red_satin_doll

Congratulations to teragramm, sweet_lyri and emmatheslayer for their winning entries in whedon_elite Challenge 121! Teragramm's 2nd place/Best Color winner is a particular favorite of mine; I've seen a lot of icons of that scene in After Life and that shot in particular, but never one that looks exactly like this. The granular details and the coloring are especially delicate and subtle.

Teasers for artwork after the cut:

The theme for Challenge 121 was "Negative space + Two (and only two) figures + one dominant color" so I tried to play on that with the awards banners, and match the couplings in the icons in my banners. (The majority of entries and winners are shippy.) I fudged a litlte on Emmatheslayer's banner: I'm not sure if that's Xander walking in the far background in her Mod's Choice icon, but all three icons in her set featured Buiffy & Xander and in any case, I associate Xander with that scene in Life Serial so strongly that I assumed it was him.

Even thougjh whedon_elite covers the entire "Jossverse" I'm amused by the fact that the entries and the winning icons are so Buffy-centric, with the exception of Teragramm's Sprusilla icon.

For last round I relied entirely on my own photographs for the banner textures but this time I mixed up my own photo textures with found textures; the textures in the Sprusilla and Bangel banners are by sweet_lyri. The Spuffy image for Teragramm's banner is a promotional photo from S2 but I really like how it parallels and unintentionally foreshadows S6.

I did not plan to make the Sprusilla and Spuffy banners darker than the Bangel and Bander ones, and since I don't ship Bangel and Bander there is no judgement regarding the ships themselves intended. In fact, one of my favorite things about the Bangel poster is how both Buffy and Angel seem to dissolve in the light; Buffy especially is all but a shadow; and the texture by sweet_lyri subtly divides the image and comes between them.