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red_satin_dollCongratulations to the winners of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
slayerstillness challenge #23 "Simplicity, it works for me": ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shameless666, rua1412, kwritten, teragramm, tempertemper, and debris4spike! There were 35 wonderful entries this round, which did not make voting any easier. Both the submission and the voting threads have been unlocked by starry_night, and I don't know about you but I think it's fun to look at those after the fact. (It's entirely possible I need to reconsider my concept of "fun", but never mind that.) And my apologies for taking so long to post this; it's not that I'd forgotten, it's that it takes me a week to put up a single post. Yes, I am that disorganized.
I want to givetempertemper's lovely Angel icon a special shout-out because I didn't vote for it but nearly did. That was an agonizing decision not to because because only five slots to fill/would have if I'd voted a day later or five minutes earlier or if the moon had been in Capricorn. You know the drill. When the quality is so good across the board and there are so many choices, which means pretty much on a regular basis with these icontests, the notion of "best" is to a degree a moot point vs just make a damn choice already because someone else is waiting to get on the damn 'puter.
Whoever said "no regrets" obviously never voted in an icontest.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH tostarry_night for very graciously and patiently answering all my questions as always, on top of all the work she does to run these challenges. After a few weeks' absence from icon making or icontests, I was apparently in uber-pest mode. The only things I didn't ask were "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" and "Can I have a soda?" I'm pretty sure she would have handled those questions with grace and aplomb as well.
Deadline for the next round is Friday May 16th, midnight your time zone.
My submissions: It probably wasn't hard to tell which were mine. 1) Buffy, Buffy, Buffy, and a little more Buffy for good measure - check 2) Use of frames esp the "torn paper" frame and/or the "vintage photo" San Carmen effect in PB - check 3) extreme contrast and rich saturation, chiaroscuro, or muted tonalities - check, 4) "illustrative" effects to create the appearance of drawings, paintings, woodcuts, vintage book cover art, etc - check
The other icons I made but didn't submit; I really had a lot of fun making these and playing with variations and effects. With the Anne icons from Buffy's guilt-plagued nightmare, particularly 2 and 11-22, I was initially trying to capture the way grief can often feel - I'm suffering and yet the world goes on; there is beauty everywhere but I can't feel it; the sun is still shining and the birds are still singing. How is that possible? For 11-13 and 21 I borrowed from "Ken's" dialogue in the episode "What is Hell but the absence of Hope?" 14-15 use Spike's comment in Smashed "Poor little lost girl". I thought the phrase suited Buffy beautifully here but when I used it in it's entirety all I could hear was Spike's sniggering tone and felt like I was likewise mocking her; removing the word "poor" solved that. For 16 & 22 the cliche phrase from old travel postcards takes on very different meaning in this context.
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slayerstillness challenge #23 "Simplicity, it works for me": shameless666, rua1412, kwritten, teragramm, tempertemper, and debris4spike! There were 35 wonderful entries this round, which did not make voting any easier. Both the submission and the voting threads have been unlocked by starry_night, and I don't know about you but I think it's fun to look at those after the fact. (It's entirely possible I need to reconsider my concept of "fun", but never mind that.) And my apologies for taking so long to post this; it's not that I'd forgotten, it's that it takes me a week to put up a single post. Yes, I am that disorganized.I want to give
tempertemper's lovely Angel icon a special shout-out because I didn't vote for it but nearly did. That was an agonizing decision not to because because only five slots to fill/would have if I'd voted a day later or five minutes earlier or if the moon had been in Capricorn. You know the drill. When the quality is so good across the board and there are so many choices, which means pretty much on a regular basis with these icontests, the notion of "best" is to a degree a moot point vs just make a damn choice already because someone else is waiting to get on the damn 'puter.Whoever said "no regrets" obviously never voted in an icontest.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH to
starry_night for very graciously and patiently answering all my questions as always, on top of all the work she does to run these challenges. After a few weeks' absence from icon making or icontests, I was apparently in uber-pest mode. The only things I didn't ask were "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" and "Can I have a soda?" I'm pretty sure she would have handled those questions with grace and aplomb as well. Deadline for the next round is Friday May 16th, midnight your time zone.
My submissions: It probably wasn't hard to tell which were mine. 1) Buffy, Buffy, Buffy, and a little more Buffy for good measure - check 2) Use of frames esp the "torn paper" frame and/or the "vintage photo" San Carmen effect in PB - check 3) extreme contrast and rich saturation, chiaroscuro, or muted tonalities - check, 4) "illustrative" effects to create the appearance of drawings, paintings, woodcuts, vintage book cover art, etc - check
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3)
4) 
2) 3) 4) The prompt was "simplicity" - no heavy textures. I interpreted the San Carmen effect in #1 & 4 as a "light" texture but in hindsight I probably should have asked. #2 looks like I did something fancy but it's really just pushing saturation, color temperature and contrast to extremes to get an effect that reminded me slightly of something from children's book covers from a few decades ago.
The only entry here for which there are no variations after the cut is #4 - it is the one and only. It's not often I am that satisfied in one attempt, and all that one needed was push the brightness and contrast, then add San Carmen effect. Done. Sarah's face is so beautiful as-is. The other daykikimay and I were talking about how lovely Buffy during that period of the series, before Joyce's death and the tremendous pressures of protecting Dawn from a Hellgod AND from Giles, keeping her promise to her mother and saving the world, steals the laughter from her life and the light from her eyes.
The only entry here for which there are no variations after the cut is #4 - it is the one and only. It's not often I am that satisfied in one attempt, and all that one needed was push the brightness and contrast, then add San Carmen effect. Done. Sarah's face is so beautiful as-is. The other day
kikimay and I were talking about how lovely Buffy during that period of the series, before Joyce's death and the tremendous pressures of protecting Dawn from a Hellgod AND from Giles, keeping her promise to her mother and saving the world, steals the laughter from her life and the light from her eyes. The other icons I made but didn't submit; I really had a lot of fun making these and playing with variations and effects. With the Anne icons from Buffy's guilt-plagued nightmare, particularly 2 and 11-22, I was initially trying to capture the way grief can often feel - I'm suffering and yet the world goes on; there is beauty everywhere but I can't feel it; the sun is still shining and the birds are still singing. How is that possible? For 11-13 and 21 I borrowed from "Ken's" dialogue in the episode "What is Hell but the absence of Hope?" 14-15 use Spike's comment in Smashed "Poor little lost girl". I thought the phrase suited Buffy beautifully here but when I used it in it's entirety all I could hear was Spike's sniggering tone and felt like I was likewise mocking her; removing the word "poor" solved that. For 16 & 22 the cliche phrase from old travel postcards takes on very different meaning in this context.
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6) 7) 8) 9) 10) 11)
12) 13) 14) 15)
16) 17) 18)19)
20) 21) 22) Look at #3, and 23-25 carefully; you can just see Buffy's (Sarah's?) teeth bared, lips curled back in a hiss as she (or the demon who has taken her form) rasps her accusations to Willow and Tara ("Did you pat it's head before you slit it's throat?") in one of the most nightmarish scenes of that season. I tried very hard to get rid of that "reverse shadow" of her mouth but wasn't able to; and then decided I rather liked it. #27 does not have a text overlay; that's just what happened when I pushed the color saturation to an extreme.
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27) 28) 29) 30) 
