Art assets needed for mobile game

Artist Brief A working brief to commission visual design and illustration for a kid-friendly logic puzzle game for iPhone and iPad (PWA + Android to follow). This document is the artist's entry point. It states what the game is, who it's for, what we need produced, and in what formats. Treat it as living — we will update it as packs and features ship. 1. About the game The game is a logic puzzle game with a playful, kid-safe premise: "Which dog pooped?" Players read a small set of clues about a cast of dogs and deduce who's responsible by placing each dog into the correct cell on a grid (one dog per row, one per column — the Sudoku-style placement constraint). Platforms: iOS (iPhone + iPad universal), then PWA, then Android. Engine: Native Swift / SwiftUI. Difficulty tiers: Easy (4×4), Medium (6×6), Hard (7×7), Very Hard (8x8). Theme today: Dogs, with rooms (Living Room, Bedroom, Kitchen, Dining Room, plus extras for larger boards) and objects (bed, sofa, chair, rug, dog bed, dinner table, desk, TV, plant, food bowl, window) used as clue elements. Some objects are room-locked — see §6 for the placement rules. Theme tomorrow: Themed packs — Cats, Farm Animals, Rodents, Birds, Animals of New Zealand, etc. Each pack is intended to be fully themed: animals and their rooms/objects. One-line pitch: Playful, family-friendly whodunit puzzles where the "crime" is a poop. 2. Audience and tone Primary audience: Families with kids ages ~8–16; secondary audience is adult casual puzzlers who enjoy a charming, low-stakes mystery. Tone: Warm, mischievous, gently funny. The poop premise is the joke — the art should be cute and inviting, never gross or scatological. Think Helo Kitty, Sago Mini, Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Toca Boca — not crude humor. Voice: Friendly, curious, "let's figure this out together." Avoid menace, peril, true-crime aesthetic. Hard no’s: Realistic poop imagery; scary or menacing dogs; gore; anything that reads as bathroom humor over whimsy. 3. What we need Grouped from highest-leverage to most deferrable. We'd like to commission (3.1) → (3.4) as a first package; (3.5) onward can follow. 3.1 Brand & visual identity (style guide) The foundation everything else builds on. Deliver a compact style guide that locks the look-and-feel before we commit to per-asset work. Color palette: Primary, secondary, accents, neutrals. Light-mode + dark-mode pairings. Hex values + usage guidance (which color for primary button vs. selection state vs. win celebration). Typography: Display face + UI face (or a single family with clear weights). Should support kids' readability (large x-height, friendly forms). Open-source preferred (Inter, Fraunces, Nunito, Quicksand, etc.) so we can license without per-seat costs; happy to consider paid faces with documented terms. Illustration style: Sample animal + sample object + sample room rendered in the agreed style, with notes on line weight, shading approach, palette restraint, and accepted simplifications. This becomes the spec the avatar/object pipeline matches against. Component styling: Buttons (primary / secondary / destructive / disabled), cards, chips, dialog/sheet shells, the puzzle board cell, selection/highlight treatments, success/error toasts. Iconography: A small set of UI glyphs (settings, info/help, share, restart, hint, close, back, lock). Consistent stroke weight and corner treatment. Motion principles (optional but valuable): A short note on how things should feel in motion — easing curves, characteristic flourishes (e.g., a confetti shape, a dog-tag wiggle), what to avoid. Deliverables: A PDF or Figma file with the above, plus exported swatches, type tokens (as a JSON or text list of name→hex / name→font), and source files for any custom marks. 3.2 App icon iOS 18 requires three variants: Light (default). Dark (designed for dark mode). Tinted (monochrome / single-channel — Apple applies the user's accent). Plus the standard size set Xcode imports (Apple Icon Composer / 1024×1024 master). The icon needs to be recognizable at 40pt on a Home screen and at 76pt in Spotlight. We'd like the dog character (or stylized motif) to read at small sizes — text on the icon is discouraged. 3.3 App Store assets Required for launch: App Store screenshots (with copy overlays) at iPhone 6.7" / 6.1" and iPad 12.9" / 11" sizes. Five to seven screens per device class is typical; we'll provide the in-app shots and the copy. App preview video (optional but high-converting). 15–30s. We can supply screen capture; artist designs motion graphics, title cards, and end frame. Promotional artwork for editorial features (Apple has been asking for a 1920×1080-ish "feature graphic" for game features lately). 3.4 Onboarding / tutorial spot illustrations The first-launch tutorial is text + a tiny 3×3 starter board today. We want 4–6 spot illustrations to make it feel welcoming: "Meet the dogs." "Read the clues." "Place a dog." "Remove a dog." "You solved it!" A "rules" recap card. Style should be consistent with the brand illustration style.