Original sci-fi IP commissions: painting from a worldbuilding brief

A client called Quentin emailed me on a Wednesday in February with a six-page PDF and the subject line "before we talk about characters, can I send you my world?" That PDF was the most useful thing any original-IP client has ever sent me on a first contact. Two years of homebrew sci-fi worldbuilding, written in a way that wasn't trying to sell me anything. The document just said here is the place these people live, here are the rules of it, here is what their gear looks like and why. By the time we got to the actual character brief, I had already painted the world in my head. The character locked in two sketches.

Original sci-fi IP commissions are different from setting-licensed ones. With Starfinder or Lancer, the visual language is partly handed to you by the system. With your own novel, your own indie RPG, your own webcomic or homebrew campaign, the visual language has to be invented and locked before the first character can paint cleanly. This piece walks through how to commission art for an original sci-fi world: what worldbuilding material to send, how to lock visual language across multiple characters, the bible-document approach that separates a great original-IP commission from a mediocre one, and how to brief the studio when there is no published source material to point at.

Contents

• Why original IPs need a different briefing approach
• The worldbuilding bible — what to send
• Locking visual language across multiple characters
• The single-source-of-truth reference set
• Three commission flows for original sci-fi work
• Where original-IP commissions usually go wrong
• Pacing a multi-character original-IP project
• Briefing the first character

Why original IPs need a different briefing approach

A licensed-setting commission lives inside an existing visual world. If a client says "she's a Lancer pilot," I already know the gear's geometric vocabulary, the typical chassis silhouettes, the way the genre's hard-edged industrial aesthetic plays at portrait scale. The visual language is already shared between us. The brief just has to specify the character.

An original-IP commission has no shared visual baseline. "She's a pilot" tells me nothing about whether the gear is sleek (a Star Wars-coded aesthetic), grimy industrial (Alien-coded), Lancer-coded geometric, retro-futurist (a Cowboy Bebop or Outlaw Star feel), or something the client has invented that doesn't have a direct genre cousin. Every visual decision is open. That's freedom, but it's also a briefing problem. The painting has nowhere to start unless the world is described first.

This is also why the original-IP commission flow takes longer than a single setting-licensed character. The first piece in an original world is doing two jobs — establishing the character and establishing the world's visual language. The first piece costs more in time and in sketch iterations than the second, third, and fourth, because the second piece can reference the first. For the broader question of how to approach commission style choices when none of the genre defaults apply, the commission style guide is the underlying reference.

The worldbuilding bible — what to send

The single most useful thing an original-IP client can send me before the first character brief is what I now call the worldbuilding bible: a structured document that tells me about the place before it tells me about any one person in it. Quentin's PDF from February was the cleanest example I've worked with. Six pages, no fluff, organized around the visual decisions that would affect the painting.

What a useful sci-fi worldbuilding bible contains.

The technological baseline. What is the level of tech in this setting? Faster-than-light or not? Energy weapons or kinetic? Robotic AI or human-piloted? Cybernetic and bioware available or not? A short paragraph on each of these tells me what's plausible on a character's body. A setting where energy weapons exist but are rare paints differently from one where they're universal. In the first case, the energy-weapon character carries a status detail rather than a standard sidearm.

The dominant aesthetic family. Is this setting clean industrial (think near-future commercial spaceflight)? Grimy industrial (Alien, Mothership)? Sleek post-scarcity (Iain Banks, Becky Chambers)? Retro-futurist (Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star)? Cyberpunk-leaning? Hard sci-fi minimalist (The Expanse)? Pick one or two reference families and describe how your world sits relative to them. A single sentence like "closer to The Expanse than to Star Wars, but with a more painted, lived-in colour palette" is more useful than a hundred pinned reference images.

Factions and their visual signatures. Who are the major factions in the setting, and what does each one's gear and clothing look like? Faction A's people wear long coats and dark colours. Faction B is uniformed in white and chrome. Faction C is freelance, mismatched, scavenger-coded. Each faction signature is a paintable cue that lets the viewer place a character in the setting at first glance. Without faction signatures, every character has to be painted from scratch.

