Round 4 of btvsats20in20: Normal Again - Buffy Summers (with a little help from her friends)

[red_satin_doll]

My entries for Round 4 of btvsats20in20 continue the theme of the latest entries from starry_night and midnightisclose: Buffy, Buffy and more Buffy. As kikimay once noted, "Buffy contains multitudes." Starry and Midnight's sets are very different in styles to each other, both wonderful. Check them out here and here.





ETA 11/25/2014: I accidentally broke all my links to these icons the other day so there are only a handful of extras; the actual entries have been restored.











VERY IMAGE HEAVY ICON GALLERY AHEAD. My entries plus a treasure-trove of alts and extras. If I didn't made you smile or break your heart, I did something wrong. You tell me. Constructive criticism and feedback are of the good. As always, all snaggable, let me know, don't steal, hotlink, plagerize, do stupid stuff that would break my heart etc and so forth.

10 Themes
Dramatic Light	Friendship	Eyes	Bite	Motion
Weapon	Lyrics	Death	Promo Picture	Textured Background
5 Category |SHAPES
Cat 1	Cat 2	Cat 3	Cat 4	Cat 5
5 Artist's Choice
AC 1	AC 2	AC 3	AC 4	AC 5

Screencaps sourced from Pretty as a Picture, Buffyworld, and the sadly-defunct Screencap Paradise. Image of vintage bottle in Cat 2 courtesy of The Cuckoo Farm. Credit to bangel_4e and pickamix for the inspiration on the Weapon icon; many thank you's to both of them and to spikesredqueen for their advice and feedback; also to bangel_4e for once again graciously extending the deadline twice.

ETA: Credit to sweetiepebbles for the text brushes in the Bite and AC4 icons.

***********************

Do I have alts and extras?  Is the Pope Italian? Polish? Infaliable? A closet case? Never mind. Last round I decided not to post my alts and extras "until after the voting was over"; I still have yet to do so and it didn't help or hurt my cause in any case.velvetwhip, snogged, spikesredqueen, teragramm and chasingdemons have all advised me to not be so anxious about competition and show off the pretties. So this time here's a full gallery exhibition, not including some miscellaneous banners and posters for a later date. Enjoy an amuse-bouche:

  (teasers)




                      1-5



                    6-9




           10-14

I had so much fun with the Buffy & Xander icons, you have no idea. (I used a photo of my stainless steel frypan because I couldn't find a cap that showed Buffy hitting him with the skillet.) "He had it coming, he had it coming / He only had himself to blame...."  (If you're about to say that so and so male character is soo much superior to Xander, however, I'm going to respectfully disagree with you. ALL the guys on the show do some stupid stuff. Yes, ALL.)


          15-21



Warning: "mature" language

22-28

If Fritz Lang had directed BtVS - the poster art:

      29-32

   33-34


35-41



42-47



48-54



55-60 The "Skillet Moon" series.




   61-66



67-71



72-77

78-82



83-87

Warning: possibly upsetting imagery below (88-90) or maybe it's just my overactive imagination on my personal Tilt o'Whirl o' Trauma (Pat.Pend.)

88-91

88-90 was going to be my "bite" entry  - can you see what I had in mind with these? It seemed like a really nifty concept- until it RL and suchforth made it a bit too upsetting even for me. I suspect someone else is going to love these, however.

92-94

I made a blood spattered version of 94, which just pushes past the PG rule of the comm. (So vague suggestive imagery in 88-90 drives me to upset but blood spatters are no prob? Explain me to me, please.) If you're interested in seeing those, let me know and I'll slip them to you under the table.

Comments

[chasingdemons.livejournal.com]

OMG. How? How did you get so good?? These are excellent!!!

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Magic? Hard work? A better program? The advice and support of good friends with lots of examples to follow?

I'm so glad you saw these hon, thank you! I'm really pleased with how these came out and so happy you approve. I have been working on a lot of banners and projects I haven't shown off yet which is where I've been getting a lot of practice in. I LOVE working larger, especially since I started wearing bifocals a couple of months ago.

[chasingdemons.livejournal.com]

I admit, I don't look at icon posts very much because my vision has gotten a lot worse. But it is fun working on bigger pieces. What new program are you using? I am so impressed with your work. And I'm not saying that just to be nice.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

I don't look at icon posts very much because my vision has gotten a lot worse.

And with these bifocals I'm getting ready to swear off icons altogether; I feels ya, sweetie. I've got some posters ready to show off *wicked chuckle*

Thank you so much for the kind words and feedback (and I know you're not "just saying that", which I appreciate. But you are a nice person anyway, you know. *hug*) I'm keeping your wisdom about not taking awards seriously in mind because, oh gosh I am starting to get pouty and cranky and insecure again, and "what did I not do? Are they not good?" feelings popping up. Must ignore aforesaid feelings and remember how I felt when I submitted them.

What new program are you using?

Still ipiccy, actually. I've just learned a lot about techniques with every round, and by working on (playing with) larger posters in between. I think a big difference is that I've started to get a handle on blends, on ayers and textures, masking etc; and I was very consciously trying to achieve lighter, brighter effects this time around because I noticed that was a feature of a lot of past winners the last three rounds. (Then this round darker and grittier/less focused is the overall look and I'm like, what the heck?)

My sweetie bought PS Elements 12 but I didn't want to switch gears and dig into it until after this round was finished.