a dog) and regenerated replacements with improved prompts. Added explicit blockers: NO humans, NO dogs, NO scary imagery, NO text in images. Applied storytelling evaluation, art direction scoring, and narrative alignment checks.

Review: Manual visual review of all 80 images. 48 STRONG, 18 WEAK, 14 REMOVE.

Draft 1 — B&W Sketch

Model: Nano Banana 2  |  Style: Charcoal/pencil sketch on white paper

Key changes: First Nano Banana 2 generation. Switched from charcoal on cream paper to clean white. Updated Ollie design (horizontal pill pupils, no mouth, realistic octopus proportions). Updated Dot design (pill-shaped screen with digital eyes, no wavy line). 4 concepts per page instead of 5. One encapsulating scene per page. Sheldon (shell den) full circle motif on pages 1, 19, 20. Whale as distant shadow. Breathing shown through octopus siphon/gills.

Issues found: Human contamination on 5 pages, empty scenes, scary content, characters blending together.

Draft Zero — Exploration

Model: Flux Schnell  |  Style: Charcoal sketch on cream paper

Key changes: Initial exploration round. 100 images (5 concepts per page). Fast, cheap ($0.003/image) to explore compositions and camera angles. Established the page-by-page scene concept approach. Yellow tint on paper, characters not well-defined, generic AI prompt patterns.

Issues found: Too much yellow, style too rough, characters not matching design specs, no visual review applied.