The settled and unsettled environments. Where does this setting take place? Stations and ships only? A specific planet's surface? A range of environments? Climate baked into the character's gear is one of the strongest reads in sci-fi portraiture, and "what climates exist" is a worldbuilding decision the painting needs upfront.

A few proper nouns and their meanings. The names of specific factions, ships, planets, or governing bodies, with a one-line gloss for each. Not a full lore dump. Just enough that when a character's brief says "she works for the Argosa," I can place that on the visual map.

Anti-style notes. What is this world explicitly not? Quentin's bible had a line that said "no chrome, no neon, no glowing markings on anyone." That sentence saved us two weeks of revision. Anti-style notes are often more useful than positive style notes, because they close off the visual defaults the painter would otherwise reach for.

A worldbuilding bible doesn't need to be long. Two to six pages is usually plenty. The point is to be a single document I can return to when a question comes up mid-painting (would the Argosa's gear be matte or chrome?) and find the answer without re-reading three different emails.

Locking visual language across multiple characters

The interesting work in an original-IP commission is usually not a single character. It's a small cast that has to read as part of the same world. A novelist commissioning art for the five main characters of their book. A homebrew RPG designer commissioning the four iconic NPCs of their setting. An indie comic creator commissioning the eight characters of their first issue. These projects only land if the visual language is locked early and held across every piece.

A few moves I rely on for visual language continuity.

A single shared lighting bible. I commit to one lighting language for the entire cast, usually a single warm key with cool ambient fill, but the specifics vary by setting. Once I've painted the first character in that light, every subsequent character lights the same way unless the brief specifies otherwise. This is the biggest reason an original-IP party feels cohesive. The light is the world.

A locked palette. The world's palette gets defined on the first character. Five to seven colours that recur across the cast: a warm dominant, a cool ambient, two faction-signature colours, a neutral, and one accent that signals the world's tone. Every subsequent character paints inside this palette, with deviation only when the lore explicitly requires it. The palette is the world's mood.

A shared surface vocabulary. What does fabric look like in this world? What does metal look like? What does dirt and wear look like? Once those are established on the first piece, the painting team can apply the same surface logic across every character. A world where metal is always matte-and-dirty paints differently from one where metal is always lacquered-and-clean, and the decision has to be visible in every piece.

A scale chart. If the cast includes characters of varied species or sizes, a single chart that locks their heights relative to each other prevents a recurring problem: a character painted at the wrong scale in their solo portrait, then needing to be repainted when they appear in a group shot.

A motif or two. A single visual recurrence that ties the cast together. A specific shape on every faction's gear, a particular way a piece of jewelry is worn, a small detail that recurs without dominating. Quentin's setting had a faint repeating diamond stitch on every Argosa-faction garment, visible at portrait scale only if you knew to look for it, but binding the cast together once the viewer noticed. Motifs reward the second viewing, which is what makes a world feel deep.

An original sci-fi world is whatever recurs across every painting. Pick the recurrences before the first sketch.

The single-source-of-truth reference set

Once the worldbuilding bible is locked, I ask original-IP clients for what I call a single-source-of-truth reference set: a small, curated visual mood board that defines the world's look without trying to dictate any one character's paint.

What goes in a useful reference set.

• Three to five environmental references. Not character art. Photographs or paintings of places that look like this world's environment. A specific industrial interior. A planet's surface. A station's docking bay. The light and atmosphere of the place do half the worldbuilding work for me.
• Two or three faction-uniform references. Not necessarily sci-fi: historical military uniforms, contemporary specialist clothing, period dress that captures the feel of the faction's gear. A faction that's coded as "naval but in space" gets a specific reference set; one coded as "post-scarcity diplomats" gets a different one.
• One or two existing-art references for tone. Pieces from published sci-fi art that capture the world's tone without dictating its look. The painting style I'd paint toward but never copy. This tells me what finished feel the client is hoping for.
• A short list of anti-references. What the world should explicitly not look like. Three or four pieces of existing art that the world should not resemble. Anti-references close off the visual defaults that the painter would otherwise drift toward.

