Art direction
Style B: Operatic Cyberpunk Cabaret — locked 2026-05-20.
The aesthetic is porcelain bodies in a cabaret palette. Hot pink, electric cyan, cabaret gold, wine-dark backgrounds. Pixel theatre. Operatic but loud. Cyberpunk but with a stage.
The decision
We explored five style directions before locking. The shortlist:
- A. Encore on Sonic — preserve the orange chassis, layer cyan/yellow neon on top
- B. Operatic Cyberpunk Cabaret — full reskin, porcelain bodies, fluro accents
- C. Sonic Spectre — chassis swaps to Sonic yellow
- D. Resurrection Aria — translucent half-coalesced ghosts
- E. Stage-and-Crew — rarity tier as opera-company role
User picked B with the word "killer" and an exclamation point. The other four explorations are kept as generator code (scripts/art-mockups/generate.mjs) but never promoted anywhere user-facing.
Canonical palette
These are the shared colours every Fantum uses regardless of fluro variant:
| Role | Hex |
|---|---|
| Body (porcelain white-cream) | #F2EBD8 |
| Body shadow | #C8BFA8 |
| Outline (deep purple-black) | #1A0A14 |
| Cape primary (gold leaf) | #D4AF37 |
| Cape shadow | #8A6F1F |
| Gem highlight (white-cyan) | #80F0FF |
| Background (deep wine) | #1F0814 |
The cyan gem is the unifying accent — it stays cyan across every fluro variant. Everything else can shift; the gem holds the brand line.
Fluro accent variants
Per-Fantum, one fluro variant is rolled at mint time from the master seed. The fluro drives hair primary + highlight + pupils + mouth + cape trim + accent halos. The cyan gem is fluro-independent.
| Variant | Primary | Highlight | Tier mapping |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pumpkin Gold (OG callback) | #F58A2A | #A0521C | Common (62%) |
| Fluro Blue | #00B8FF | #80E0FF | Uncommon (25%) |
| Fluro Green | #39FF14 | #A0FFA0 | Rare (10%) |
| Fluro Pink | #FF2D8F | #FF7DC0 | Epic (2%) |
| Legendary — Void Phantom | body #1A1A1A, outline glows #FF2D8F | hair pink + cyan mouth | 0.5% (half of legendary) |
| Legendary — Holo Iridescent | gradient body pink→cyan→green | gold hair + pink trim | 0.5% (half of legendary) |
A small ~1% slice across every tier above Common is set aside for two-tone ultra-rares — hair in one fluro, cape trim + halo + mouth in another. Six combinations exist:
Pink × Blue, Pink × Green, Pink × Orange,
Blue × Green, Blue × Orange, Green × Orange
Why the rebrand from pumpkin orange
The original Fantums were #F58A2A (pumpkin) on #000000 outline. The Reborn body is porcelain, deliberately not the orange. The reasoning:
- Clean rebrand identity — Reborn is a successor, not a reissue. The silhouette honours the original. The palette signals the encore.
- The OG palette becomes the Common rarity — the Pumpkin Gold Common tier is the OG callback. 62% of supply wears the original colours. Rarer Fantums earn the cabaret palette.
- Cabaret reads on-chain — gold + pink + cyan on wine-dark backgrounds renders cleanly in 32x32 SVG; the gold gradient and the cyan gem give the cheap renderer something to do.
What the Fantums are
Pixel people. Not bare ghosts. The art carries through from the original's grammar:
- Hair, in the fluro accent colour, flanking the face
- Held weapons or props per archetype (microphone, scroll, dagger, baton, candelabra)
- Bling — gold cape trim, cyan gem, occasional cyan band on a top hat
- Multi-layer outfits — cape + collar + held items, not just a base sprite
See Archetypes for the 19-archetype roster that drives accessory grammar.
Hero character — Cyber Diva
The marketing hero piece is CYBER DIVA at Legendary tier:
- Porcelain face and body
- Gold microphone right-hand
- Gold scroll left-hand
- Pink top hat with cyan band
- Hot-pink hair flanking both sides
- Gold cape collar with cyan gem
- Hot-pink pupils and mouth
- OG badge top-right
She is the marketing splash. Her exact pixel placement is committed in docs/art-mockups/style-b-hero.png and the variants under docs/art-mockups/style-b/.
Tone callouts
- Lowercase, dry, casual. No corporate-speak in any embedded text.
- Cabaret tagline candidates: "the chain killed them, the encore brought them back" / "ten thousand ghosts, one more song" / "you can't permadeath an opera".
- Avoid Goblintown gross-out. Avoid Pudgy / Doodles cute. Aim for elegant haunted.
See also
- Archetypes — the 19-character roster
- Rarity tiers — Common through Legendary, what colour each is
- Legendary skins — Void Phantom and Holo Iridescent
- The Dev Monarch — the 1-of-1 outside the random roll
- On-chain art — how this palette ends up rendered from contract bytes
Last updated: 2026-05-21