NEED INPUT on modern heraldry

[latchkeykid]

http://www.deadboybreathing.com/crestnewtrial3.jpg

i desperately want some opinions on this....anything....be critical, be abusive....

[Kittywolf13]

its beautifully sysmetrical. love the dark red color, and i'm really amused by the key and crossbones. :3 its an interesting comment. although call me dense but i dont get what its for/is. though it would make an interesting tattoe or cd cover. :)

[Dr Midnight]

Looks great, love it... I'd just say that the fox (wolf?) eyes shouldn't be the flame shape, the white spot makes them look like odd anime eyes. The only other thing I can think of is that the shade-lines in the banner should be more evenly spaced and orderly. Good stuff man!

[THUNDERCOCK]

i think doc midnight hit it right on the head...its all pretty good but those eyse are just a bit distracting in their current shape. try to rework it and put it up...I would love to see alternatives.

[latchkeykid]

thank you for the input....i'm glad someone said something about the eyes on the foxes, (and yea, i'm going for foxes there) so i'm uploading three different eye designs, see what you guys think......

http://www.deadboybreathing.com/foxes.jpg

[Jedmo]

I'd go with the middle one. Nice design overall though.

[Rhynome]

A combination between middle and right eyes for me.

What does the Gaelic say?

Overall I quite like it.

[bwkeough]

looks really nice! I also prefer the middle eye design.

the one thing I think you need to consider is that all of the major elements are the same size so they're competing for attention. The negative triangular shapes created by the fox legs are the same size as the negative space inside the shield created by the crossed bones. For me, this results in a lack of cohesion -- I tend to look through the image as if it were a screen. obviously, when you add color to the objects some of this problem will go away.

I would also suggest that you scale down the size of the foxes (not much just 10-20%). This will add emphasis to the shield since it will now be the tallest part of the design.

I'm not sure what you intend to do with this when it's done, but if you keep it as vector art, you can get it embroidered on the back of a jacket which could look really wicked.

[Kittywolf13]

i like the middle eye design as well...though if you were going for something oriental looking the last one on the right is really cool! Also i agree with Bwkeough, makeing the foxes a tad bit smaller will give empahsis to the shield, as well make the piece flow better. but other then that, its totally looking good.

[young paddy1]

I'd go for a cross between middle and right for the eyes, get a nice sweep to the top of the eye, possibly lose the flames above their noses seems a bit random, maybe block in the centre of the shield to emphasise the key and crossed bones.

dunno how good my translation is "not enough, the love"

[Alexandr Pascenko]

if this should be a fox , please take the 3rd, the other eyes i´ve seen a thousand times.....

[abediah]

i like the one on the right, but i think it depends more on what you want to foxes to be showing, anger or wisdom or what?

[bwkeough]

...dunno how good my translation is "not enough, the love"

I was curious about the phrase but didn't recognize it as Gaelic until you mentioned it. first time trying to translate Gaelic and came up with pretty much the same word matches you. I think the phrase might be closer to "love is not enough" if we're looking for a comparable idiom in English, but I'm just punting here. hopefully latchkeykid will come back and set us right. :)

[latchkeykid]

thank you all for your critiques and suggestions....i'm down to basically two different ones with small differences....the top, i colored the crests border, shrunks the foxes and the top bad luck symbol down....the bottom, the foxes are shrunk only a small amount and i made a decision on the eyes....

http://www.deadboybreathing.com/crestnewtrial4.jpg

...now to answer some of your questions...

its beautifully sysmetrical. love the dark red color, and i'm really amused by the key and crossbones. :3 its an interesting comment. although call me dense but i dont get what its for/is. though it would make an interesting tattoe or cd cover. :)

thank you for the compiments and basically, it's a crest, i plan to use it as a personal logo as i am currently working freelance, so it will go on business cards, my website once i get it finished, etc....so i don't want something i'm going to get sick of seeing, nor something i'm going to constantly be pissed at cause i should've done something different....

...possibly lose the flames above their noses seems a bit random...

in many old myths, foxes would lure people off paths in woods and trick them using small balls of fire above there noses, this is a story my grandmother told me a long time ago....and it's stuck with me, so it's not random, just a very old reference....

I was curious about the phrase but didn't recognize it as Gaelic until you mentioned it. first time trying to translate Gaelic and came up with pretty much the same word matches you. I think the phrase might be closer to "love is not enough" if we're looking for a comparable idiom in English, but I'm just punting here. hopefully latchkeykid will come back and set us right. :)

and bwkeough gets the door prize!!!....it is irish gaelic for "love is not enough"...the words get switched around from young paddy1's translation because english grammar is a lil different than irish gaelic....

[bwkeough]

I'll put my vote in for the top one, but I also like the upward angle of the things that look like thorny vines coming off the bad luck symbol in the lower version.

[inspector Lee]

I have to say I'm not feeling the modern key, it just seems out of place to me. The handling of the banner at the bottom, the other design elements, the crossed bones and even the idea of heraldry itself says "old". Why not go for an old style skeleton key to keep everything in the same flavor. It will have the same symbolic meaning while making a better fit with the overall style?

[young paddy1]

I'd go for the bottom one, but I'd fill the centre of the shield to make the other items stand out.

inspector I'm guessing the new key is their because it's a latch key, and not a mortis like you're suggesting.

p.s. I have no idea why the shoddy translation is there, I'm damn sure I changed it while I was typing, and then left it out entirely. meh