btvsats20in20 ROUND 6: WILLOW ROSENBERG

[red_satin_doll]

ETA 01/16/15: Round 6 Voting at btvsats20in20 open until Jan 18th. Thank you everyone who has voted and commented!

Many many thanks to velvetwhip for her boundless support and encouragement, for the brainstorming sessions and her absolutely invaluable Willow expertise!

This is the first time I've been comfortable enough to make Dark Willow icons; I've needed to tap into a little of that dark side apparently.


TEASERS:
     

10 Themes
Accessory	Purple	Quote	Reason	Profile
Out Of Character	Soft Glow	Bored	Outfit	Re-Cast**
5 Category |HOLIDAY TIMES
Cat 1	Cat 2	Cat 3	Cat 4	Cat 5
5 Artist's Choice
AC 1	AC 2	AC 3	AC 4	AC 5

* Reason: In 2014 I came out of the closet as a Buffy/Tara shipper. This year I'm coming out as a Buffy/Willow shipper...and by "ship" I mean "relationship" in the broadest sense.
I love Buffy. I love Willow. Their friendship was one of my favorite things about the show; it's not only central to btvs, it's absolutely essential - just as the friendships and love I've found in this fandom are likewise absolutely precious and essential to me. I want to celebrate and appreciate, not waste time mired in pointless and tone-deaf fandom wars.

** Aly Sheedy. (The Breakfast Club, War Games; she's adorable and quietly intense on this 1975 segment of the game show "To Tell The Truth", after her novel She Was Nice to Mice was published when she was all of 13 years old. It's a historical novel about Queen Elizabeth told from the POV of a mouse who lives at the castle. Which seems like a Willow Rosenberg type of project. Except that I suspect Willow would hide her manuscript away in a drawer because somebody laughed at it.)

Ironically Alyson Hannigan was already a "recast"  of Willow; Riff Regan played her in the unaired test pilot, but I couldn't find a decent photo of her to work with.



Alts/Extras:

  01-05
  I've never seen this image of Aly used in icons, and I have no idea why not; it's utterly adorable.


  06-07
The inspirations for my AC set. I wish both of these had come out better, and I couldn't find another theme to fit them in.


08
My alt Reason icon, and one of my favorite icons I've made this round. Buffy & Willow (or "Wiffy") fans unite!



09-12

13-14


  15-18

  19-22




23-26

23 was my alt Outfit icon; my entry version is a bit more visually arresting, and has a nice lesbian subtext (it could be an icon for an Impala/Willow shippy fic). But the alt version, with the mummy's withered face frozen in anguish, is sadder and more interesting on a meta level.  25 and 26 attempt to blend a quote from Reptile Boy with an image from Grave; it doesn't quite work because the context the image - a pile of burning books - is unclear.


27-28



This is the first round that I started by making the AC set; I've wanted to have an aesthetically coherent AC set ever since I saw spikesredqueen's pretty Cordelia AC set for Round 1.  So I collaged them together in a row as single images to apply text and effects to all the icons at a time. Then of course I proceded to make at least three more variations, and mixed and matched to come up with the final set of five.

As one does:

29-33


34-38


39-43


44-47

I used the "Oh my goddess" rather than the "White Willow" cap because I think the White Willow cap looks just plain silly.

Comments

[starry-night.livejournal.com]

Ack, how did I miss these?!
This is a beautiful set hon. Your icons just keep getting better and better and I love how you work with textures (it took me so long to even start using them myself).

And now for my faves...ok so first up I have to say I love what you did with the ACs. It's really creative and the image choices are suberb. I also really love:
Accessory (Willow was so adorkable in the early days and I love the simplicity of the icon);
Reason (Yes! And also it's a beautiful icon. I love the colouring; it has a rich yet kind of retro look to it);
OOC and it's alts (it's just pretty and I love the light effects);
Soft Glow (same as above - seriously beautiful!);
Recast (excellent choice and I love the warm colouring);
Cat 2 & Cat 5 (love the warm colours again, and great image choices).

