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Arranged roughly from most painterly/stylized to photographic/realistic.  I'm really pleased with how #1 and it's alts (below) turned out.  I layered several textures by lookslikerain that give it the look of a post-impressionist oil pastel by Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas or Toulouse-Latrec.

Alts and extras:

5 - 10

I couldn't resist stealing teragramm's idea to make the Buffyverse ladies redheads. (Teragramm's are much superior, of course.)

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        16 - 20

Day 01

In your own space, talk about why you are doing the Fandom Snowflake Challenge? What drew you to it as a participant? What do you hope to accomplish by doing these challenges? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Ok this one is easy: I'm participating because it looked like fun last year, and because velvetwhip encouraged me to do so this year. I don't think I mean to "accomplish" anything in particular except to see how many of these days I can actually cover. I usually avoid memes and daily posting types of things.

Day 2

In your own space, create a list of at least three fannish things you'd love to receive, something you've wanted but were afraid to ask for - a fannish wish-list of sorts. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your wish-list if you feel comfortable doing so. Maybe someone will grant a wish. Check out other people's posts. Maybe you will grant a wish. If any wishes are granted, we'd love it if you link them to this post.

This is gonna get slightly "political" so bear with me. My favorite part of this post is akamine_chan's extremely astute observation: Asking for things is hard. We're socialized to not ask for things, and in a lot of ways I think that's not necessarily a good thing. We feel guilt and shame when we ask, and that makes us less likely to ask for help, for care and consideration and kindness, for respect, when we all deserve those things.I think this is spot-on.

I tend to think of this as an American tendency but perhaps it's a "modern" tendency - pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Be entirely self-sufficient. Don't admit to weakness. It's American "rugged individualism" writ large, but it's also useful to super-capitalism: instead of people living together in extended families we've been conditioned to believe that everyone living in their own "nuclear family" is the one right and true way to live. Everybody in their own home with their own tv, their own radio, their own computer and their own washing machine, etc means more stuff to sell, sell sell and keep the almightly GDP going.  And even if you are receiving help or aid of some sort, we're conditioned to be ashamed of it, ashamed of ourselves as "failures".

ETA: A very very kind benefactor came through and granted my wish already with an extension of my paid account through 2018 AND even more icon space through the next year! I am just stunned and speechless beyond anything except to say THANK YOU to them. THANK YOU.

And thank you to everyone who I know would have done if you had the resources. I'm just overwhelmed by the love and support I've received here.  And people wonder why I hang out in fandom.

And in keeping with the theme of being ashamed to ask for stuff, I do actually have one wish and this really makes me cringe to ask. The paid LJ membership that someone gifted me with a year ago expires on Jan 12; and I'm pretty sure that the extra icon space that someone else gifted me with will disappear on that date and I'll be back down to 6 icon spaces. I had assumed by this point in time that I would be working again and would be able to renew it on my own, but I simply can't justify even that small outlay when there are things like rent and groceries to cover. The only part of the paid membership I really do take advantage of is the extra icon gallery space. I feel really weird about asking if anyone would consider gifting me with another year's paid membership, but I that's exactly what I'm asking for. *gulp* I would be most grateful. (And please not at the expense of your own food, rent, etc.)

Barring that, some help in selecting and paring down my icons would be most appreciated. But I'll probably do a separate post on that as I haven't had time to think about what ones I would keep.

Beyond that, I always want more kindness and understanding towards Buffy Summers, and fics that don't portray her as simply the accessory for a supporting male character, or a stone cold bitch who exists only to be punished. I'm always on the look-out for more Buffy and Dawn fics that is about the sisters and again, not about a man in the center, and in fact 2015 saw some really wonderful Summers Sisters fic; so I'm hopeful that there's more of an appreciation of their relationship. I'm also hopeful that more folks are inspired by velvetwhip's Answering Prayers and explore the character of Joyce Summers in ways that canon didn't bother to, and her relationship to her daughter. Spuffy fics that don't bash Willow or Drusilla? Yes please. Buffy and Tara friendship fics? Bring it on. Basically, anything that gives more face-time to the interrelationships of the women of the Buffyverse, not just for slashy porn and not to justify how "good" a male character is.

