2 - 3

Spuffy Hand Banner (what else could I possibly title it? I think that says it all) is still one of my favorite and, I dare say, best things I've made yet. I was nervous about entering the round because it's difficult for me to express my views on Buffy&Spike. How in the world could I encapsulate my complex feelings for two insanely, deliciously complex characters in a single banner? But this is IT for me in terms of my feelings for the pairing. I was determined to avoid using the flaming handfasting in Chosen because I've seen it used so often in fanart, but I wanted to depict Spuffy hand imagery and I couldn't not use it. There's "iconic" and then there's beyond "iconic". Know what I mean?

For this particular project I got a lot of my inspiration from the music I was listening to at the time. The lyrics in this banner are from "Flaws" performed by Bastille (Writer: Daniel Smith Copyright: Wwkd Ltd.) The backdrop is one or two of my sweetheart's photos of - you guessed it - a New England autumn sunset that's come in handy so many times before and since. In this instance I used it as a backdrop then I layered it over the screencaps a second time, turned in a different direction to "fill the gaps" and create continuity across the image. Then I used Sharpen, Glow and various other filters to make the caps look less photographic and more painterly.


The cap from Listening to Fear was the most difficult to adjust in terms of brightness and contrast because that scene is so damn dark. Layering on the cloudscapes was pretty much a necessity. It ended up being my favorite portion of the banner - the icon I made from it (#8 below) is still one of my all-time favorite icons I've made.


I entered both 1 & 2 to the contest; I have no idea what I was thinking. I also entered my first version of this design which was very bright, over-saturated, had a triangle in the center and was just a hot freakin' mess; I'll be damned if I'm going to repost it here. I have no idea what I was thinking.

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   4 - 5

That Sad Earthly Scene v.1-2 (2015)  750x422 & 750x400
Figuring out sizing and proportion was something I was still strugling with at the time.

My second-favorite design. I was intrigued by the resemblance between the Normal Again and Beneath You images. Madness, insanity, depression, the damaged caused by experience and memory, by a life of violence, is another of my favorite themes when thinking about the Buffyverse although part of my interest lies in how Mutant Enemy sometimes gets it all wrong.


Add the handoff of the amulet from Chosen, an image of a shattered mirror by Lauren Elisabeth Photography, and stir. I was really pleased with how the images came together here. The place where their hands come together and the glow from the amulet just happened to fall pretty much in the center of the banner; and the fact that Spike's face seems to be tucked into or leaning against his own body from the later episode was pure serendipity. Lyrics on #5 from "Flaws" and "Take Me to Church" by Hozier. (Writer(s): Andrew Hozier Byrne. Copyright: The Evolving Music Company Limited)

#4 was preferred by the voters in  the poll over 5 by a slight margin; I think the voters were right but I really do love both versions for different reasons and go back and forth as to which is "best" - probably six of one, half a dozen of the other. Once again I submitted both versions to the poll. What in the world was I thinking at the time?

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6

The Work I Have to Do (2015),  750x300

I wanted to compare Buffy's sacrifice in The Gift with Spike's in Chosen because they are after all parallel events. This is perfectly obvious and yet somehow doesn't get discussed all that much. Or when it does, it's in terms of a competition: this person's sacrifice was just "suicide" and therefore not really all that heroic compared to that person's sacrifice, blah blah bitty blah. Whatever.


The design turned out to be rather simple - the image of Buffy leaping into the exploding portal is well, a gift to the fan artist because it's such an incredible visual. Layer it with the image of Spike's soul "effulgent" in Chosen, add a Shine filter, balance warm and cool color layers and tah-dah! It just glows. Instead of song lyrics I used dialogue from The Gift and Chosen. Once again, the way that the lines in different fonts and colors intersect with one another ("This the work I have to do" / "I have to do this") was a very happy accident.

