Mediterranean engraved pixel art.

Roman arches and stonework, medieval Italian coastal towns, and the fine square marks of an engraving. Ten places share one bay, in daylight and moonlight.

One architectural language.

Use “Mediterranean engraved pixel art” when briefing an artist. Keep the architecture and the rendering method together.

Reference	What it contributes
Roman structure	Round arches, substantial stone piers, aqueducts and barrel vaults.
Medieval Italian coast	Loggias, compact hill towns, tiled roofs, working harbours and small watchtowers.
Mediterranean setting	Cypresses, terraces, calm bays, fishing boats and pearl-farm floats.
Engraved pixels	Material-following hatch marks, tiny square pixels and blue-noise dither in the seven-tone ramp.

The setting is an invented coastal world. Keep its scale and materials consistent across scenes. Gothic spires, imperial monuments, fantasy castles and modern marinas belong to a different setting.

Use the art in Studio Technical graphics Animated artwork

The reviewed art library. Use the matching canvas and preserve its quiet zone.

The world.

The places have a purpose. Keep their architecture and the horizon consistent.

A stone bridge crosses a calm bay, with mountains, pearl farm floats and a lighthouse on the right headland. In daylight. — The bay and bridge
A long bridge of ten stone arches, pearl farm floats and a lighthouse. Pavilion Bridge’s place.
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An open stone pavilion stands on a terrace above a bay, with cypresses, two seated figures and a distant bridge. In daylight. — The pavilion
A tiled roof, terrace and balustrade. Two small figures sit together, with no visible faces.
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A coastal village with a domed church and bell tower overlooks a bay, a small arched bridge and a sailboat. In daylight. — The coast
A village with a domed church, cypress trees and a sailboat. Shared across the family.
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An arched doorway faces a stone path through a walled courtyard, with a tree and shrubs. In moonlight. — The doorway
A moonlit path ends at an arched door. The brand idea has a place in the world.
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Day and night are drawn.

Day has a Paper sky and Mineral water. Night has an Ink sky, sparse stars and Paper reflections.

A stone bridge crosses a calm bay, with mountains, pearl farm floats and a lighthouse on the right headland. In moonlight. — Night · A real moonlit scene with its own lighting.

Edit the accepted day composition into night. Inversion turns Paper shadows into light and leaves the architecture lit from the wrong places. Keep the subject, camera and horizon related across a pair.

Leave room for the words.

Compose the scene below the quiet zone before adding type. An empty patch between buildings is not a quiet zone.

Quiet sky

1600 × 900
Full width, y 0 to 468

Canvas	Quiet zone	Scene
1600 × 900	Top 52%: y 0 to 468	Bottom 48%
1080 × 1350	Top 56%: y 0 to 756	Bottom 44%
1080 × 1080	Top 52%: y 0 to 562	Bottom 48%
1500 × 500 header	No type. Clear avatar overlap at x 0 to 420, y 300 to 500.	Keep subjects between x 450 and 1450; protect 60 px at top and bottom for X.

At least 97% of a day quiet zone uses the two lightest ramp tones. At least 97% of a night quiet zone uses the two darkest. Keep the night moon on the right, away from the left 60% used for headlines. In tall exports of the six new places it stays beside the original scene.

The texture, close up.

Quantise at the final art size. At 400%, every source pixel becomes four square pixels.

A 128 pixel crop of the bridge art texture — Source crop · 128 × 128 px

The same art texture enlarged four times with nearest neighbour — 400% · Nearest neighbour

Use image-rendering: pixelated in the browser. Prefer a whole pixel scale, then crop the excess. Use nearest neighbour for any raster resize. Never smooth an illustration to fit a slot.

The art ramp.

Use all seven tones when the scene needs them. Dither makes the transitions. It does not add a gradient.

Tone 0#F4F2EC

Tone 1#D9DFDF

Tone 2#B8CAD1

Tone 3#8DB1C1

Tone 4#7695A4

Tone 5#57707F

Tone 6#1B2B41

Download art ramp

Backgrounds and headers.

Choose the canvas shape before adding a headline. Headers carry art without type.

A stone pavilion with two seated figures, a distant bridge and a lighthouse above a quiet bay. In daylight. — Day header
Keep the avatar overlap clear.

A stone pavilion with two seated figures, a distant bridge and a lighthouse above a quiet bay. In moonlight, with a small moon at the upper right. — Night header
Protect the top and bottom crop bands.

Small vignettes.

Use one subject at a time. Day sits on flat Paper; night sits on flat Ink.

The interactive gallery needs JavaScript. Every vignette is also available in Downloads.

Subject	Topics	Keep
Pearl in an open oyster	Wallet and welcome	A physical pearl. It never replaces the Pearl Research Labs asset mark.
One bridge arch	Bridge and proofs	A plain horizontal rail and two intact piers.
Pavilion	Wallet, community and events	The isolated building on the same stone terrace.
Lighthouse	Status and updates	Pair with an exact status. Add no warning beam or glow.
Doorway	Welcome and self custody	Keep the open door and complete entrance visible.
Strongroom door	Vault, keys and self custody	The keyhole is a motif, never a security badge.
Five buoys on a float line	Proofs, status and updates	A progress motif. Explain a real process with a labelled vector diagram.
Sailboat	Bridge, community and events	A crossing motif. It makes no claim about transfer speed.

Each 1200 × 1200 vignette has at least 64 px of flat surface around every edge. Its ground or water dissolves through sparse dither. There is no rectangle, sky, horizon or moon behind it.