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

How did I miss your comment here? THANK YOU so much for the compliments to my work! I'm just blushing like a rose.

I love how you work with textures (it took me so long to even start using them myself).

Aren't they wonderful? I've mostly used ipiccy's default textures or my own photos up until now; I started experimenting with other textures more in the last round; this round I pushed myself to use more and different textures I've found online, esp: light and glow textures.

I love textures A LOT. Adore them. I think there's two very distinct aesthetics in fan art in that regard - the more crystalline, smoother look with a certain clarity and purity that I admire so much, and the "rougher" texture-heavy aesthetic that I'm nonetheless drawn to.

Your Category set is a completely brilliant example of merging the two. If that's what happens when you use textures - more, please.

And I'm blushing even harder rereading your icon choices of my set. I don't know what to say except thank you so much!

This is the very FIRST round of 20in20 that i did the AC set first; I really wanted for once to have a true set conceptually and not just throw in 5 extra icons I happened to have lying around. I sacrificed their usefulness as individual icons but I'm ok with that.

Accessory is so cute - I'd forgot about that hat. I'd forgot about a lot of things in the early seasons so this round was great just for that. And I was really pushing myself to go for simplicity or the appearance of it this time around, after the last round of slayerstillness when my simplest icons took 2nd and 3rd place, that taught me something about the value of simplicity.

Reason (Yes! And also it's a beautiful icon. I love the colouring; it has a rich yet kind of retro look to it);

Buffy & Willow fans unite! (The "wars" btwn Buffy fans and Willow fans are as perplexing to me as the ship wars.) And you described what I was going for exactly -the color and look of an old hand painted postcard or photograph. I'm very pleased it worked for you; it's one of my favorites here.

I could do a set just from this scene. So next round my claim is Buffy and Willow; I look forward to making those. There are not a lot of icons of the two of them for all that their friendship is central to the show.

OOC is another one of my favorites - alt #1 was supposed to be the entry until the last minute I suddenly decided it was too fussy so I remade it; I'm glad I did. The light effects in the entry are from a set of "color filter" textures I've borrowed but haven't used before.

Recast was a fun idea but a real challenge - I wish I could have gotten a better icon but that was the best I could do with the screen caps i found from Breakfast Club.

And Cat 5 is my favorite of the Category icons; I really think Willow is sexy because of her confidence here, unlike Halloween and she looks so uncomfortable in that "hooker" outfit. But still adorable.

[starry-night.livejournal.com]

You are very welcome my dear! You should be very proud of how far you've come with icon making.

Your Category set is a completely brilliant example of merging the two. If that's what happens when you use textures - more, please.

Aw, thank you. I kind of have a love/hate relationship with textures because it takes me forever to do something I'm happy with. But I'm thrilled you like how the Harmony cat set turned out because that was someting I was quite pleased with :)

This is the very FIRST round of 20in20 that i did the AC set first; I really wanted for once to have a true set conceptually and not just throw in 5 extra icons I happened to have lying around. I sacrificed their usefulness as individual icons but I'm ok with that.

Lol, yeah that's usually how I do mine. I get all the theme stuff done and then see which images I'm left with :P

And again, it was a beautiful set and you should be proud of it :D

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

You should be very proud of how far you've come with icon making.

Thank you hon!

When I compare my entries for slayerstillness #37 with the icons I posted on Jan 1 2014, I'm pleased. (And mortified the older ones looked so bad and I literally had no idea at the time.)

But when I look at the icons that are out there on various comms then I'm really aware of how far I have to go. (If I never get the full version of photoshop, will I be able to go any further in terms of technique? IDK)

that was someting I was quite pleased with

I think it's utterly gorgeous - and should be in first place for category, no lie. (Is it ok to say that?) You'll notice I snagged the gold one. :)

I get all the theme stuff done and then see which images I'm left with

I'm so relieved to know it's not just me! I think for round 7 I want to start with the AC set again because I already have one or two ideas for it.

Thank you so much for the compliments; I'm honestly perplexed by how well this set has done but i'll take it.