The reference set should be small. A hundred-image Pinterest board is harder to paint from than five carefully chosen references. The discipline of picking the five most important references is itself worldbuilding. It forces the client to decide what actually matters about their world's visual identity.

A client called Mei sent me a reference set last summer that had exactly four images: one of a deep-water research vessel's interior, one of a Soviet-era space helmet, one of a Norwegian fishing village in winter, and one painting from an old Atlantic feature on Arctic exploration. Four images. Zero sci-fi character art. But those four images told me everything about the visual language of her setting: a cold, cramped, working-class deep-space mining colony with a Scandinavian-coded aesthetic. Every character I painted for her cast pulled from that reference set without ever copying it directly. The piece felt original because the references weren't sci-fi character art to begin with.

Three commission flows for original sci-fi work

Original-IP commissions arrive in three shapes, and the pipeline runs slightly differently for each.

The single hero portrait. One character from your original sci-fi world, painted once, no follow-up planned. This is the simplest flow but the most painting-dense. The first character has to do all the worldbuilding work alone, because there's no second piece to spread the visual language across. The brief and the worldbuilding bible matter more on a single hero portrait than on a multi-character pack. I usually push first-time original-IP clients toward two characters minimum, because the second piece amortizes the worldbuilding work and the cast starts to feel like a world rather than a person.

The small cast pack. Three to six characters from your setting, painted as part of one project. This is the sweet spot for original-IP commissions, because the first piece sets the world and the subsequent pieces refine it without re-establishing it. The cast pack runs through the character work service page's party-pack pipeline, which is the same pipeline used for licensed-setting groups but with extra time budgeted upfront for the worldbuilding bible.

The publication-scale project. Original sci-fi for a novel cover, an indie RPG book, a webcomic launch, a tabletop campaign supplement. This is its own flow. It sits in the custom projects service rather than in the standard character-art pipeline, because the project usually involves repeated work over months, often includes setting illustrations as well as characters, and may involve specific delivery formats (cover-ready PSDs, print-ready resolution, transparent backgrounds for layout). Quentin's project was a publication-scale flow: eight characters plus three environment plates, delivered across six months. The worldbuilding bible was the first deliverable. The visual language locked on the third character. The remaining five painted nearly twice as fast as the first three.

Where original-IP commissions usually go wrong

Failure modes I sketch around on every original-IP brief.

• The "trust me, it's all in my head" brief. A client who hasn't written down the worldbuilding because it's all internal. The painting can't paint what isn't articulated. Even a one-page document is enough, because the act of writing the world down is itself a useful design pass.
• The thousand-image Pinterest board. A reference set so large it tells me everything and nothing. Five carefully chosen references beat fifty disorganized ones every time.
• The "anything goes" attitude. A client who tells me the world is wide open and I should pick. I won't pick. The world is the client's; the painting is mine. The handoff only works if the client owns the worldbuilding.
• No anti-references. Without explicit notes on what the world is not, the painting drifts toward the genre's defaults. Anti-references prevent default drift.
• Inconsistent worldbuilding across characters. A first character is painted in a grimy industrial language; a second character arrives with a brief that suggests sleek post-scarcity. The cast no longer reads as one world. The worldbuilding bible has to be locked before the first sketch, not refined character by character.
• Late-stage lore additions. A client who, halfway through the third character in a pack, decides the faction's gear should actually be chrome instead of matte. Late-stage changes cascade. They affect every piece already painted, every piece in progress, and every piece scheduled. Lock the lore before the line work starts.
• Forgetting that the world's visual language costs time. A first character in an original sci-fi world takes longer than a first character in a licensed setting, because the painting is also establishing the world. Budget for this. The pricing guide has the underlying logic on how original-IP work prices relative to licensed-setting work.

Pacing a multi-character original-IP project

A small cast pack or a publication-scale project paces differently from a single portrait. The rough rhythm I follow on most original-IP groups, with Quentin's eight-character book project as the reference.

Week one. The worldbuilding bible review and the reference set lock. I read the bible, ask clarifying questions, push back on anything that's vague or contradictory, and confirm the anti-style notes. No painting yet. By the end of the week, we have a single source-of-truth document that I'll return to throughout the project.