Rejects to recognise.

Soft resampling breaks the square texture. Inverted day art does not establish a believable night.

Incorrect: bridge texture blurred by smooth enlargement — Reject · Smoothed pixels

Incorrect: a daytime bridge with its colours mechanically inverted — Reject · Inverted daylight

Make new art.

Edit an accepted raw first. Change one thing at a time: light, framing, sky or the isolated subject.

Open the raw and final at full size. Count the arches and figures, then record the features that must stay fixed. The bay has ten arches; the coast has a different, smaller bridge. Preserve each place’s own construction.

Use the image generation tool with the raw as the edit target. Night begins as an edit of the accepted day scene. Generate from scratch only for a new isolated subject without a source.

Compose to the target ratio before quantising. Extend sky for a tall post instead of cropping away a bridge end, roof or boat. Keep each raw, prompt and rejected attempt with a descriptive name. Never mirror a scene to make it fit.

Day edit

Edit the accepted raw of [place and locked features].
Preserve every arch, roof, shoreline and figure.
Keep the complete scene in the lower 48% of a 16:9 canvas.
Leave the upper 52% as pale Paper sky with faint cloud wisps.
Use Mineral water, Ink detail and fine square pixel engraving.
Keep the same architecture and camera. Never mirror the place.
No type, logos, faces, extra people, modern objects or glow.

Night edit

Edit the accepted day raw. Preserve [place and locked features]
at the same positions and sizes. Change the lighting to moonlight.
Use a quiet Ink sky, a few tiny stars and one small moon
near x 82%, y 20%, about 5% of the canvas width.
Keep the moon away from the left 60% used for headlines.
Use dark Mineral water, a narrow Paper reflection and a few lit windows.
Preserve the square pixel engraving. No heavy clouds or glow.

Vignette

Isolate [one subject] on flat Paper by day or flat Ink by night.
Use a 1200 × 1200 canvas with the complete subject centred
inside the central 68%. Dissolve its ground into sparse dither.
Keep every roof, arch, door, hull and mast intact.
For a night pair, edit the accepted day vignette and preserve its geometry.
No scene boundary, sky, horizon, stars, moon, type or people.

Quantise once, at native size.

Use a 1 px source grid. Make the 3000 × 1000 header as an exact nearest neighbour double.

Art	Pixel	Gamma	Contrast	Lift
Day scene, background, header or vignette	1	0.92	1.08	−0.035
Night scene, background, header or vignette	1	1.04	1.06	0.02

uv run --with pillow --with numpy python3 -I tools/pavilion_quantize.py \
  composed-day.png day.png --width 1600 --pixel 1 --tones 7 \
  --gamma 0.92 --contrast 1.08 --lift -0.035

uv run --with pillow --with numpy python3 -I src/art/quantize_art.py \
  composed-night.png night.png --width 1600 --height 900 --pixel 1 \
  --gamma 1.04 --contrast 1.06 --lift 0.02

Run from the workspace root on a composed raw at the target ratio. The art wrapper uses the unchanged shared quantiser, enforces dimensions and packs indexed pixels. Production art uses exactly seven palette entries and no transparency. Keep type, marks, diagrams and product UI out of this process.

The scale test compared pixels 1, 2 and 3 at feed widths of 600, 506 and 343 px. Pixel 1 kept rails and stone joints clearer; coarser night dither became grainy. These are simulated compression tests, not a promise about X’s processing. The current live day finals use pixel 1; their older night bands use pixel 2.

Keep the world intact.

The art supplies a setting. It does not establish a product claim.

Leave out	Use instead
Modern devices, vehicles or street furniture	Show actual product UI as a separate layer.
Coins, rockets, circuit boards and glowing cubes	Use the bay’s own buildings, boats and float lines.
Padlocks, chains or a security badge	Use the strongroom door sparingly, with an exact explanation.
Faces, portraits or extra figures	Two separate seated figures at the pavilion, seen from behind. Other scenes have no people.
Generated letters, numbers or a logo	Keep type, the mark and diagrams vector sharp.
A mirrored scene or a new arch count	Preserve the accepted raw and extend the sky to fit.

Before an image joins the library.

Review the composition at export size, at feed size and at 400%.

Check	Pass condition
Place	The subject belongs to the Mediterranean bay. Architecture and camera stay consistent within each day and night pair.
Palette	Indexed PNG, exactly seven ramp entries, with no transparency.
Pixels	Square, coherent pixels. No smooth scaling, blur, JPEG halos or stray colour.
Quiet zone	The agreed rectangle meets the 97% two tone test. Inspect the exact headline area too.
Night	A matched scene with deliberate night lighting. The moon avoids the headline area.
Header	The art contract protects 40 px at top and bottom. Check the stricter 60 px X crop before upload.
Export	Correct dimensions, indexed PNG when lossless, under the upload limit. Inspect the uploaded result.
Access	Plain alt text describes the subject and includes any meaning carried by image text.

Mediterranean engraved pixel art.

One architectural language.

The world.

The bay and bridge

The pavilion

The coast

The doorway

Day and night are drawn.

Leave room for the words.

Quiet sky

The texture, close up.

The art ramp.

Backgrounds and headers.

Day background

Night background

Day header

Night header

Small vignettes.

Rejects to recognise.

Make new art.

Day edit

Night edit

Vignette

Quantise once, at native size.

Keep the world intact.

Before an image joins the library.