v2.2.0

v2.2.0: 43 Creative mode styles, demo clips for every style, and a wiki

32 new tested Creative mode styles. The style library grows from 11 to 43. Every new style was tested in VideoExpress 3.5 with its own start image and a ten-second clip. Each test clip shows the style name as a title for three seconds, then fades it out and performs one action with one camera move. Every style passed, and each has its own sheet in references/styles/. A sheet gives the style's medium phrase (the opening words of every image prompt), its video style anchor, the stability line that closes every [LIGHT AND IMAGE], motion guidance, guards, and the known failures from the test take.

• Painted and drawn: Charcoal and Chalk, Ink and Wash, Gouache Picture Book, Oil Painting, Acrylic, Pure Watercolour (no line), Pencil Sketch, Pencil and Watercolour Picture Book ("Little Golden Book").
• Print and craft: Linocut, Risograph, Engraving, Chalkboard, Blueprint, Embroidery, Tissue-Paper Collage, Mosaic, Stained Glass, Origami.
• Japanese painting: Nihonga, Suibokuga (sumi-e, with kasure and nijimi named).
• Vintage animation: Rubber-Hose Cartoon (1930s black-and-white cel).
• Hybrids (two media in one frame): Pencil on Gouache, Charcoal on Watercolour, Clay Puppet on a Painted Set, Needle-Felt on Cut Paper, Pixel Sprite on Painted Scenery.
• Anime: Modern Digital TV, Shōjo, 1990s Cel, Shōnen Action, Cyberpunk (mid-1990s cel film look), Mecha.

The ten Create Mode presets and Cinematic Photoreal were tested the same way, so all 43 styles now have demo clips.

Demo clips and wiki. The styles index (references/styles/README.md) now links every style to its demo on YouTube, plus two master reels: the existing presets reel and the v2.2 new styles reel. The new project wiki has:

• A How-To home page with flow diagrams for install, the start methods (concept, script, existing images), intake, the prompt pack, the three operating modes (manual, automated with Claude or an agent driving VideoExpress, shared), fixing problems, and finishing.
• A Style catalogue with one page per style: demo clip, thumbnail and full style sheet.

Restructured skill. SKILL.md is now a short router (about 1,700 words, down from 7,700). It keeps the two driving facts, the workflow and the rules that apply to every prompt, plus a table saying which reference to read for each step. The detail moved, word for word, into references that load only when needed: bible.md, camera-and-motion.md, light-sound-dialogue.md and prompt-rules.md. create-modes.md is replaced by the styles/ folder: an index with the shared image recipe and video pattern, one sheet per style, and a _TEMPLATE.md for adding new ones. With this layout, adding styles costs nothing at read time: the assistant reads the index and the one sheet it needs.

What the tests taught (now in the sheets and the index):

• Mixed media: name the medium for each layer, state the separation as a rule ("strictly two media: … only, … only"), and rule out each cross-over. All five hybrids held with this wording.
• Pencil and watercolour: the picture-book look comes from pencil line and watercolour across the whole scene, not a pencil character over a painted background. The sheet is corrected. Pencil Sketch is corrected to full coloured pencil rather than a light tint.
• Blueprint: extrude, don't rotate. Asking a line drawing to turn made it spin out of control. Drawing it up from a plan held.
• Tile and glass styles: state "every tile / lead line stays exactly where it is" in the identity block, not only in the stability line.
• Titles in images: put the title sentence first in the image prompt and repeat it in the closing guards, or long character blocks can push it out.
• Look-alike characters: describe the whole design so a cartoon character can't drift toward a famous studio mascot.

Other changes. SKILL.md now records its version in the frontmatter (metadata.version: "2.2"), following the Agent Skills spec. The main README links the wiki and lists all 43 styles.

Upgrading. Replace the whole skill folder rather than copying files over it. references/create-modes.md no longer exists, and an old copy left behind would compete with the new styles/ folder. In Claude, remove the old skill and upload the new zip under Settings → Capabilities → Skills.

Both builds (Claude, ChatGPT/Codex) are identical in substance, and their 43 style sheets match byte for byte. Scope remains VideoExpress 3.5 and later.