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7
How to Save a Life (2015), 532x512

This banner received zero entries in the poll - and it shouldn't have. This was the first banner I made for the round, and I was worried I wouldn't be able to make anything in time (hah); so I adapted the composition of the awards banner I made for oh_cheezit for Round 6 of btvsats20in20, using a different image of Spike. So it wasn't a strict cheat in the sense that yes, I had to go back to my original source images and make the whole thing from scratch; but I was ripping ("riffing"?) off my own work - and I did it better the first time.

Lyrics: "How to Save A Life" performed by The Fray (Writer(s): Joseph King, Isaac Slade Copyright: Aaron Edwards Publishing, Emi April Music Inc.)

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Icons from the banners: I wish #9 had come out a bit better (there are superior icons of that image out there) but I was thrilled with how well #8 worked as an icon.

      8 - 11

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           12 - 16

12 - 16 is based off a banner idea I rejected; more The Gift/Chosen parallels. Good idea but the execute of the banner was a mess (to be polite), so I settled for an icon instead. I'd still like to return to the idea for a banner at some point. Dylan Thomas' poem seemed like a natural here. Light texture in #15 by colorfilter.

Check out my Resource post for some of my image sources.

        2 - 3)

I prefer the brighter version myself but in any case I realized (and my lovely beta confirmed) that it was too showy to be a proper awards banner and would only overwhelm the icons it was meant to highlight and honor. So I went with another design but I'd love to see this used for a fanfiction poster. I don't know of any Xander Nightmares fics off the top of my head but I confess I don't read a lot of Xander fic.  So if anyone knows of a story or any author would like to claim this, let me know and I can personalize it to suit.


Per velvetwhip's rec I asked sparrow2000 if she'd be interested; she graciously declined as she hadn't written anything that this would go with, but am I now reading her fic Cracks in the World. (Her prose is amazing.) Perhaps lusciousxander or aadler? eurydice72? Suggestions, anyone?

Alt # 3) I made a version with the tag line from the movie The Dark Knight because I couldn't resist.


Screencaps: Buffy the Vampire Slayer HD/Blu-Ray, Bloodqueen

Nightmares is one of my favorite episodes of Season 1 in part because of the way it resonates all the way to the end of the series, particularly in terms of Willow and Buffy. It's one of the most essential episodes of Season 1 and on my shortlist of "S1 episodes You Must Watch if You're Going to Try to Wriggle Your Way Out of Watching the Entire Season (Which You Shouldn't.)"  But it also has some of the most fantastic imagery of the entire series and this was one round I could have very happily submitted 10 - 15 icons. My entries:

1 - 5

My favorite icons are definitely 3 - 5, Xander and the Evil Clown; and the swastika icon is my absolute fave of this set. For once I'm unhappiest with the Buffy icons. I had better ones than 1 - 2 that I didn't submit and I'm not sure why.


Alts: I nearly submitted #6 instead of 5; I like the way Xander is "consumed" by the light.

6 - 11

When I was in college I came across a biography of child-killer John Wayne Gacy that included a photograph of him in a clow costume. The corners of his painted mouth were pointed just like that of the Evil Clown in Nightmares. Apparently professional clowns were shown the photograph and noted that they never painted the corners of the mouth pointed in that way because it was considered to be scary and threatening.

My entries:
      1 - 5

  6 - 12
Yes, I duplicated a few images; you noticed? I have no idea why Starry let me get away with it, other than she was being super-generous.

This was a special challenge for me in a lot of ways. When it began, I had just lost a friend in fandom (how is neither here nor there at the moment) and I used this challenge to push myself through a period of intense grief.The person I'm speaking of had been very supportive of my artwork and so I had them in mind the entire time and kept asking myself, "What would she think? Would she approve of this?" I tried out new-to-me techniques and came out with a set of entries and alts I'm immensely proud of. (That this person had not passed away in fact is neither here nor there now.) I decided to focus on Buffy, my favorite fictional character, and dive in deep. (That this person was not a Buffy fan, making this an altogether strange "memorial" is neither here or nor there either.)

