Hello, it’s Michelle finally helping out with the blog! This post will share some insight on how I designed the flag symbols for the various empires in the game. I learned quite a lot from this experience, and it was quite fun to draw these! I managed to finish all 7 designs in a day, in approximately 6-8 hours. I will talk briefly about each Empire, in the order of completion.

Roman Flag

The Roman Flag was the first flag I designed, it took some time for me to be satisfied with the look of it. I also was unsure of how the spacing and outlining of the flag would work, so much time was put into experimenting. This flag is pretty similar to the actual Roman Empire Flag, but I did try to vary the wings and stance of the eagle.

Egyptian Flag

I felt a lot more comfortable with this style after the Roman Flag. For Egypt I wanted to incorporate pyramids into it, which is the reason for the triangular outline which surrounds the pharaoh. Another idea I had included the sphinx, which was way too complex and had an awkard shape that would be hard to work around. At this time, I was having quite alot of fun with these and was quite absorbed into creating them.

Chinese Flag

A dragon was the first thing I thought of when I thought of China, so I used that idea as a starting point. Since the last two flags did not really incorporate circular shapes in their design, I thought it would be a good idea to have the Chinese Flag be more rounded and circular to contrast the more angular Roman and Egyptian Flags. I was really satisfied with the dragon in the end, I tried to add as much detail as possible!

British Flag

The British Flag was one I finished quickly, not because it was simple but because I realized the convenience of copying and flipping the image. This technique really did save me lots of time and made the flag look more structured and realistic. At the beginning, I was considering drawing a different type of bird, but I was concerned it would be too similar to the Roman Flag. This is what leads to the lion as the centerpiece of this Flag. By this point, I was very comfortable in creating these, although it can be difficult to make each flag unique.

Japanese Flag

Kashif urged me to include sakura blossoms in the Japanese Flag, so I did! I almost did forget though. My original design was centered around samurai headgear, but I did not want to include overlapping swords again like seen in the British Flag. This was how I remembered the idea of sakura blossoms. Japanese culture and design incorporates quite a lot of circles in it, so I opted for a koi fish in a circular pond. This also blends nicely into the Asian Empires having something in common. And of course, this one had to be pink because of the sakura blossoms!

Greek Flag

This flag was a bit difficult for me to draw. At first, I couldn’t find a specific idea or animal for the flag to feature. I didn’t want to repeat animals such as the bird or lion. In the end, I decided to use the unique Greek architecture and symbols that can be easily associated with Greece.

Persian Flag

The Persian Flag is the final one! Honestly, I was really stumped with this one. My research(google images) kept giving me different types of birds and lions, both of which I have already used. But the Persian curved blade really caught my eye, so I elaborated on that. For this flag I really just had fun with it, the Persian designs I found were really elegant and I wanted to draw them. Overall, I really did like how this one came out!

This was quite a long post, but thank you for reading until the end. There is still much to work on for this game, but we are slowly getting there. Please look forward to future updates!

-ML