illo

Illo

Make original, distinctive editorial illustrations for written content. One image explains one idea: a key judgment, a flow, a before/after, a trap, a loop. A recurring mascot is the one performing the idea in every scene — the subject, never decoration. When one idea advances through stages, it can be a mini-comic: 2–4 panels inside a single image. And when the idea is itself a traceable structure — a pipeline, labeled stages, a fan-out, a timeline, a loop — it can be an explainer: the same mascot and look drawing the structure as a hand-built sketch-diagram with arrows and callouts (references/composition.md, "Two registers" and "Pick the diagram type"; editorial scene is always the default). A named pipeline or recipe is labeled stages inside that register — named phases in order, one connected system, pack-solved for this body, never a new look. Or a character cutout: the mascot alone on a transparent PNG for downstream overlay — pose and contact continuity only, no idea, no text, no environment (references/cutout.md).

This is a configurable house style, not a generic image generator. The methodology is the constant; the character pack and palette are the parameters — and a character pack carries its style with it: one look per pack, chosen from the bundled look library (riso — grainy halftone, ink-layer offset, paper grain, one bold softly-rounded outline — plus blueprint, woodcut, pixel, clay, manila, chalk, phosphor, enamel, gouache, felt, diorama, sketchbook, bricks, fizz, bloom, and snes) or a custom style file. The default mascot is Blot, a deadpan ink-drop in riso. Palettes come from presets, the user's own palette file, or one derived color. Whatever the parameters, it is intentionally not a photo — with one deliberate exception, the bricks look, a toy-brick photography style — not a logo, not a corporate infographic, not a formal boxes-and-diamonds flowchart look, not a UI mockup. Asking for a flowchart still means labeled stages in the pack's look — the formality ban is a look constraint, not a refusal of the word.