So I'm not very artistically inclined, but one of the few things I do enjoy drawing is Flags. In the course of my time here on GC, I've drawn a few, and want to have them in a centralized place, so that I can draw inspiration from them, and perhaps inspire others to create some colors for their factions. The Flag for the Black Militia: This one is a fairly straightforward flag with a Nordic Cross design, a little bit of flippity however gives us a Politically left flag, with the usual starkness of color that such flags tend to have. I've actually had this flag for years, and was just looking for an excuse to use it. The Berezan Flag: This one was a labor of love, as I've been spending alot of time recently getting better at photoshop, when I learned how to start making broader shapes and waves, I really wanted it to go somewhere, When I started to write the proposed lore for Bereza in the GC universe, I knew it had to have a stark flag, and enough meaning that I could expound upon in the lore itself. Looking up old State seals (Both United States States, and Old Soviet State coat of arms.) won me over, and naturally the Berezan flag got to have the states name on it. The Berezan Flag with yellow poles: This one honestly was just me thinking that perhaps the flag needed to feel a little more vertical, and thought to accomplish that with color. I was torn trying to figure out if I wanted the colors to alternate (It looks too mustard and Catsupy) Or leave it simply like this. Later when I was writing the lore, I found an excuse to use it, since the first lore for Bereza first came from the character sheet for Velimar. In that sheet I wrote about their yearly Rad Storms, and how a society would function based off that. It then suddenly had a very useful purpose for the people of Bereza and so it could be used. So because of that, Bereza has a Seasonal flag, which I thought was seemingly alien enough, but also shows the practicality of the planet and it's people. And now for two I've never shown on this site: This one is a redux of the Haven flag, I did this around the time that I wrote the Character sheet for Velimar and had hoped to use it in some sort of official capacity, Nothing much came of it, but it does show that I certainly had an interested in GC some years ago, before I ever actually played. This one, I had hoped to use in some sort of military fashion in respect to being in Haven's Military, this wound up not being the case, as the only Roleplay in the Haven Military is for the High Brass, and lower echelons need not apply. Perhaps in the future of one of my Characters stories, it will be of use, but for now, it's just an experiment I put together for fun. ֎֎֎ There are more flags I've got in the pipeline, but I don't want to spoil them yet, since some parties may wish to keep them secret until a proper unveiling.
I've never done an art request, that is until last night, when I got a sudden request from Ballasivus to create a flag for them. I was given what I could, a general idea that it had to be a corporate flag, and to work from there. The problem is is that Ballasivus didn't have a logo, or even corporate colors, so I had to start from a place of almost complete ignorance, and build something eye catchy and worthy of the name. However I did have something to work with, their discord icon: I noted the bits that stuck out, the 6 orangey lights was what I saw that I liked, and decided that they needed to come across. What else? There was a triangle like shape above the nose and eyes, So I needed some good geometry that a triangle would be apart of. Lastly was the rest of the colors, a dark black where the eyes are, and a dark grey for the silhouette. With this in mind, I went through a few ideas, and realized that the first order of business would be to create a logo, since I could very simply work with that: 6 Dots for the lights, and the colors from the soldiers helmet. I realized that a highlight on the inside of the six pointed star (Six triangles) would highlight what the logo is pointing to, and help catch the eye further. Next was the task of laying it on a field, my first thought was to create something Rising sun like, like the old Rising sun flag of Japan, But that quickly seemed to be too much as it magnified the star to be of too much importance in the flag. Next came me looking at inspiration, Barbados has a marvelous flag in the tricolor design with a yellow strip down the middle, I decided to shrink that style of stripe down and plop the logo into it. And it looks pretty good. The problem is the Black fields really overpower the flag, and I imagine it waving, it would look like almost a black flag unless the wind caught it right to show you the logo. I then thought of the RAF logo and liked what it did to magnify the colors of the RAF on a plane during WWII and decided to try something similar with this flag to get to my personal favorite incarnation of this flag: A large circle to draw more attention to the center logo, brightness concentrated into the center of the flag, and keeping the large black desolate fields that the Soldier channeled in the inspiration picture, and in my mind, standing for Ballasivus expanding into space. ֎֎֎ I had a few other variations on this flag here if you are interested in seeing them: https://imgur.com/a/5aCbbkf Until the next flag,
So I do goof, like anyone, and from time to time, make flags that I can't really place anywhere, The Black Militia flag from Bereza is one such flag, I loved it, but had no use for it. Thankfully GC has a use for art like this, and I can apply it liberally as needed to situations. My First Flag, is an alternative I presented to Ballasivus as a possible flag, I didn't much at the time present other than the center icon of the flag, but felt the colors were good enough to put it together all the same. It really loves it's orange, and wound up looking more like something I'd see on a back of Tea bag, or a Tea chain then any real flag: So I call it my Tea flag, Because of the similarity to Ballasivus's flag however, I may just have to open up a coffee chain under them using the flag. Starpixel's Coffee inc.™ a Subsidiary of Ballasivus Holdings. The next is what happens when I look up the worlds largest flower and proceed to make a flag of it: Again a very Pastel-ee flag, that may not have a future anywhere due to what's on it. I liked it because of the colors and the center shape being that of a Rafflesia flower, which is the worlds largest flower, and smells of rancid meat, because it uses flies to pollinate. A real Rafflesia looks like this: I really loved it's shape and wanted to bring it across so after a bit of fanagling was able to make a reasonable and cleaner facsimile of it. I like what it became, but admittedly it's purple and calm color wouldn't suit many uses, as it's not striking enough for a cutting edge corporation, and a strange combination of colors for a nation. (Not to say that it couldn't be used.) Still I'm quite happy with both, and do love the sunny-ness of the flags, but do know that starkness keeps the flags going out, pastels look like an Easter Parade.
