For the first flower to add to our game, I wanted to use the ghost orchid as it was possibly the most rare flower in the UK. The flower had been last seen in 2009, was prior thought completely extinct, and currently it is labelled as 'critically endangered'. All these factors made it perfect to fit in our game, as not only would it strengthen our theme to protecting endangered plants, but also the name appealed very well to our fantasy theme.

Photo from Flickr under Creative Commons

I decided the main elements of the real life plant, that I wanted to accentuate in this design was going to be the rarity of the plant. The most notable aspect of this flower in online media was its elusivity, and the fact that it was thought to be extinct in the UK for many years, and continues to not be seen since 2007. I started the design by just trying to make a few basic shapes to outline the key distinction that it was an orchid, and more specifically a ghost orchid. Though, I did try to accentuate the cream as a 'ghostly' colour and remove somewhat of the green from the design, as the green suggests 'life' which, due to the main point of these flowers being in the game is to highlight the conservation status, I would want to stray from the design looking 'life-like'. To highlight the fact that this flower is very close to extinction, I added a ghost into the design to add an air of death to the theming of the design. The ghost also helped to link the game back to the cute art style we were aiming toward for the game as well as linking it clearly to it being a ghost orchid.
In reviewing my current iteration of the design, I decided that the design for the actual flower, was fairly bland, and didn't really have anything fantasy-like about it to link to the magical world our game was set in.

In my next attempt for the design, I clipped over my original petals, so I could keep the original shape. The first element of the design I tried to change was making the design more whispy-like, like most ghosts in common media. I tried to do this by making the edges more curvy to a point, as if they were moving like smoke, and also adding a gradient to my petals to make it look as though the tips of the petals were disappearing, to add to that ghost-like effect. I then also tried to add insect bites, and general battered marks to the design, like where the petals look torn, to highlight the dying nature of this plant. Not only does this show that this plant may have previously died, through being in poor conditions, and there by highlighting the name of the ghost orchid that, in the game, this plant would be similar to an actual ghost of the original plant, but the fact that this flower would have died would put more focus on the other main point, is that the ghost orchid critically endangered, and this new design calls attention to the dying nature of the plant.
Another section of the design I changed was the relation to the ghost. I made the ghost slightly smaller as it was no longer the only key element linking the orchid to the ghost aspect, however it still added a cuteness aspect to it, and I felt as though it made the design a lot more interesting. Moreover, to link the ghost more heavily to the design, I changed the colour of the anthers of the orchid to that of the pink in the ghost's design. As well as strengthening the connection between the two elements of the design, I felt as though this gave the orchid more of a pastel colour and just made the colours of the design come together a bit more.

After liking the effect the transparency gave to making my new iteration more ghost-like and whispy, I decided to make all the petals even more transparent to further the ghost effect. In the end, I didn't like how these designs were further unclear, and didn't make the flower stand out as much as I wanted it to.
Though I didn't like these new designs, I did get an idea for a new design that if one of the illustrations was more transparent, I could put one design over the top of another to make the ghost aspects a bit more subtle.

In this design, I had the original flower I'd made, with the whispy petals as a more transparent layer overtop. The concept of this design was to make the ghost tendencies a little more subtle, as an option for different design concepts, and that the difference in transparency would highlight the areas that had been torn or eaten away at.
I decided, for this design, that there was little contrast between the two layers, which made it very hard to figure out what was going on, but then I realised I had been doing this design backwards, and that the clear solution was to reverse the layers the other way around.

For this design, I switched the layers around so that, still, the layer underneath was the original flower, however, it was now at a fairly low opacity, instead, the focal point of this design lay on top with the full opacity design of the whispy petals. The storyline behind this design is to show that the layer underneath, fully healthy, was the original flower in the height of its glory, however, after many years of being eaten away at and battered around the original flower had died, leaving behind a whispier version of what it used to be. The figure it's meant to show as a whole is the flower as it is now, in it's ghostly appearance with the holes where it has been eaten or torn, and a transparent design underneath to show the viewer what this flower used to look like.
This then highlights to the audience a change in the flower's design, and would act as a call to action to be saving this plant.

After completing the design of my ghost orchid, it came to my attention that I had been taking inspiration from the wrong orchid. I had illustrated an American ghost orchid, also known as the 'Dendrophylax lindenni' whereas the Eurasian ghost orchid, which is the one that is critically endangered in the UK, is known as the 'Epipogium aphyllum', however both orchids are most commonly known by the name of 'Ghost Orchid'. Though the American ghost orchid is threatened, unfortunately it is a swamp orchid native to Florida and Cuba, and does not grow naturally in the UK. This is an issue as the focus of our game was highlighting endangered flowers in the UK.
This issue likely came about due to a multitude of reasons. The first being that, due to the scarcity of this flower in the UK, there are little images of it, and so many of the images that came up when I searched this flower were of the American variety. A further reason for this is that many of the articles I had researched for endangered flowers in the UK had made a similar mistake to me, leading me to believe that this flower grew in the UK.

Though this was a large issue in our project, I decided to keep the old design. Due to this being a limited time project to make a prototype, I believe my previous design works well as proof of concept. The time wasted by throwing away my previous design would be critical, as this design would now go completely to waste and be unused. If this game was going completely into development, this error would be fixed, but for the prototype of the game, the current illustration works fine. This experience did teach me, however, that when I research the next flowers, I should check that I have the correct flower and that they indeed grow within the UK.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons