Logo locked in: draft 3c with Karin's silhouette behind the title (character at 80%)

Looking at draft 4 from 183 (Karin's silhouette + flowing brushstrokes), it was pretty close to the concept I'd first pictured in my head. So I decided to keep going in that direction and treated 183's draft 4 as draft 1 of this direction. Still a black screen at 4K.

The goal this time was to polish the character-silhouette logo, lock it in, and export a background version and a transparent version I could use right away.

What I built

The final is draft 3c with the character at 80% (locked in on 2026-10-31). I put three files in the final folder: the layered source, a 4K PNG on a black background, and a transparent-background PNG (2660×1249, 60px margin). In the source, the subtitle group "Subtitle (swap per game)", the black and gray silhouettes and their outlines, the brushstrokes and the title are all on separate layers.

Once it was all done, I noticed the logo was sitting a little to the right. I measured the center of the actual artwork (alpha 25% or higher), and it was 345px right of and 130px below the screen center. I moved every layer except the background by that amount to center it exactly, then saved all three files again.

It took a few steps to get here. In draft 2 I scaled the character down to 68% (measured from the top of the head) and tried two fills: a gray gradient silhouette (A) and a black silhouette with a 5px gray outline (B). With only black on a black screen the shape disappears completely, so I needed both approaches.

In draft 3 the title moved to the front, and only the character's upper body went behind it, between the A and the R. Below the waist the silhouette fades out behind the title with a mask, and the greatsword reaches up over the R and V.

3b is the version where I marked up the draft 3 image with what to fix and then worked through it. I erased the left brushstrokes and raised the tips of the right brushstrokes to about 120px above the top line of the title. At first they shot up too high, so I brought them down a little. The character was scaled to 85% (measured from the waist).

For the colors, I drew one yellow diagonal line and split along it. Left of it (the front of the head and the torso) is black, right of it (the back of the hair and the greatsword) is a gray gradient, and the whole thing gets a 5px gray outline.

3c takes 3b and only shrinks the character further, to 90% and 80%, side by side for comparison. The diagonal color split moved at the same ratio, and the brushstrokes and title stayed as they were. Of the two, I went with 80%.

Things I thought about

• Title in front, character behind, upper body only. I left out the legs so only the upper body shows behind the title. At first I placed the upper body between the R and the V, then quickly moved it between the A and the R.
• Black and gray together. I always planned to use both A (gray) and B (black), so I started with black, and in 3b I split it along a diagonal to use both.

Rabbit hole: moving layers cut them off

When I shoved the layers over to center the logo, the layer boundaries moved with them and the edges got clipped. Resizing the layers back to the image size after moving them fixed it.

Rabbit hole: GIMP froze and closed the draft 3 I was working on

Having sixteen 4K images open at once was the culprit. GIMP stopped responding, and while I was cleaning up windows, the draft 3 image I was working on got closed too. The "procedure error" that popped up came from a failed attempt to reopen a window. I rebuilt draft 3 from the saved draft 1 source, and every other draft was already saved, so nothing was lost.

Next up

• The transparent version is for dark backgrounds. The title is whitish, so contrast is weak on light backgrounds. If needed, make a separate light-background version
• It's not in the game (Unity) yet, and there's no title screen either