Banners for Whedon Elite Challenge 120

[red_satin_doll]

But first thank you for everyone for the hugs, support and good wishes regarding my recent job loss, you guys are truly amazing.

Thank you to the voters who awarded my Riley and Lorne icons 2nd and 3rd place (tied with shameless666) at Whedon Elite Challenge 120. Congratulatioms to fassy, entwashian, sweet_lyri, shameless666 and starry_night on your winning entries this round!

Those were my two favorite icons for this round; ironic, as I rarely do male characters. Also, I'm not Riley's biggest fan and I haven't watched Lorne for more than a few minutes on AtS. So I was surprised and pleased that they won. Yes, Virginia, it is possible to make fanart of characters you don't like or are barely familiar with.

Click all images to see full-size:

     

Banners and base photographs by yours truly. Many thanks to my incredible Beta-Muse velvetwhip. More banner images affter the cut

Teasers:

   

   

 I had no idea what I wanted to do for the banners until I came across a close-up photo I'd taken two years ago of the bark on the locust tree in our front yard. The color and pattern of it faintly resembled army fatigues as well as the colors of fassy's first place icon and the patterns on Connor's sweater.  So I used it for the base of both her banner and my Riley one; all the other banners have different base images but they are all photographs me or my sweetie have taken in the past couple of years. I decided to stick with the nature imagery all the way through.

The River banner differs slightly in that the base image is a photograph of a wooden bowl my sweetie made several years ago when she did woodturning for a time. It's probably nearly 20 years old but the grain still shows up beautifully in the sunlight. I like how the woodgrain across River's face in the banner reminds me of Maori or "tribal" tattoos.

For the Lorne banner I wanted to use the sunset photo to the mournful tone of the icon and specifically his last line in the series, "Good night, folks."

For shameless666's banner, I knew I wanted flowers in the base image to go with the icon but I didn't have photographs of daisies. A couple of months ago I waved bunches of lilacs in front of my Nikon Coolpix camera to get blur and motion effects; the green from the leaves was simiilar to the color of the icon once I adjusted the image slightly, and Skye's face emerged dramatically when I layered it with a PR image.





I would not mind if the mods repeated did a round-robin challenge like this again because it really stretched and challenged me, alongside Round 10 of btvsats20in20, to try new things.  BTW, deadline for Challenge 121 is Sunday July 12, 3pm EST - and only seven icons by two artists have been entered thus far.

And speaking of btvsats20in20 HAVE YOU VOTED YET FOR THEMES AND CHARACTERS? HAVE YOU TOLD YOUR FRIENDS TO VOTE?  Because as it stands this moment starry_night is going to be stuck with a bunch of two and three way ties and the entire process will be drawn out.

Comments

[velvetwhip.livejournal.com]

I am so proud of you! Your icons are SUPERLATIVE and those banners are DI-VOON!!!!!



Gabrielle

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Oh thank you sweetheart! I took your advice about the Lorne image.

Oddly enough though, some of these banners are not the ones you saw, esp the Riley one - I ended up going back to my original version.

(BTW, I'm still not satisfied with that Wangel icon - Willow's face isn't clear enough when the image is downsized in the convo threads. I might take another stab at that one. Or just wait until you write another story to go with?)

[double_dutchess]

Congrats again on the wins! And of course also congratulations to the other winners.

For the whedon_elite challenge, maybe I could make a variation of one of the Giles icons that I'm currently working on. I guess it would be easy to adapt it to fit the specifications... I'll think about it.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

For the whedon_elite challenge, maybe I could make a variation of one of the Giles icons that I'm currently working on.

I'd really like to see that and see you participate in more challenges! What motivation do you need? Cookies? (Have you thought about slayerstillness? The challenge this time around is pretty loose - up to five icons each with a different character in it.)

I'm trying to get better about remembering when I see a screen cap I love and want to work with it in one challenge but don't get the chance, to remember it for another time rather than starting from scratch every single time.

And thank you for the compliments again - seeing you use that Lorne icon is the besest compliment of all of course!

[double_dutchess]

Thanks, but it's not motivation I need -- it's time!

And when I find time (hopefully during the summer) I'm going to use it for vidding. There's this vid I've been "working" on for over a year now -- and by that I mean I haven't actually managed to do any work on it since November last year. So that's a priority now.

Maybe I can still squeeze in the occasional icon though.

[snogged.livejournal.com]

I love the effects you created on the banners using those photographs. The one of River is particularly striking.

Congrats on your wins!

Love that Riley icon so much. Would you be open to personalizing that for me? Please? Thanks.

*hugs*

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Thank you sweetheart!

I noticed that not all of the banners enlarged when you click them; I think I have that fixed now.

Love that Riley icon so much. Would you be open to personalizing that for me? Please? Thanks.

Sure thing! I just knocked out a couple of versions, what did you have in mind in terms of text? I think in this instance keeping the font simple is best:



this is a first effort, let me know if you'd like something different.


I've created Briley and Wiley alt versions of that one btw; don't know if that floats your boat?

[snogged.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much!
I love the 1st and 4th ones best, but I'll definitely be saving all 4.

Ooh! Wiley? I love Willow/Riley as a pairing. I wanna see the icon, please?

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

You're welcome hon! I like 1 & 4 best too. But they're all yours of course! I tried script and military stencil style fonts but I didn't care for them as much.

I love Willow/Riley as a pairing. I wanna see the icon, please?

As a matter of fact, your request inspired me to revisit the W/R icon and remake it a bit for Gabrielle, I'm going to add it to a post for everyone to see. ;-) Thank you for the motivation!

[snogged.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I could help motivate you!

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

I hope you don't mind that I adapted it for Gabrielle's fic? Her fic was actually the original inspiration for the original icon.

I added another texture (the same tree bark one I added to the Connor banner) and changed the color tone to differentiate it a bit from the original.

[snogged.livejournal.com]

Not at all!
It suits the story really well.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

:D :D