Merlin fanart: Fire In Her Hands
I made another fanart podfic cover for my iTunes display, this time for Emei's wonderful Fire In Her Hands, which she made into a podfic recently.
I spent a while looking for pictures of Merlin that look as girly as possible (*g* that sounds really bad, if you don't know that the story's about Merlin being a Shakespearian Heroine type of girl, who cuts off her hair and dresses as a boy before travelling to Camelot to seek her fortune). It was actually rather difficult, as for all Colin Morgan's slenderness, he has a very strong jawline and eyebrow ridges, so he's not really that feminine.
Having found a couple that are almost passable, I debated trying to soften his jawline or add colour to his cheeks or lips... but after fiddling for a bit, I decided it would be a little too easy to make him look like a drag queen! I did add a little colour back to his lips, as someone either in makeup or retouching afterwards had made them match the surrounding skin tone: a situation which almost never happens in reality, but which people seem to like to see on men on TV. So yes, in the end, Merlin doesn't really look like a girl dressed as a boy, but on the upside, at least there's no visible stubble or 5 o'clock shadow!
Then it was just a matter of smudging an intruding dragon wing so it looks more like a tree *grins*, and figuring out what to do about title fonts and positions. Thankfully, I quite quickly found that a font called "Arthur" worked really well with the GIMP logo extension "Glowing Hot" to make the title look as though it was on fire.
In the end, I think I'm pleased with how it turned out as an iTunes podfic cover, though most of the credit still has to go to whoever from Shine put the original poster together.
I spent a while looking for pictures of Merlin that look as girly as possible (*g* that sounds really bad, if you don't know that the story's about Merlin being a Shakespearian Heroine type of girl, who cuts off her hair and dresses as a boy before travelling to Camelot to seek her fortune). It was actually rather difficult, as for all Colin Morgan's slenderness, he has a very strong jawline and eyebrow ridges, so he's not really that feminine.
Having found a couple that are almost passable, I debated trying to soften his jawline or add colour to his cheeks or lips... but after fiddling for a bit, I decided it would be a little too easy to make him look like a drag queen! I did add a little colour back to his lips, as someone either in makeup or retouching afterwards had made them match the surrounding skin tone: a situation which almost never happens in reality, but which people seem to like to see on men on TV. So yes, in the end, Merlin doesn't really look like a girl dressed as a boy, but on the upside, at least there's no visible stubble or 5 o'clock shadow!
Then it was just a matter of smudging an intruding dragon wing so it looks more like a tree *grins*, and figuring out what to do about title fonts and positions. Thankfully, I quite quickly found that a font called "Arthur" worked really well with the GIMP logo extension "Glowing Hot" to make the title look as though it was on fire.
In the end, I think I'm pleased with how it turned out as an iTunes podfic cover, though most of the credit still has to go to whoever from Shine put the original poster together.