Behind the Badges (Patreon)

 I'm planning to make another post soon about the inspirations behind some of the choices for the badge designs themselves. Many of them are obvious-- wow, Volt Badge, lighting bolts, so original-- but others aren't so much. Are there any badges you're specifically curious to know why they look the way they do? 

~ April 22nd.  

well. "soon" is a highly subjective term-- i did mention i was saving this follow up post for a rainy day, and with my sleep schedule having been flipped over three times in as many days, the day is raining.
also as a side note you know the problem with daily updates is that it's damn near impossible to find anything :C

so let's go over the ones that were asked about, and some others:

Titania's Alloy Badge:

Originally a Season 1 badge, it looked like the following, and was one of the simpler designs:

The season 1 design was basically made to be generic metal in the kind of form that could be a shield. The circular/rippling out thing could be argued to be parallel to the ripples in her brother's Geode badge-- but i can't remember if that was actually a reason or if i'm just making that up now lol. 

When I updated the badges for season 2, I darkened various spots on her badge to make it look dynamic and sort of show an element of corruption.  It isn't rust-coloured, but possibly should have been. Nonetheless, her drama with Amy unfolded well near the end of the season 1 and it showed in her disposition a lot-- so it did in her badge too. 

Anna's Millennium Badge:

Since she took over after Radomus, the imagery was sort of meant to follow his initial pyramid-head look with a touch of Illuminati. Anna is known for being able to see things that others can't see, and although she doesn't quite have the paranoid aspect, I thought re-using the imagery to hint at something More might be appropriate.

Adrienn's Amaranth Badge:

This is literally the last badge that was made, since the fairy type came in so late. Aside from just using Adrienn's signature colors (which themselves are always meant to show the gender dichotomy twisting around) this design doubles as what could be the rough silhouette of fairy wings, but more importantly an hourglass tipped on its side (the sand can't move, thereby doubling with xyr still-time dealio.)

As for the name, Amaranth is most commonly known as a variant of wheat, but in fantasy it also refers to a flower that never fades. Again, timelessness.

Charlotte's Cinder Badge, Samson's Strike Badge, and Serra's Rime Badge:

Q: what do all of these badges have in common?

...pencils down.

A: All of them take their names from Starlight-- no, not the reverse.

These badges were designed ~2011 iirc, so I would have been 19. I think I have written in here at some point how I first got the idea for Starlight when I was 16. 

I knew then that the ice angel race would be called Seracs (note: where Serra takes her name pun from) and the fire demon race would be Cinders-- Charlotte's badge. Her badge design doesn't really follow the name-- it's just a lighter, matching her (former) cigarette deal (so Graves can have his cigar, but Charlotte can't have her cigarette? -- yes.)

I also had an idea for the attack style system (Strike/Slash/Pierce-- you can see this listed on each character's profile), and had sprited icons for them. Samson's badge design is basically what the strike icon was, not that it was terribly original or anything.  Frankly it'll probably end up similar in the end too. 

Then there's Serra's Rime badge. You know Rime.  But back then in 16-year-old-me's version of Starlight, the character who is now Rime was actually named Tempest (and used what is now Aulyra's weapon instead of a violin). Instead, there was a different character, something like Aulyra's uncle, who was named Rime. That character no longer exists but the point was it was still a name I had back then. So I reused it for the badge name.

As for the design itself, Rime is a type of ice that forms over the surface of things so I tried to do the same on Serra's badge-- the black is supposed to be some kind of landmass-- cracked and broken, like her--and ice forms over it.

Seel's Suspension Badge:

Ciel's act in the circus is aerial dance. If you aren't familiar with that, it's a performance art usually seen in something like cirque du soleil where one or several ribbons hang from the ceiling, and a dancer twirls themselves up in them to pull themselves into the air and swing, strike dramatic mid-air poses, and generally move in seemingly-impossible ways. A quick search finds me this fairly exemplar video of it. This is Ciel's gig.

Her Suspension Badge is named for her act, as she is always literally suspending herself in the air between those ribbons. As for the design, I imagined it to be an abstract representation of a pose that such a dancer would take-- and to my luck, the dancer in the above video, happens to take almost exactly what I had in mind, here:

Comparing the two I think you can see how the wirey bits at the top of Ciel's badge were meant to be the dancer's legs-- then the triangle below, her body. The red and white was probably just for the generic circus aspect of it.

Shade's Omen Badge:

this is another one surviving from Season 1, but the origin is a bit clearer looking at the original version:

Well, it doesn't seem to have changed much, right? But the fact that it was gold on the border was pretty important. The idea of Shade's Omen Badge was that he tells the future in some respect, so his badge was meant to be a crystal ball. But, this isn't just any crystal ball-- it's one you've probably seen, in fact.

It's this one. This is a magical artifact, a dragon claw/crystal ball necklace given to me by my mother, for whom it was custom made by a kind old smith who worked near the royal castle-- none of that is made up or exaggerated, but that's a story for another time. Anyway, you've probably seen this in my streams because I wear it all the time. 

The points around the Omen Badge's design were the claws of this necklace viewed from the front. You can also see the base of the claw on the top right in the badge, though it's cut off. Then the flecks inside the circle were made parallel to the flaws inside this one's crystal. Nobody else knows this but me, and now you all.

The "Cocoon" and "Canopy" Badges

I mentioned last time how the game uses Season 2 badges even when Season 1 leaders give them out. This resulted in Florinia and Shelly giving out the Blossom and Monarch Badges which had Laura and Bennett's color schemes on them, but calling them by their own badge's names. After writing about this before, I went back and just did a quick recolor to the Monarch and Blossom badges to make them more appropriate for Shelly and Florinia. You can see the previous version in-game and in the linked post above, but here's the updates:

geez- update post at 9:30 pm. i'm so late.