Light Source / Tattoo Stag Designs

After a talk with Alan today I shifted my idea from having an armour on my stags, to having the stags actual skin as an armour and a power source underneath. That power source will come through as a light source underneath the skin. I first was thinking to have the lights follow the muscle or bone structure of the stag. But also went ahead to turn the light "cracks" on the skin to some sort of tattoos or war paint.

In order to distinguish the two stag characters I not only gave each character a different colour for the light source, but also their design language is different. One has only straight lines and geometric forms, while the other has fluent and ergonomic lines.

While looking at influences for these tattoos I looked into tribe or native tattoos, as well as films like Tron Legacy, Frozen 2 or Atlantis. I realized, since stags are deeply connected to nature, that each of them could represent an element / season / time of the day. 

So one stag represents the cold, snow, ice and therefore winter. But also links with the night and stars and the moon. Which is why for his designs I looked into different ice crystal patterns or included star and moon shapes.   

The other stag represents the heat, fire, lava and therefore summer. It also links with the sun as the power source and therefore also represents the day.