African Union

***Update: I won! This flag was chosen as the winner of the African Union flags! Hurray! (does a single-person wave)***

My conception of the African Union’s flag from Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicle:

First of all, I now have the upmost respect for people who do digital art on a laptop, what with all the fussing and destruction I did to my own works without a wireless mouse. Anyhow, I designed and twisted the flag in a Rhino trial, a good starter 3D program, I hear. Then, I took a snapshot of my flag because I didn’t want to use up any more trial saves. The snapshot program fluctuated the colors in a way I didn’t intend, so I went back and edited the jpeg in the good old-fashion computer program Paint.

You’re still reading? Thanks! For the reason I made this in the first place, please see:
[link] if you really, really care in a stalker-ish kind of way. For the reasons as to why I made the features what they are:
- African is a vastly diverse continent, especially when it comes to cultural aspects like religion and languages.
o I felt that the African Union flag had to represent all of them.
o My AU flag has five essential colors, two of which are on nearly every African flag. Unfortunately for me, Libya’s flag is entirely green. Somalia is another exception, too.
o A crescent moon, which is generally accompanied by a star, is a symbol of Islam, like the Star of David is to Judaism or the cross is to Christianity. That crescent, though, has a smaller radius in ration to my crescent, and is thicker. Thus, the crescent does not have to be a moon, but can be to Islamic countries. The crescent is also fully capable of symbolizing the Lunars whose ancestors who came from Africa, if, I assume, the flag’s design was settled before Cyprus Blackburn rose to power (also see the website for more detail on him). Among other things, the crescent could symbolize a borderline, what was left over of the whole (such as of the population, inhabitable land, resources, etc) after World War IV finished, and the circle is what has recovered anew. Or, the crescent could represent a trough of a wave to suggest the oceans, which surrounds the African Union.
o The circle: I got the idea from Burundi’s flag, along with the X. It represents the whole, where people converged to and joined hands.
o The X: The X’s branches touch the corners, symbolizing that people, beliefs, and governments came together from different branches of Africa to join forces. The X and circle share a single color to show that they were all the same all along. Yellow, which also represents gold, on flags is the color of justice, such as the justice that prevailed when the African countries stopped fighting each other and joined hands.
o The stars: Several flags had stars or circles of stars, whether it was because of former colonization, religious beliefs, revolutionary symbols, or other situations. The ten stars in a dome and arrow combine the reasons, without favoring or bias. They are white, the color of purity and innocence in flags, to cement this.
o The color black in any flag stands for determination, ethnic heritage, or overcoming one’s enemies (whether the enemy be disease, enemies in a past war or revolution, what beliefs separated your countries, etc).
o The color green can stand for agriculture, fertility, or in the aspect I considered most interesting: Earth.
o Red in flag language represents courage, hardiness, valor, and revolution, even if it’s only a revolution in how one does government.
o Yellow, as I said before, represents the wealth and justice.
o White shows peace, innocence, and purity.

I designed the AU first because all of the different aspects of it definitely made it my favorite. If you would like to enter the design-a-flag contest for a chance to win a copy of Marissa Meyer’s first book, please see the first link in this endlessly long ramble. If you want to learn more about flag color symbolism, please see [link] .
That last part totally sounded like a commercial! Ha!