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[red_satin_doll]

Deadline to submit your entries to whedon_elite Challenge 112  "Illyria" is Sunday March 8th, 3pm EST. Fifteen gorgeous icons from rua1412, starry_night, hsapiens, sietepecados and julie_izumi have been submitted but to quote Starry, more are always welcome. (The post by sietepecados doesn't seem to have been tagged correctly, so here it is; the others can be found in the previous link above.)

Personally, as banner-maker for the comm *, I'm thankful that starry_night had an Illyria challenge at slayerstillness back in October/November because it forced me to gather material for a character I had no familiarity with; so this time, I've got lots to work with and I'm ahead of the game, banners-wise.

Here are the banners (and some icons) I've made thus far for whedon_elite: (teasers)




Challenge 109 winners 1st and 3rd place for starry_night,  2nd place for rua1412 and Mod's Choice for yours truly:





The background texture is the same one that I used for my Summers Family icon, expanded, rotated the composition, played with colors. sharpness etc adjusted to personalize each icon. I actually wasn't exactly color-matching the backgrounds; I glanced at the icons and then played around with the designs without directly looking at the icons again. Font colors were coordinated but not necessarily matched exactly. rua1412's name is a different font to the other usernames because her's just looked bad in that font (instead of rua1412 it looked like rual412).

My icons for that round: 01-03

1) I FINALLY made a tragic/romantic Bangel icon! Thank god that's out of the way *lmao* I actually like this one quite a bit.
2) My beloved Summers women in The Weight of the World. The texture I used created a painterly effect and I kept trying to put my finger on whose work it reminded me of until I realized it was rua1412's.
3) The less said the better.

Challenge 110 winners: hsapiens stunning entries hit a home run with 1st, 2nd and 3rd place (tie) so I treated her entries as a "set" on one banner (click images for full-size):



Cutting around the outer edge of that gold frame was exactly as hard as it looks. *lol*  The challenge was "emerald green" so I found a photograph of an emerald on the internet, then made it look like an antique postcard or illustration with grunge filters and various effects. This allowed the icons to "pop" without competing with a bright stone in the background. The gold frame was a last-minute addition; I was amused by the idea of the valuable emerald's image "deconstructed" and made to look like something old and worn and of little value (old postcard) then popping that into a fancy museum-quality frame. As always, the text was the most difficult aspect; when I'm designing a banner I tend to forget that value changes in the image are going to cause me headaches down the road.

I posted my own entries and alts here last month.

Challenge 111 Winners tiptoetwirl, hsapiens and rua1412. The theme was analogous colors (colors next to one another on the color wheel). For the banners I went with the colors opposite those of the icons on the color wheel and used the icons themselves as the banners because I loved their compositions. Tiptoe and rua's designs were very simple and elegant; hsapiens Spike icon was the most detailed and complicated and thus challenging to work with; that icon already featured Courier font so I stayed with that for my own text.



No icons from yours truly for that round.

Don't forget to enter challenge 112 and good luck! And even if you're not entering please don't forget to vote.


* I got the assignment because I shamelessly begged politely asked the mods and fassy and setentpet most graciously allowed me to take the gig.