Portfolio Class- Character Development!

[Jmob]

Here's my design for the class in it's rough stages... went through A LOT of problem solving for the thing to read as a whole and tell a story accurately. I still have A LOT more and am not afraid to change anything.. I've dissected the crap out of this thing so many times. The horror... Things that still aren't ready to be called done: the raven/bird in the cage needs to be more defined/better designed to read better. A decision needs to be made on whether I want the staff/cage to be one giant candy cane... haha.. I will vary the direction of the stripes on the cage so that it doesn't look so boring and repetitive and looks like a candy cane. Overall things need to be cleaned up and become more crisp where crispness is needed and some edges need to be lost where edges should be lost for the image to read as a whole (and tell the story as best as possible). Will now be looking at refrences to get these things to read better as I haven't for rendering better. I settled on a simplistic design because it seems that when seeing the thing as a whole, it reads better and allows more resting room. Plus I wanted a sort of finish that allowed interesting shapes without overcomplicating the whole. I hope I will achieve this in the near future.
*and if you can't get your eye off the anchored foot, yes, I will be fixing that too.