Real Person Fic - CW: Freedom [Art]
Title: Art for Freedom by sanshal
Fandom: Real Person Fic: CW
Characters/Pairings: Jared/Jensen
Rating: PG for visual references to slavery. Fic is NC-17 for violence, slavery, dubious consent, power imbalances, and explicit sexual content. See fic post for more warnings/details.
Type: Digital Art
Author’s Note: This is pinch hit art for this year's round of spn_j2_bigbang. I was so lucky to get to work with sanshal, who was lovely and collaborative and believed I could pull off things that I was not confident I could do well, which pushed me to try. I also want to give a big ol' thank you to my lovely starshinedean. Every time I get myself into a mess trying to make art, I slip into her DMs and she magically spots all the things I need to change...and then gives me ideas on how to do it since I wouldn't know where to begin. All of these face manips looked a mess before she stepped in. I won't even get started on the sunburn Jared had at one point.
Summary: A new law comes into play which calculates an individuals’ income and expenditure and if one fails to meet a particular ‘standard,’ they are indentured till they can work off the difference by working for ‘sponsors.’
Jared fails to meet the ‘standard.’
The biggest motivation for the motif I went with for this art set was a quote image Sanshal sent me along with the draft. Since that was something that inspired the story, I decided to carry that contrast between the wire fence and the flying birds through the art. I also used a thin line font for the lettering. For the J2 image, I chose one of my favorites of the hand-over-heart thing, which is a big gesture in the story. Originally, I was going to leave it as is, thinking that it was moments like this in their history before the story that led them to making the gesture significant, but I also liked that, removed from context, Jensen's expression seems really worried/protective, which fit the story. Sanshal pointed out that Jared's glowing smile doesn't really fit the tone of the fic at all, which is something I had also been bugged by when making the banner, not to mention he is too young in it. I was scared to try to change his face with my limited skills, but I wanted to make something that actually represented the story. I know it's still not perfect, but I'm pretty satisfied with how his face looks, and it fits the fic much better now.
PART HEADERS
I knew I wanted to use the hand-over-heart gesture again in the chapter/section headers and my brain immediately went with to this one because the angle on Jensen's hand is so direct and would make it really easy to make that the focus. We played with a few options that kept his/both of their smiles, but once again, that didn't seem honest to the story, so instead we kept to this tighter look at just the hands. I brought in the birds overlaying that to sort of flag that despite the fact that Jared is indentured (represented by the wire background on the text section), that connection with Jensen allows him some freedom from his conditioning.
DIVIDER
I figured the scene divider as a simple version of the wire/bird motif was a no brainer to tie the scene break to the rest of the art.
THE END BANNER
Capturing Jared finally getting his freedom for the end banner was something I really wanted to try for, even though I was extremely dubious of my ability to age him as much as he needs to depict that point in the story. I'm pretty happy with how it came out. The broken wires were Sanshal's excellent idea and I think are the perfect conclusion to the bird/wire freedom/slavery metaphor in the art set.
Fandom: Real Person Fic: CW
Characters/Pairings: Jared/Jensen
Rating: PG for visual references to slavery. Fic is NC-17 for violence, slavery, dubious consent, power imbalances, and explicit sexual content. See fic post for more warnings/details.
Type: Digital Art
Author’s Note: This is pinch hit art for this year's round of spn_j2_bigbang. I was so lucky to get to work with sanshal, who was lovely and collaborative and believed I could pull off things that I was not confident I could do well, which pushed me to try. I also want to give a big ol' thank you to my lovely starshinedean. Every time I get myself into a mess trying to make art, I slip into her DMs and she magically spots all the things I need to change...and then gives me ideas on how to do it since I wouldn't know where to begin. All of these face manips looked a mess before she stepped in. I won't even get started on the sunburn Jared had at one point.
Summary: A new law comes into play which calculates an individuals’ income and expenditure and if one fails to meet a particular ‘standard,’ they are indentured till they can work off the difference by working for ‘sponsors.’
Jared fails to meet the ‘standard.’
The biggest motivation for the motif I went with for this art set was a quote image Sanshal sent me along with the draft. Since that was something that inspired the story, I decided to carry that contrast between the wire fence and the flying birds through the art. I also used a thin line font for the lettering. For the J2 image, I chose one of my favorites of the hand-over-heart thing, which is a big gesture in the story. Originally, I was going to leave it as is, thinking that it was moments like this in their history before the story that led them to making the gesture significant, but I also liked that, removed from context, Jensen's expression seems really worried/protective, which fit the story. Sanshal pointed out that Jared's glowing smile doesn't really fit the tone of the fic at all, which is something I had also been bugged by when making the banner, not to mention he is too young in it. I was scared to try to change his face with my limited skills, but I wanted to make something that actually represented the story. I know it's still not perfect, but I'm pretty satisfied with how his face looks, and it fits the fic much better now.
PART HEADERS
I knew I wanted to use the hand-over-heart gesture again in the chapter/section headers and my brain immediately went with to this one because the angle on Jensen's hand is so direct and would make it really easy to make that the focus. We played with a few options that kept his/both of their smiles, but once again, that didn't seem honest to the story, so instead we kept to this tighter look at just the hands. I brought in the birds overlaying that to sort of flag that despite the fact that Jared is indentured (represented by the wire background on the text section), that connection with Jensen allows him some freedom from his conditioning.
DIVIDER
I figured the scene divider as a simple version of the wire/bird motif was a no brainer to tie the scene break to the rest of the art.
THE END BANNER
Capturing Jared finally getting his freedom for the end banner was something I really wanted to try for, even though I was extremely dubious of my ability to age him as much as he needs to depict that point in the story. I'm pretty happy with how it came out. The broken wires were Sanshal's excellent idea and I think are the perfect conclusion to the bird/wire freedom/slavery metaphor in the art set.