Pico Raven: asset inventory
Built from manifest.json, flight/flight_manifest.json and pixel checks of the actual files in the v1 handoff ZIP. ← back to Pico
Findings
- Technically clean: all 15 flight sprites and the master are true RGBA, SHA-256 matches the manifest, no alpha touches any canvas edge (no clipped wings or tails), and there are no opaque background rectangles.
- Body scale is not consistent between poses. Measured from eye-to-beak length and iris size, the flight art draws Pico's head 30–45% smaller than the master (crouch about 9% smaller). The runtime corrects this with a uniform per-frame scale. Matching heads exactly made the flight body ~18% bulkier than the slender master, so the runtime uses a compromise (
head_scale × body_fit, with body_fit 0.85 for flight frames). In flight his head reads slightly smaller, but his body mass stays continuous through takeoff and landing. - Manifest eye anchors are approximate: (600,600) for airborne frames versus a measured ~(575–585, 580–600). The measured values live in
tools/pico_registration.json, which leaves the vendor manifest untouched. - Contact registration: the manifest says foot contact is "not guaranteed uniform". Toe lines were measured for the crouch, lift-off, touchdown (08) and master/settle poses.
- All 12 illustrated flight keyposes face left. The only right-facing originals are a full downstroke and a landing flare. A right-facing cycle, a right-facing perch pose and a turn-around do not exist, so Pico cannot visibly fly back to the right yet.
- No first-contact landing key. 08 (feet planted, wings open) works as the contact frame, and the crouch is reused as absorption. The 08 → crouch → master folds are hard cuts.
- Mirrored candidates (full downstroke, landing flare, right bank) look convincing at display size; the reversed rim light is hard to spot because it wraps the silhouette. The landing flare is a better pre-contact pose than 07. They stay opt-in (Developer → "Use mirrored candidate frames") until approved.
- flight_09_settle is pixel-identical to the master, translated into the 1600 canvas, so landing resolves exactly to the approved master.
- Expressions are complete separate illustrations with slightly different scale/pose; they swap as whole images. Idle studies are provisional composites. Neither is used in the proof of motion.
- Reference-only sheets (ruffle, hop, concept, flight review) are never published or sliced.
Suggested additional art (priority order)
- Right-facing flight set, hand-lit rather than mirrored: upstroke, glide, downstroke-transition and brake/landing-approach at minimum, so Pico can return across the scene.
- Perched turn: master pose facing right (or a 2–3 frame turn on the perch: 3/4-left → front → 3/4-right), registered to the master's foot line.
- First-contact landing key (toes touching, wings still high), plus a wing-fold in-between from 08 to the master.
- Push-off in-between between the crouch and lift-off (legs half-extended, wings starting to open). The crouch → lift-off cut is the biggest jump in the takeoff.
- Approve or hand-relight the mirrored left downstroke and landing flare, plus a wing-tuck mid-stroke pose for a loop-safe flap cycle.
- Every new frame drawn at the master's head scale and a shared foot line. That alone would remove most of the runtime normalization.