Eyyy more stuff!

This time around I did a bunch of background patterns since I was getting tired of the old one. Even though I made a background pattern before, I wanted to create a "simpler" design and, funnily enough, trying to do so was harder than making a complicated looking one.

So, what I knew for sure before starting anything was that I wanted to implement my alter-ego (Rikaneko--a sort of sphinx creature) into the BG design. I knew I wanted some sort of symbolic image of that alter-ego to be the center of attention. I also wanted the color scheme to be blue, though that was just because I wanted to make something blue, haha.

My first attempt was this:

I had a lot of fun drawing the borders, but there were a lot of flaws as a patterned background

1. It was much too complicated for what I had in mind as a BG as well as being a bit too busy for, well, a background image that's not really supposed to attract that much attention from more important content (like entries).
2. While the border decoration is intricate, the design didn't quite match so well with the image inside the circle. The image is way too simple, the style doesn't match, and it's a bit boring compared to the busyness surrounding it.
3. I didn't like how constrained each portion of the BG felt. While I was making the main pattern, I forgot to remember to keep away from the "edges" of the canvas which resulted in each repeat to look box-like. There is no fluidity or flow into each others' spaces to make it less look like a simple copy-and-paste of a BG
4. It looks like it was made for a bathroom. Just...no. Nope.

Sooo I scrapped this one and took what I learned (what not to do, haha) to create something better.

This was my second attempt. This time around went a little better. I took more time to make the alter-ego image and I decided to go with the theme of stars (though the reasoning behind that is less because I love space and more because star shapes are really pretty, haha). 

Initially, there wasn't going to be a Scorpio star constellation in the pattern, but after I had finished setting up the pattern with only the main image of my alter-ego and a spattering of star shapes, I realized the most of the background looked very empty. Adding the second main image into the pattern made the emptiness a little less and was a learning process all on its own since I didn't plan for it.

Unfortunately, I still wasn't too happy with this BG. I really liked the color scheme, the star theme, and the alter-ego image I had created, but together the BG still looked a little boring. There wasn't that much variety and I thought the main image of the alter-ego was still a bit complicated--it sort of made an imbalance to the entire pattern when compared to how sparse the Scorpio portion of the pattern was.

So I scrapped this one, too, for take three.

Now this was when I was somewhat satisfied. This was the variety I wanted, the color schemes, the star theme, and the fluidity. My first go was the navy/gold pattern, but when I was happy with that I wondered how a more dynamic and lighter color scheme would look, thus the cloud/gold pattern. The latter was surprisingly difficult as I hadn't considered how I would repeat a more textured BG compared to the flat BG in the navy/gold. Luckily, with some tweaking and a handy clone tool it came out pretty nicely!

In the end, I decided to go with the navy/gold one as the final BG I would use across my social media sites (including this one as you can see). I really love how the cloud/gold pattern came out, but the small details (like the constellation) got lost in the BG which I didn't like at all. The navy/gold pattern showed everything a lot easier, blog entries included.

So, in the matter of legibility, I chose the navy/gold. Maybe the cloud/gold pattern would work better with cellphone and notebook covers and the like. Hm.