1 - 2 ) Probably the simplest icons I made that round, so the 2nd and 3rd place awards stunned me. The Dawn icon I literally threw together at the last minute because I realized I wanted to do something with Dawn in it and I liked the image. #2 is the only cap from that heartbreaking scene in Listening to Fear that I could make a decent image from. I had wanted to depict Buffy crying but had to go with this. I also had to make the scene look like daytime light in order to make it visible; the caps are incredibly dark and this is deceptively warm and sunny. But I like it that way.

3 - 4, 12) The one moment in BtVS when a character shattered the "fourth wall"; it's been done as a gimmick countless times before and since (Garry Shandling, anyone?) but this is one of the few instances I can think of when it's genuinely unsettling. The camera is uncomfortably close to Sarah's face and we are "in her space" as she calls us out on our passive complicity. As viewers we are "enjoying", are "entertained" by her pain and trauma; and unlike her friends we've been in on the secret from the beginning. I love Sarah's face as Buffy (and specifically as Buffy); and unlike so many caps for the series, this image is relatively good quality, clear and well-lit.

5) Another image that I've reused in other projects and dearly love, Buffy in her own dream at the beginning of Nightmares; I layered two photographs my sweetie took of New England sunsets over Buffy. Yes, the clouds were really that brilliant and fluffy and I only slightly adjusted the saturation.

6 - 7) These Joyce & Buffy icons were two of my favorites going into the challenge; I absolutely teared up while I making them. And made tons of alts, which were nothing more than small tweaks to coloring, sharpness etc. I made versions that included text (see alts) from The Gift, "I just wish my mom was here." What Buffy says to Giles (again) in Intervention, that she feels that being the Slayer is turning her into stone, was also on my mind. I wanted to compare/contrast Joyce who is dead, "cold as stone" but very much alive in her daughter's memory; and Buffy who is alive but feels herself to be a dead thing. Her depth of feeling indicates to me that nothing could be further from the truth but it's what she believes about herself. (I have strong words for Xander Harris and Riley Finn and their entitled manpain but I will keep them to myself at the moment. In the interest of the children.)

"Sing" on number 3 and it's alts refers both to Buffy's lament "Something to Sing About" and "Sing" written by Joe Raposo (1971) and made famous by the Carpenters, a song I grew up with thanks to Sesame Street and probably had on my CD player when I was making this set.

9) Another of my favorites, "Normal Again grune wall" is still in my userpic gallery. The look of this icon was inspired by tempertemper's 1st place Willow/Tara icon for slayerstillness Challenge 32 from Oct 2014, believe it or not. I even asked her how she got the look of the icon, attempted to duplicate it to the best of my limits and got something completely different.  I'm still really pleased by the balance of sharpness and blur and how palpable it seems: Buffy dirty hair, her gritted teeth, and tensed muscles are all very sharp, contrasted with her hand flapping impotently against her attacker. It's an incredibly sad image; that the girl who went up against Angelus ("Take all that away and what's left?" / "ME.") is reduced to this, even if it's an hallucination, and that she should find this state of affairs preferable. Of course it also speaks to Joss Whedon's fascination with tearing characters down to a state of complete powerlessness and then seeing how they react. Which he does over and over and over.....ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

11) I actually had snogged on the brain for this one, due to the rivulet of blood effect. Sarah's hair reminded me of a needle piercing her skin; the effect was surprisingly easy to create. I probably should have kept this one to myself but it was just weird enough that I decided, what the heck. It's weird. I'm weird. And that's ok. But OTOH, I thought 13 would be "too weird" to submit, although it's one of my favorites. Go figure.

And I did promise a treasure trove of alts. Challenge 37 was a special free-for-all: we were allowed to enter as many as we wanted instead of the usual five. My habit at the time had been, 5-9x the number of alts per entries needed. I entered 12. You do the math, Gentle Reader. This only represents a fraction of my alts btw. You're welcome. (And I wonder why it took me nearly a year to post these?)

13 - 19

20 - 25

  26 - 32

I might like the b/w versions better than the sepia ones. It's a toss up.

