Spotlight for Selwyn

The funniest thing about this little banner project of mine is that almost none of these banners have ended up looking like what my original (admittedly hazy) vision was.

I had this image of swirls and loop-de-loops with contrasting colors and it was bold and exciting!

And I became so thoroughly distracted with all the neat STUFF that I found that nothing quite like the beginning thought has been created.

That’s OK.

I’ve had a lot of fun just poking at this and seeing what happens.

And that’s kind of how Selwyn’s banner came to be.

The other day I was running around Org and my random mount of the moment was the Winged Guardian.

I was admiring the use of contrasting colors, the bold purples with the creams, and the hints of pale blue with a splash of lavendar. It’s really a very pretty mount.

Suddenly it struck me as only natural that I start a banner with a palette in mind instead of the randomly clicking about on a color wheel method I normally employ.

Off to the Blizzard website to snag a pretty picture of a pretty mount!

Inspired, I returned to a cluster of screenshots I had taken on Selwyn in the WoW ModelViewer, in the blue Tier 10.

We’ve seen Selwyn in this gear before so it seemed only natural to return to it, although I don’t recall if he ever actually wore this particular coloration in game. (Sorry, Zar, that link does not go to anything filthy like last time.) I briefly considered using the birdbath-shoulder tier, because it also is very pretty in color, but ultimately decided he had suffered enough with that gear.

As with just about any character I’ve worked with in the model viewer, it’s insanely difficult to find a pose that conveys any sense of movement without clipping a shoulder through the character’s head. This gear set was no different, but I finally settled on a nice kneeling shot.

Archangel is one of my favorite effects in the game so I knew I would have to paste some wings on there. (Looking at the MoP talent calculators, I may have to choose between this and the heal-arang spell. Wings versus literally throwing heals at people? Why does Blizzard give me these terrible choices?!?!!?)

The background texture is actually a cleverly re-sized and re-purposed parchment texture, similar to what I used in the clearcasting title banner. It gives it an impression of gauzy curtains or stone pillars rising from the mist. It’s artsy.