Banners and image studios
The layered image studio behind welcome banners, boost banners, birthday cards, rank cards, leaderboards and achievement badges — and why the browser preview is exactly what the bot draws.
On this page
Several systems post a generated image rather than only text: welcome and goodbye banners, boost thank-yous, birthday cards, rank cards, leaderboards, invite cards and achievement badges. They all use the same studio, and the same drawing core.
One renderer, two places
The studio in your browser and the bot that sends the image share one drawing module. The browser draws it to a canvas; the bot draws it with a native canvas on the server. There is no separate export, no “approximate preview”, and no class of bug where the preview and the post disagree — a layer that looks right in the editor is right in Discord.
Working in the studio
Start from the library or your own art
Every banner system ships a shared library of ready-made designs. Pick one and edit it, or upload your own background and build from scratch.
Arrange the layers
A design is a stack: background, artwork, avatar, text. Drag to move, use the handles to resize, and reorder in the layer list. Text layers carry their own font, size, weight, color, alignment and shadow.
Put placeholders in the text
Banner text supports a shorter placeholder set — name, display name, server, member count, account age. A mention has nowhere to go in a drawn image, so it is not offered.
Send yourself a test
Boost, birthday and welcome all have a test button that sends the real thing to the real channel with your own account in it. This is the only way to see how it looks in a live Discord message rather than on a white page.
Recoloring library art
Library designs can be tinted to your server's colors. It is switched off by default, because a design that was drawn to look a specific way usually should.
Things to know
- Banners are generated at send time, with that member's avatar. Nothing is pre-rendered, so a member who changes their avatar gets the new one on their next banner.
- There is a layer cap per design — enough for a rich composition, low enough that a runaway design cannot make the bot spend a second drawing one message.
- Uploaded art is stored by Arclo and served to Discord from there. Deleting a design releases its images.
- A banner is an image attached to the message. It is not the embed's color, its title or its text — those are set in the message editor beside it.
Attach Files is required
Arclo needs Attach Files in the target channel to post a generated banner. Without it the message still sends — the image simply is not there.
Which systems have one
| System | What it draws |
|---|---|
| Welcome & Goodbye | A banner per arrival and per departure, with the member's avatar |
| Boost Messages | A thank-you banner per boost |
| Birthdays | A birthday card, on the member's own date |
| Levels | The rank card and the leaderboard board |
| Invite Tracking | The invite card and its leaderboard |
| Achievements | Badges, the profile card and the leaderboard board |
| Information Channel | Section headers inside a published channel |
Troubleshooting
The message arrives without the image.
Arclo lacks Attach Files in that channel.
The avatar is a silhouette.
That member has no custom avatar. Arclo draws a placeholder rather than Discord's default color block.
My uploaded GIF is not moving.
An uploaded GIF stays animated; a design built in the studio is rendered as a still image, because it is drawn fresh for each member.
The library art is the wrong color.
Color matching is a switch. It is off by default for the welcome library — that art is scenic, and re-hueing a forest breaks the picture — and on for the abstract boost and birthday art.
Still stuck? Ask in the support server — somebody there has almost certainly configured this before.