Weeks two through three. The first character. Three to four sketch iterations to nail the lighting language, the palette, the surface vocabulary, and the faction signature. The first character is the one I expect to revise the most. Quentin's first character (a station-born engineer named after a real ancestor of his) went through five sketches before we locked the colour pass. Every subsequent character in the project moved faster because of that work.

Weeks four through twelve (or whatever fits the cast size). The remaining cast. Each character paints in two to three weeks now, because the visual language is already locked. Each new piece adds a small refinement to the bible: a faction detail we hadn't fully painted yet, a climate variation we now know how to render, a species variation that requires a specific lighting note.

The final cohesion pass. Once every character is painted, I lay them out side by side and check that the cast still reads as one world. Small adjustments happen here: a slightly cooler shadow on one character to match the others, a faction emblem repainted at consistent fidelity. This pass is what makes a cast pack feel like a book rather than a folder of files.

Briefing the first character

If you want an original-IP sci-fi commission that lands, the worldbuilding bible does most of the work before the character brief even starts. But the first character's brief still has specific questions that need plain-language answers. Who is this character? Name, age, role in the setting, faction or affiliation, the one-line summary of their function in the story. What does their gear look like in this world specifically? Not "sci-fi armor" but "the specific Argosa-issue working softsuit, three years worn, with one shoulder patch from their previous unit." What is the character's relationship to the world they live in? Comfortable, alienated, on the run, in command, indifferent. What is the moment the painting freezes? What are they doing, where, when, lit by what? And what is the one feature of this character that has to survive every revision pass: a specific tattoo, a specific posture, a specific way they wear their hair.

A client named Eitan brought me an original sci-fi piece last September with a brief that solved the first-character problem in one sentence on the third question: "He left the colony three years ago and the painting is the first time he's looked back at it." That sentence told me the moment, the emotional register, and the composition. The character had to be facing slightly away from the camera, looking over a shoulder at something off-frame, the colony itself implied rather than shown. The colony's visual language came from Eitan's bible. The character's relationship to it came from that one line. The piece took six weeks and Eitan signed off on the first colour pass.

For the wider context, the sci-fi character art commission guide is the genre-level guide that this piece sits inside. If your original sci-fi setting includes significant body modifications, the cyberware versus bioware piece covers how mod systems lock into a worldbuilding bible. If your setting includes invented alien species, the humanoid vs non-humanoid alien guide covers how to brief a species you've designed yourself rather than one with established canon. And if your setting includes mech or hardsuit-coded armor, the sci-fi armor families guide covers the family-level decisions that have to be made early in worldbuilding.

For genre crossovers (original IPs that lean cyberpunk-coded or horror-coded), the cyberpunk character art commission guide and the horror character art commission guide (Mothership-leaning original sci-fi often pulls from this) are the right cross-references. If your original IP is closer to a homebrew TTRPG with a Starfinder-style class roster, the Starfinder character art guide covers how class-and-species matrices brief, which translates directly to homebrew systems. For the wider craft of writing a useful brief, the brief-writing guide covers the underlying discipline that applies to every original-IP project. The commission style guide covers the painterly-versus-anime-versus-lineart decision that has to be made before the first sketch.

When you're ready, the order form takes original-IP briefs the same way it takes any other commission, with one important note. Attach your worldbuilding bible (or a draft of it) to the first contact. The first email matters more on an original-IP project than on a licensed-setting one. The portfolio has the closest painted versions of original sci-fi work I'm able to show publicly, including some pieces from Quentin's book project once the publication releases. For multi-character original-IP packs, the character work service page covers the party-pack pipeline. For publication-scale projects (book covers, indie RPG books, webcomic launches), custom projects is the dedicated route, with a longer initial conversation budgeted for the worldbuilding bible and reference set lock. The pricing guide and the sketch-to-final process walkthrough cover the underlying logistics, which apply to original-IP work with the caveat that the first piece always takes longer.

Original sci-fi character art is one of the most rewarding kinds of commission I take, because the painting is also the world's first visualization. The brief that arrives with a bible attached is the brief that paints in half the time of the one that arrives blank. Write the world down before you write the character down. The painting follows from there.