And I always wish for the various fandom factions and shipper factions to lay down arms, stop attacking each other, and see just how much we all have in common. We all want the same damn things for our beloved babies. We're all hurting over the things we were denied. Rather than attack each other, let's look for common ground - and attack TPTB who look down on fans with smug satisfaction and superiority whilst depending on us for their livelihood.  'kay?

Unlike the poster for AP, this one came out very different to my original concepts - and probably for the better. I wanted an image of Dru less obviously her, more mysterious, but the S32 promo images are excellent quality and absolutely swoon-worthy. I layered one of my photographs from a bonfire the summer over her twice as the background.

The screencaps were of far lesser quality and merging images of very different quality together into a cohesive whole was the biggest challenge.

ETA: I thought about redoing this poster to deepen the shadows, as in the earlier drafts of this image.  But that would make it look more like the AP poster and I wanted to differentiate them. The lighter contrast of this image helps to mask the differences in image quality especially re: the cap of Joyce; at least that was my conscious motivation. It wasn't until after I finished it and sent it to aadler, then saw it on his journal, that I realized that the relative lightness or haziness of the image reminded me of the apartment fire my sweetie and I had in 2013, and how my vision slowly filled with smoke until it became difficult to see.

The image of Angelus I think is from Passion - or Phases - it really doesn't matter.  I didn't want to use a well-known shot of him from a particular moment in the series and this fit the bill.  The burning wood in the lower left corner is from another of my bonfire photos that I used as a foreground texture to mask the edges between the figures, and it happened to fall over Angelus' coat in a really interesting way.

The photo of Joyce is from Gingerbread near the end of the episode - ironically, the scene where Buffy and Willow are nearly burnt to death at the stake. I assumed the image is not well-known but her expression of shock and horror was perfect for my needs. I wanted very much to emphasize the horror of the situation without turning Joyce into a quivering damsel, to suggest some of the strength and dignity and determination that carriers her through the story. A tall order for just one little image. I erased out the MOO badge on her blouse, which I changed to a lavender color from the original earth-tones.

The image of Buffy is from Ted, when she's sitting on her front steps thinking she's killed Ted; the stairs inside the house are just visible behind her.  It doesn't represent a moment in the actual story. Drusilla imagines Buffy as a hardened warrior and I was going to use a image from The Wish but Wishverse!Buffy looks rather silly in that thick black eyemake-up so I tried to evoke a moment that isn't in the story but what I imagined in-between the spaces. I cut the image around her roughly, dropped it in and it fell into place perfectly.

I originally wasn't going to put Buffy in the poster; unlike Answering Prayers, she's not actually a character in the story but as with AP she's a presence despite - or because of? - her absence, the Buffy-shaped-hole that everything else revolves around. Which makes sense to my mind - this is the Buffyverse after all, and even if she's not the protagonist of the story, she is the Buffy-shaped-force that everyone else revolves around, the reason why everyone in the story does what they do.


And the women are the most important thing in All Ye, as in BtVS; Angelus is just a puppet on their stage even if imagines himself the puppet-master.

     2)           3)

#2 is actually the first version of the banner I made. Since it's the central object in the story I figured out that I wanted to use it to "frame" an image of Buffy skating and found one that had a large enough center space. In the story the scrunchie is made of hot pink fabric printed with bears "cavorting across" it. The scrunchie, the bears "printed" on it, and the bears in the background are three separate layers. I changed the orientation of the fabric when I added it to the background so it wouldn't look like I'd plunked it down once over the entire banner and called it a day. I wanted the "print" to look authentic. I also added a tight canvas weave texture from ipiccy to make it look even more like a real fabric. Poster #1 has an additional plush pile fabric texture added for the soft grey lines and to help blur the background pattern a little.

