Return of the Badges!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

I've been working once more on the badge ideas that I spoke about in a previous blog and rejigged one of the ones that I decided to work on. There were a few parts to it that I wasn't entirely pleased with. Firstly, the eyes were a bit out of proportion. Secondly, considering the design would eventually be shrunk down to badge size, the line art was a little too thin and would have been lost once it was adjusted to the correct size. And lastly, I had made mention of having some difficulties with the colour scheme for the character himself.

Considering I'm talking about these issues now....well, suffice to say, they've been fixed.

So, for the first problem I had, I needed to adjust the face somewhat to put everything in its proper place. This meant the eyes are now in different places and a little narrower than the previous versions, along with some of the face placements to get everything in proportion. For the second problem, in order to fix it I ended up using my previous line art as the base to essentially redraw it. Ine of the main differences in redrawing was the hair is ever so slightly less detailed, since some of it would have been lost when shrunk, though more details will come in from the shading (I've only just started a little on that. You'll be able to see the little bits I've started on with the image I'll be showing in a moment). This will stand out a little more, even at a small badge size.

Lastly, as mentioned, was colour.

While I've yet to work on the background (I have a few ideas for that but I need to see how the final image works with the light and dark from the glowing orbs and eyes), the character himself now has more complimentary colours.

Do excuse the white ball. That will be changed to a gleaming ball of different colours when I've finished with the basic shadows and lights of the character. The white circle is a placeholder so I'll be able to work out where the light source is. So, the colours. Before, he looked very white washed, but this time he looks a bit less dead, both with skin colour and the colour of his clothing. What you may notice is his eye colour is currently a bit darker. This is because I've yet to really do the effect on the eye colour to make it have his more signature glow to it. Once done the eye colour should look much lighter ad closer to the original colour choice. As for his clothing, the colours are not only a little more complimentary, but they match the Victorian-esque feel and make it look a little more authentic. Currently it does look a bit dark, admittedly, but once I've started playing with shading, it should fix this problem.

As you can see, I've only really just started on doing the shading basics, that is in the hair and on the face. I'm currently just working on the shadows right now, with proper highlights being added a bit later once I'm absolutely sure how the shadows lay. Because of the particular light source and its proximity, the type of shading will be rather interesting, and may even get darker once I know the intensity of the ball of light. For now, it's mostly about the placement, however. Still, I'm much happier with this version right now.

So, what do you all think? Do you like this version, or prefer the original. I'm always happy to hear from you :)

Until next time!

Tara