Re-Mastered Ball (Patreon)

i had a few posts planned in advance of the alpha being ready, so we're gonna be stuck in the past for a couple days here. 

one of the bug reports i somehow got during the internal test was that i forgot to update one of the master ball's graphics. i don't recall whether i mentioned it here in the past or not, but after being requested to have one so many times, i decided to replace the normal Master Ball item with a Reborn Ball. it's still functionally the same, just cooler-looking and thematic. wowzers. 

anyway i did that during E17's cycle but appppparently i only updated 3/4 of the graphics cuz i forgot about one... specifically i forgot about the main graphic which displays in the bag. how??? that's the most important one.

so i did that the other day. here's a step by step of transforming the Master Ball into the Reborn Ball. 

First, I returned it to the normal circle shape. The Master Ball has those bumps on the sides of the top, right? so the shape is altered. gotta fix that first.

then i cover up all that mess on the top with black. these shades here are pretty rough since i know i'll be tweaking it as i go, but this makes it easier to work without that clutter.

next, the grey stripe turns white and the white bottom turns black. similar to the above, this is just laying down foundation. but that white contrasts pretty harshly with the black, right?

so here it is but blent. the stripe looks much thinner now, and also fades nicely into the black using its own lighter shades. i also fixed the shades themselves to work with both the white stripe and the outline.

next we draw a few rough guidelines for our logo's color curves. this is just to get a start on the shape-- i'll keep tweaking it as we go. by the way, this step is done on a second layer so i dont mess up the stuff beneath it.

i fill it in, and add proper colors...

..and then cut the opacity of the layer. this is just a guideline, not a finished product. i do this so i can see where the shadows and curves on the ball are underneath the color areas. 

you'll notice from the above image those shadows darken here. that's because i copied their pattern and put them onto the color layer so that the shading is preserved. but this is still on the faded layer. when we click that off back to full opacity....

we have it properly colored and properly shaded-- if the ball were flat.
but since the master ball wasn't flat, why should this one be?

here i start drawing outlines around the colors to give them apparent depth. a small highlight on the rasied part helps a lot. we also have to make the ribbons bulge around the top and side of the ball properly, which mess with the shape. it's a little awkward tbh.

tweaked the red and finished the blue. getting those notices in the top side outline is not entirely correct, but i decided it looks best.

then we fill out green and red the same way! the bottom being a flat line that is undesirable, but since the ribbons are closer together than on the top, using the same strategy won't work. i decided for the angle the ball is at, this was fine.

and so it's complete!