Did a Thing! But it’s been yonks...
Because kit10notk9 recently asked about it, here’s the scoop on the avatar sevatar. *nods*
So... Zombie Pumpkins! is my all time favourite source of Halloween pumpkin stencils (Ryan also does some watermelon designs, but we can’t afford decent watermelon here, so I’ve never tried those.) You can see some of our pumpkins here. (I expect to be adding more next Halloween.) The Snape papercut I did is based on one of his stencils. Because of the intended use, all of his designs really lend themselves to papercutting. He did all the heavy thinking involved, it’s really hard to go wrong if you just do what he ‘says’. 😉
We like to work in three tones on our pumpkins, it lets us get a little more detail in the final result. I made the avatar papercut in much the same way. It’s two papercuts layered. The background sheet is white, the foreground black, which gives me three tones to work with. I made it for Halloween in honour of Alan Rickman two and a half years ago. Then I hung it in the window behind the milky glass by the door and backlit it with a bunch of flickering candles and took the picture from outside. (It wasn't until I went back to try to change the crop that I noticed it has my arms reflected in it. Somehow that makes it look spookier. lol. (Arms! Eek! Seriously, these days arms are *scary* things... *nods*)) Some of the random haziness is caused by the window.
Originally I cut out the spaces above his eyes to make them look a little less beady larger. Eventually I decided that sort of made him look like he was wearing guyshadow. Hmm. So... MyWitch was kind enough to recommend some free(!) software (SketchBook), and I was able to do a fill on the picture within minutes of touching the software for the first time, so it must have been reasonably intuitive. The job itself, once I figured the software out, was a matter of seconds. (Technology is awesome!) If you look closely, you can see the edges of the fill, but compared to cutting the paper again... Yeah, it was the clear choice for the avatar, because who knows how long that would have taken otherwise. (I honestly don’t because I try very hard not to time myself on these things. That way lies madness. *nods*)
Design by Zombie Pumpkins!