Chop Shop Painted

Painted plates are the middle ground and the most forgiving. Colour is already exaggerated, so pushing the palette to a saturated accent does not look like a filter, and the tonal range is deliberately wide, which gives the wordmark a bright band to sit against and a dark corner to shadow into.

They compress better than photoreal for animated formats. Broad areas of related colour are exactly what a 160-colour GIF palette handles well, so a painted scene at 7MB looks closer to its source than a photographic one at the same budget.

Choose painted when the server has no strong tonal identity yet. It is the style least likely to be wrong in a year.

See every painted design.

The hardest-edged family in the catalogue: a single overhead work light, concrete, and a car that is clearly being taken apart rather than built. That one light source means an enormous tonal range from a blown highlight to a near-black corner, which is why the lettering reads so cleanly over it despite the clutter. The obvious pick for crime and mechanic roleplay, and completely wrong for anything welcoming.

The same scene is also drawn in anime, grunge and photoreal.

Saturated green has the highest luminance of any hue, which means it overpowers everything else in a frame and leaves nothing for the lettering. These designs keep green to the ribbon and the mark and hold the wordmark neutral, which is the only arrangement that stays balanced. It is a strong choice for survival and toxic-themed servers and a poor one for anything that wants to look restrained.

See every green design.