33 - 39


40 - 47

This was the round I finally got in the habit of saving icons with and without font. In case you hadn't noticed.

killing_kurare's wonderful set for Round 11 of btvsats20in20 inspired my Daddy's Home icon; I actually had the phrase in mind from the episode Ted and thought about making a Ted/Joyce icon to match but didn't have time.  The "flame" texture is by pensnest, which I found via colorfilter's journal, set on Lighten or Screen.


Banners by your's truly, icons by their respective artists. For the background image I cropped a photograph of a trumpet flower in our yard that I took this afternoon, pointing my Nikon Coolpix upward on macro setting to keep the blossom in focus and the sunlight-dappled trees in the background blurred. This accounts for the natural "bokeh" effect in the lower portion. I wanted to capture the elegant simplicity of the flower; it's texture and form remind me of a parasol made of the most gossamer silk, it's edges billowing slightly in the breeze.


The gold frame around the icons is meant to be a punning reference to the phrase "gilding the lily". The flower isn't a lily but the phrase became my mantra anyway when making these banners. What I had in front of me was already beautiful - the flower, the icons - so don't overwhelm, overwork or overdo.

My entries (1 - 4) and alts:



      1 - 4


  5 - 8

        9 - 13

Unlike the poster for AP, this one came out very different to my original concepts - and probably for the better. I wanted an image of Dru less obviously her, more mysterious, but the S32 promo images are excellent quality and absolutely swoon-worthy. I layered one of my photographs from a bonfire the summer over her twice as the background.

The screencaps were of far lesser quality and merging images of very different quality together into a cohesive whole was the biggest challenge.

ETA: I thought about redoing this poster to deepen the shadows, as in the earlier drafts of this image.  But that would make it look more like the AP poster and I wanted to differentiate them. The lighter contrast of this image helps to mask the differences in image quality especially re: the cap of Joyce; at least that was my conscious motivation. It wasn't until after I finished it and sent it to aadler, then saw it on his journal, that I realized that the relative lightness or haziness of the image reminded me of the apartment fire my sweetie and I had in 2013, and how my vision slowly filled with smoke until it became difficult to see.

The image of Angelus I think is from Passion - or Phases - it really doesn't matter.  I didn't want to use a well-known shot of him from a particular moment in the series and this fit the bill.  The burning wood in the lower left corner is from another of my bonfire photos that I used as a foreground texture to mask the edges between the figures, and it happened to fall over Angelus' coat in a really interesting way.

The photo of Joyce is from Gingerbread near the end of the episode - ironically, the scene where Buffy and Willow are nearly burnt to death at the stake. I assumed the image is not well-known but her expression of shock and horror was perfect for my needs. I wanted very much to emphasize the horror of the situation without turning Joyce into a quivering damsel, to suggest some of the strength and dignity and determination that carriers her through the story. A tall order for just one little image. I erased out the MOO badge on her blouse, which I changed to a lavender color from the original earth-tones.

The image of Buffy is from Ted, when she's sitting on her front steps thinking she's killed Ted; the stairs inside the house are just visible behind her.  It doesn't represent a moment in the actual story. Drusilla imagines Buffy as a hardened warrior and I was going to use a image from The Wish but Wishverse!Buffy looks rather silly in that thick black eyemake-up so I tried to evoke a moment that isn't in the story but what I imagined in-between the spaces. I cut the image around her roughly, dropped it in and it fell into place perfectly.

I originally wasn't going to put Buffy in the poster; unlike Answering Prayers, she's not actually a character in the story but as with AP she's a presence despite - or because of? - her absence, the Buffy-shaped-hole that everything else revolves around. Which makes sense to my mind - this is the Buffyverse after all, and even if she's not the protagonist of the story, she is the Buffy-shaped-force that everyone else revolves around, the reason why everyone in the story does what they do.


And the women are the most important thing in All Ye, as in BtVS; Angelus is just a puppet on their stage even if imagines himself the puppet-master.