Though the twinflower is not labelled as endangered, in recent years there has been a sudden decline to their numbers in Scotland, their habitat in the UK, which has led to them being included on many awareness lists of endangered flowers in the UK. Their name as the twinflower is likely due to the fact that the flower splits part the way up the stem into two fairly similar blooms. All of the flowers bloom like this, and it creates two pink, twin-like flowers on the plant.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons

I drew a design for the twinflower to start with, trying to factor in the key elements of the flower, however, looking at it, it was very plain. I looked back at what had made the previous two designs interesting, and decided that if I were to accentuate the name-sake of this flower, into a more fantasy aspect, it would make the design a lot more eye-catching.
The twinflower is named this way due to it's twin-looking blooms that split a short way down the stem. I had tried to factor this into the design previously, however this had been through copy and pasting the first flower onto the other side to make them look identical. This method was, at best, barely noticeable and, at worst, made me look a little lazy, as the design element as to why I had done this wasn't obvious, so I pondered about different ways I could highlight the twin aspect of the flower.

To highlight the twin aspect of the flower, I experimented with the idea of adding a mirror, as if from the point of the stem splitting was mirrored.
I attempted this concept by drawing a rough sketch of a mirror and, in seeing that the idea worked, I continued progressing it. However, I made sure to progress this design with the mirror using non-destructive means in photoshop using masks, as I was a little worried as to how the idea of a mirror on the flower would work in the UI, and I wanted to make sure that if my group didn't like it I could easily revert back to the simpler design.
My main reasons for concern were due to the idea of these plants actually growing in the game. Though we had planned to have the same plant model, with only changing colours, I had concerns about realism in our fantasy game, as to how believable it was physically that you could pick a flower that would have a mirror integrated into the design. I did come to the conclusion that if this was a more developed game, the 3D model wouldn't have a mirror in it, but I kept the design without the mirror in case my team didn't like the mirror design.

Due to the mirror design looking nice as a UI element, I then further developed the concept of the mirror shard so that it looked a lot nicer. When looking at this design next to my other flowers that I had made, I still felt as though this design was still a lot plainer than all the others, so I started considering ways I could make the design look better.

I felt as though one way I could make the design look better was to add some more depth to the design, so I shaded it a little more so that it looked a lot more interesting. Because the mirror is a reflection of the bud, I found that the shading was the exact same on the reflection, just mirrored.

Because I had kept the design without the mirror to show my team a comparison, I shaded this design as well so that it would look just as good. Unfortunately, it wasn't as easy as just taking the mirror group away that I had added, as I needed to re-shade the other bloom as instead of having a reflected shadow, it would have light coming from the same direction.

I showed the two different designs to my group and they really liked, even after I made my concerns of realism known. They had a couple notes to make about the mirror lighting, which I amended, but then I had my final design.