Sister Bonding Via Road Trip: Art for "Show You the World" by Aliceinkinkland (Buffy, Dawn)

Poster for aliceinkinkland's "Show You the World" for buffy_genfic Round One "Buffy's Stuff  (2015), inspired by spuffy_luvr's prompt: Joyce’s Jeep, a road trip, car trouble, and muggle hitchhikers, and didn’t want vamp!Buffy or angst without some measure of hope.

Unlike velvetwhip and spuffy_luvr's stories this round, I didn't read Alice's story until yesterday when she posted it to the comm but I knew as soon as I read it that I'd want to make artwork for it. Summers sister bonding is my jam. Call it corny and nonsensical but I loved it when Buffy and Dawn fought side by side in Grave; when S7 began I was looking forward to more Summers Sister screentime and the season started promisingly enough in Lessons but Dawn was soon shunted off to the side. Alas.

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For once there are no alt versions (fancy that) because the final product turned out pretty much the way I envisioned it. I knew I wanted an open road in the daytime, with "Joyce's jeep" seen in the distance, lines from a map fading as they melted into the sky, and the "ghost images" of Buffy and Dawn above. I wanted this to be different to my two previous posters, for "Who's That Girl" and "Come Out Come Out"; something light, fun, reminiscent of a movie poster.

For once I used a stock image for the road instead of one of my own photos; but I did photograph a close-up of a map I have at home and expanded it over the base image. I couldn't find a map of the west coast in my house so I pulled out one of...South Carolina. I gave it a warm, golden tonality to try to evoke the look of the open road to Sunnydale in Becoming and Chosen. There are no images of Joyce's jeep at a distance on a desert road or highway; the jeep here is one I digitally masked from a separate stock photograph and layered here. I made sure to feather the edges of the mask so that there would be some shadows from the jeep on the road itself; I think it looks fairly convincing.. Warm-tone filters give the entire poster a sunny but also slightly faded look.


The image of Dawn in Help is from Leave Me the White; the cap of Buffy in Him is from the sadly-defunct Broken Screencaps. Finding images of the girls that conveyed the right tone, especially Dawn, was the hardest part of the projects. The story takes place during the summer between S6 - 7, and possesses a lovely sense of humor and whimsy interlaced with heartbreakingly rendered observations about the trauma Buffy and Dawn are trying to push through and get over with the help of no one but themselves and each other to rely on.

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The image of Dawn isn't perfect perhaps but it had the advantage of not being a well-known image (Help is an underrated episode IMO but then the entire first half of S7 is highly underrated) and I prefer to work with lesser-known caps when I can. Plus she's smiling, god love her and you can actually tell that yes, her eyes are blue. The image of Buffy from Him is probably better known simply by virtue of the sunglasses she wears. But I simply liked that image of her and I loved the breezy California-girl sophistication.

Thank you kwritten for hosting this commuity dedicated to gen fics for us to enjoy! Check out the masterlist of fics for this round here.  Sign ups for Round Two for Willow Rosenberg will begin August 15th, until then, the next four days are a "free for all" period for more fics and artwork dedicated to the Round One theme. Also check out Kelsey's opinion poll.