: Awesome work thus far, but I would suggest the following: Remove the white
: background fill behind the ring and, in fact, remove white entirely. The
: white in your design serves only to distract the eye away from the focal
: point and your characters. Replacing the white fill behind the ring with
: transparency (nothing) will make your design pop out against your t-shirt
: color choices. Additionally, fill in the white elements of the Chief's
: helmet with grey.

: Remove the blue eyes on the Chief. They're unnecessary and break the solid,
: iconic profile of the Chief's visor.

: This is very important! Keep the Chief's belt brown! It provides a nice
: splash of color in the focal point and solidifies the contrast of bright
: hues on the left of the image and dull grey on the right. The balance is
: pleasing.

: Rough Mockup:

Sorry for my late response, Bones. Something important came up.
First, thank you for your suggestions and taking the time to create the mock up.

Sadly, removing his eyes not a option. They are too important to the Parody aspect of the design. Removing them, pushes the design too far into the "Fan Art" category for my liking. Plus it takes away from the idea of kids at play. I like it more without the eyes, but enough to risk it. What I can do is make them fully black so not to distract so much.

I agree with the white background being removed. It was mostly a quick fix for the dark shirt issues I've ran across. To counter that, I'm going to have to place a thin gray stroke around his hands and the outer edges of his torso so that they don't fade into dark shirts. Easy fix.

But I am bit worried that the brown on the ring looks too much like poop (hehe I said 'poop') without the icecaps. Then again, I may just be over thinking it.

I'm still on the fence concerning his belt. You make a great point. But if RIPT passes on the design, then I'll have to remove brown to bring the color count to meet the required standards of the other companies. Unless I can halftone the orange and black it to look brown.

In the end, I may just submit both versions (top and bottom) after making some final adjustments based on feedback.

I'll post updated versions soon.