Hilt detail. Striving for a nice reflectivey crystally icey look. The big flat blade will be an interesting challenge to make look translucent like the hilt.
I want the flames more chaotic and maelstromish.
I'm simply using any color in the palette that works now. Forget color count control, who needs it. This sword was originally supposed to have significantly more colors than the other two anyway, to give it even a technical superiority.
Quoting your whole post for ease of comparison purposesesese
Just tried making it more chaotic and maelstromish. The spirals feel to me like they're going the wrong way! If the energy is travelling upwards and we state that the wispy smoke/fire like energy travels faster the closer it is to the core / the hotter it is, the slower wisps would get pushed away to the side, outwards, and not inwards, since inwards is towards more energy.
thus the direcion of the spirals should be outwards FROM the blade.
I tried to fragmentarize (this must be a real word) the flames/wisps into bigger accumulated masses that define the spiral more by direction of the clusters rather than lines that are then softened up by bands of color. ' 3 ' since that looks a bit pillowshadey.
Didn't touch the handle, but for compositional purposes couln't you change the balance of light reflected in the handle too? The middle of the handle could be almost black and then the reflections would appear more and more intensely towards the bottom. I feel that's how it should look more, and I'm sure it'd give a more tangible feeling of transcluency to the blade. I also think it'd be good, compositionally, have the bottom very densely filled with color, because that would give the eye a 'base' for the sword, where the color denseness from the flames would return in another part of the image, giving the image balance.
My mind is in a complete jumblemess-mode today so I'm afraid I might not be making as much sense as I'd like. Ask about anything that my ADD-mind didn't let me explain properly enough. CHEERZ
