The Mana World Forums

Both very good, but I think the second one is better.

I prefer the same-color method.

This is just an idea I'm toying around with.
There could be three types of energy and each is capable of creating three elements. Something like:

Red Energy (Fire, Lightning, Metal)
Green Energy (Earth, Plant, Wood?)
Blue Energy (Water, Ice, Air)

..then to stay in theme with RGB, necromancy is Black magic and healing is White magic.

Ice... was quite difficult to tweak. Note sure about it yet...

I would suggest to change the color of either the foreground or the background a bit because gray on gray is not only hard to separate visually but also quite boring.

Maybe shift the hue of the background more in the direction of blue while shifthing the hue of the snowflake more to cyan?

Maybe if the snowflake's shape was more visible.. maybe change its color, so it's a bit closer to white. Bring out the barely visible, outer portion of the snowflake, so that it doesn't blend in to the background so much. (basically what Crush just said about gray-on-gray) ..I really think a larger part of the solution lies in the accentuation of the snowflake, than the color of the background.

Great for an initial draft, though.

I think the snowflake is a bit too complex, too many lines coming off of it. Perhaps you could simplify it a bit? The color should be tweaked too, but Crush and Dave already commented that.

The icons are looking beautiful so far! =D

The icons are starting to look really nice
(sometimes I think you guys are over thinking the colors)

Indeed.. I think I made it too complex. The goal is clarity not as-close-to-real-life-as-possible image. I till make another attempt with a simpler design. Maybe then I can put more accent on the borders.

Thanks len for putting them together like that. It does show that I need to get some more consistency in there. I think I need to modify air, lightning and ice to be mor ein line with fire, water and nature.

I think its good to let every element have its own color. It can simplify your user-interface design quite a bit. For example, you can color the name of each spell according to its element, etc...

Thanks for your comments so far!

I like the second one. Keep up with your good job ^^

Here is a setup for iron.. I went for the bolted look. I'll redo the snow later on this week.

Hmm.. looks much darker on this screen than the one at home

Othello,

it is hard to find a good shape for metal (cue the Led Zeppelin jokes), but I don't think that a rough cube is what I would most associate with it-- to me it conveys more of an `unrefined ore' image than a metal one. Perhaps a (shiny) ingot shape would be more appropriate?

I'll look into it. Its not rough ore, unfortunatly the current icon is much too dark. It should give a shiny metal cube look . I could make a 3D ingot shape.

the cube does not make me think metal and the bolt or rivets you don't see at normal size. When I think of metal I think of sheet metal with large over sized bolts like on old steam engine.

here is a quick example I threw together

I'm going to have to disagree with you guys on this one. As abstract as it may seem, the cube is my favorite symbol for metal so far. Yeah, it seems a bit dark, but as far as the symbol itself is concerned, I like it better than the sheet with rivets or the idea of using an ingot. Using the shape of an ingot would seem more appropriate for an actual ingot item, though I suppose that's technically the shape Othello made. (At first I was thinking of an ingot as a rocky shape, rather than a processed form)

Speaking of earth, just to move the conversation around for the time being.. how are we standing on votes for that symbol?

The way I see it, we're at a tossup between the shape of a mountain and a chasm. Even though the symbol that I made for earth a long time ago was a mountain, I'm just as partial to the use of a chasm.