Apologies for the massive text wall, I mostly do these to sorta catalog my own thought process to myself as to not forget it in the future and to practice writing as well. Thank you if you do read it but I do not expect anyone to take their time and waste it on my rambling. Thank you for viewing my picture however and I really hope you enjoy it.

I've kind of been sitting on this picture for a bit and needed to get it out before I forgot what my thought process was. With this character I was going for a sort of frail healer for the three party group I'm trying to design. With this character I imagined that he was a later addition to the group and carried baggage from a former group he may have been a part of unrelated to his current party. Things such as the odd color scheme for a "white" mage is an examples of this. Along with this I imagine he's a reclusive character who I imagine would have to go through with character development that involves him opening up to the other two party members who he's now with. The red patches and small right shoulder patch are also examples of that whole "baggage" idea. I kind of thought maybe the patches could be from another former party member's clothing he knew that may have left or died and small grey patch could have come from a wound that struck him at some point. I even kind of wonder if there's like some cultural reason for the black cloths too.

Originally this character was designs I believe a few years ago, since like the witch character I did this is also a redesign of an older design albeit not AS old as that witch, I think I was sorta just starting to form the concept of this party or was experimenting with classical RPG styled roles and messing with them. I don't believe the paladin knight character that's part of this group was even conceived by this point in fact. If I didn't conceptualize this character and the witch as part of a group I definitely did by the point said paladin was made. I don't believe I even had a reason for a lot of the weird design quirks like the black eye bars either. I think along with the general look of the hair, his look was kind of meant to look vaguely like some sort of emo style. With the redesign however, I imagine the makeup/ markings on his face probably some sort of cultural significance to how he grew up. On top of that I put far more definition to these lines and less on his lower eyelid eyeliner. The hair didn't change THAT much however. I kinda just vaguely really liked how the bangs looked and thought it kind of defined his appearance far too much to remove without risking just making him unrecognizable. At the same time though, I did fluff the hair a bit though to make it look less spiky so that he'd look less aggressive and threatening. I also made his hood have far more "fluff" volume to it and took way a lot of the sharpness to it to further push a less aggressive design.

Funny thing was that I never actually finished that original design for this mage because I never actually drew his staff even though most of the design was finished. It gave me some liberties to find a way to base him around a sort of unusual artistic medium. I went with candles and flames because fire in itself can be used to burn designs into things, things such as shadow puppetry can be created using the light that fire makes, and it's used to make things such as charcoal. When it comes to the candles themselves, I imagined things such as incense and candle designs could have some sort of influence on the casting of the spells. Along with this I imagine such a thing would also influence how long he would be able to cast before needing to replace the candle. Wax made from the candle could maybe have some sorta use or effect too, since wax is often used for things such as stamps, though Im not sure what it'd be good for asides from being sort of like magical residue on the staff.

The staff itself has a sort of moon motif I kind of wish I expanded on with the rest of the design. I kind of got the idea for the moon theme when I saw the Yu-Gi-Oh card "Moon Envoy" and its weird moon trident spear thing. Along with this I tried to go for a semi art/dark nouveau look. I kind of did that to kind invoke both the Gothic beauty and frailness of the character though I feel it's too detailed compared to the character and I don't feel the character themselves invokes dark nouveau enough for that to be apparent honestly. I did also try to invoke the moon due to his focus on light and fire and how both the moon and fire are sort of the safest things in the night and the best things for using as directional tools. Also I like the mix of blues and whites since they're both common colors on the design that rarely actually ever interact with each other. They also give off this cold but pristine look that kinda contrasts both the candle/fire's and character's warm designs. Not really feeling how I added stars though or how they're meant to represent lunar cycles. Makes it look too detailed and tacky honestly. I also feel that I could have done a better job conveying that the wax catcher on the staff is suppose to be like clouds covering part of the moon.

When it comes to me adding themes of guidance to his design, I do it to kind push the idea hes more of a supportive lead and helper than the person who actively makes the decisions of a battle and progresses the fights. His heals and buffs give the other two party members the tools they need to find a way to win. The lantern kind of also helps give him this almost guide like look to him, like someone helpful and non threatening if you met them while lost at night. I believe I had the woodsman from Over the Garden Wall in mind in fact when trying to get that look. The lantern is sorta based on a hodge podge of various lanterns and is how he stores his fire. I imagine the lantern burns on his magic energy and is how he lights his candles so he can cast spells. He needs a staff to cast and the staff needs a something to realize said spells so fire fills that role.

When it comes to his color scheme I tried to go for a mix of black, white, red, blue, and lighting yellow. I feel maybe with the lighting, a more orange toned color might have fit the reds and blues better actually. The red patches are there to invoke the sorta traditional "white mage. Along with this the original design of the character was more "emo" than "goth" for what ever reason. Funny enough in the design the idea was he had red hair to show his aggressive "edgy" side but his main color involved green highlights all over his coat to show that he was a healer. The only blue on the design was the under cloths that were visible too, I believe I was trying to invoke primary colors, even though green blue and red are digital primary colors as opposed to physical primary colors, since I wanted him to be some sort of art related character like my witch. I feel the massive chunk of blue on the bottom of the robe in the new design is sorta meant to invoke that old under dress look. Along with this, the blues are there to break up the grey sections from being TOO overbearing and are there to kind of class with the red to give the outfit a bit more pop. The color also makes it easier to spot where sections of cloths end. For instance if a sleeve is in front of the main body of the jacket the blue helps the sleeves and such from blending into other areas of the body color, which make it easier to read in turn. The red patches also help with this, though I feel that if they were the only parts to help with contrasting body parts then they wouldn't work due to their shape and size. Because of how triangles come to a point, I felt t would have left way too much negative space on the body and would have made it easy for different parts of the body to almost "point" into each other. Also it would have looked a little odd to have patches over sleeve seams too. I didn't want to bring too much attention to the shoes so I just made them a darkish grey, originally they were going to be red to tie in with the patches. Brown was another color I tossed around due to my witch's boots being that color but found that adding too much color just took attention away from the rest of the body way more than it should have.

I also changed a lot of little design quirks to to make him work. The cape was removed because it messed with his silhouette too much and gave him a MUCH more imposing figure than I wanted him to have. Gloves were also added so he wouldn't burn his hands around all the fire and so I could tie his red color into more things. Surprisingly when I went back to the original design I saw he never actually had red spikes like how most white mages do and had to add it in turn because of that. Honestly one of the things that gets me the most with the old design are the eyes. I believe I made them to be very striking with how piercing and bright they are but it kinda looks ugly and silly. I liked the eye color since it kinda contrasts his hair but even the sclera was green. Made it look way too silly. He was originally a really lanky character. I toned that and his height down to make him kinda less intimidating, making him more around average height. Here's a picture of the original design for reference. Honestly looking back at it's so weird. I used to consider this to be the best image I ever drew. Looking at it now, there's just so much wrong with it. But seeing just how much I've grown as an artist is a genuinely gratifying thing to see quite honestly. I even see a lot of weird stylistic things I stopped doing. Its quaint really, charming to look back and see how everything's different and since improved on. Even down to color choice I've gotten better. It feels nice