I could have stopped there but I felt it needed something more. #2 is a cute image but it isn't evocative of anything; it has layers in the literal sense of the image but no emotional layers, no complexity. Most of the story takes place in a cemetary while Buffy is on routine patrol and is reflective of Buffy's mindset at that moment.  So I went back to a wider version, added the large image of Buffy from What's My Line, and layered a shot from CWDP's cemetary to fill in the Buffy-shaped silhouette and create a sense of atmosphere and emotion. Then I cut around the large obelisk headstone from the same shot and added that to the right side, to balance the poster visually.

The images of a cemetary in #1 and the posters below is from Conversations with Dead People. For #3 I layered and blended cemetary shots from CWPD with an image from Forever (right side of the poster).I'm pleased with how seamlessly the two blended together but of course I'm using the image of Buffy and of the scrunchie to mask any "joins". I like the softness and deep blue tones of #3 quite a bit but it feels as though something is missing that would pull it all together.

The loopy font in 1 - 3 was meant to look like cursive Buffy might have written, something somewhat feminine. I switched fonts to something slightly more elegant for the variant below:


If you click  4 - 7 to see them full-size (they're rather large) - did you spot where I added my "signature stamp"?

4)   5)

Confession: I love this version and all most of it's variants, I truly do. Same image of Buffy skating and the scunchy but without the cemetary shots replacing the bears in the background; the large image of Buffy is from Doublemeat Palace and the way her face fit into the contours of the fabric band was pure serendipity. (And yes my ongoing love affair with Sarah's face continues unabated. kikimay will understand.)


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So what's the problem? They're not right for spuffy_luvr's story. They don't imply the moments of lightness, humor  and strange whimsy in "Come Out Come Out...." They're more of piece with the poster I did for velvetwhip's offering . Possibly a Bergman film - but not this story. And I highly doubt that anyone is going to remix "Come Out..." or that there will ever again be a need for a poster that includes Buffy, ice skating, a cemetary, and a bear-print scrunchie. Though I've been proven wrong before.


I still love this one, though. And it's simple enough that I was able to get a icons out of it; posters 1-3 are  to complicated image-wise to make good icons without being entirely reworked.

8) 9)  

I've praised this author's work and this particular story before, but I won't pass up another opportunity. Ever since I entered Buffyverse fandom I've wondered at the absolute dearth of Joyce-fic out there. A huge number of fans - and authors - are women of a certain age and mothers, after all. And fanfiction is designed to explore what goes ignored, overlooked or forgotten in canon. This story fills a huge need and I hope will inspire other writers.


The project sat on the back burner a bit longer than I'd intended. I've had the basic composition in my head for months; making sketches in my notebook, however crude, really does help me remember my intentions. This is pretty close to what I first imagined; the biggest difference from sketch to poster is that I wanted a shadowy "ghost image" of Buffy walking away from home in Becoming, or sitting on her bed in the dingy apartment in Anne. But neither image worked quite the way I'd intended.


Technically this was my third go at the poster for this story. " Version 2"  (b & c below) was a lot more complicated, busy, bright and overstuffed with details (layers! layers! layers!). velvetwhip preferred the more subdued version, and her feedback inspired me go back and try to pare back down to the basics. I realized I'd gotten enamoured of playing with the images and effects and had forgotten the story itself. In theory every detail in V.2 has a meta point but it's all too much.


I also realized I needed something closer to a square-ish shape to fit Gabrielle's journal format. Version 2a-b below features a "flame" texture I got from sweet_lyri and she is not to blamed for the fact that I went overboard.


The thing about poster art for me is that, I want the recipient to love it; I want them to feel that it's an absolute perfect fit for their work because the point of me making a poster is to honor their prose and encourage people to want to read it. And yes, I absolutely realize that's kind of selfish and egotistical on my part, but I like to think of it as a "win-win" situation all 'round.


Which is to say, if I ever make an artwork for you, Gentle Author, and you don't love it with your heart and soul, be honest and tell me and if I can't rework it, I'll let you know.

2a)   2b)

3)

That image of Joyce from Restless was a bitch to work with btw, as are most caps of Joyce from the series, poorly-lit and unfocused. So not my best work but a good exercise. I actually think this one looks better in the icon version I made for Gabrielle. Speaking of:

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