Story banners...
I've been making quite a few banners for people recently, and I thought it would be nice to have them all in one place. So here are
This banner was made for eilonwy1's The Hidden Heart, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast with Hermione as Beauty and Draco as a very lonely Beast. The roses, Arthur Rackham illustration, and rose quartz pendant on a fine silver chain (which I had to draw onto the screencap) all appear in the story. The image I used for Draco shows Tom Felton with a slight moustache and beard, and with his hair gelled into rough spikes, which I thought was appropriate for a man who's living as a recluse, and I used the clone tool to give him a pony tail.
I do prefer working with pictures that show the cast looking that bit older...
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This one was made for curiouswombat's A Powerful Absence, a poignant story in which Elrohir, one of the sons of Elrond, is killed in a freak accident, leaving his twin brother bereft. The story focusses on the difficulties immortals have in dealing with something that should never have happened to them, and with a loss that has no foreseeable end. curiouswombat asked me to use a particular image for Elladan and Elrohir, Daeron, by Ebe Kastein, which has a very strong blue colouring. I decided that the blue would be too overpowering on a banner, but it took a lot of manipulation to make the colouring more natural, and to combine (not one, but two copies of) a drawn image with a screencap of Imladris!
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This banner was made for eilonwy1's The Challenge, or the Taming of the Skrewt, a romantic comedy set in the sixth or seventh year at Hogwarts. Runes and galleons are important to the plot, so I included some of those, plus a very pissed-off Hermione (I love her little potato-face in this screen cap), and a rather more sophisticated, worldly Draco. But eilonwy1 didn't like the image of Draco I'd chosen, and suggested an alternative. So here's the final version:
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This banner was made as an exchange_bingo prize for strawberry_kait. It illustrates her compelling dmhgficexchange story, I would find a way, which shows Hermione suffering from PTSD after the war. I was particularly pleased with this banner, partly because all the screen caps (apart from the one of Tom Felton) are from Deathly Hallows I, and partly because I had to build Hermione's left shoulder up from various geometric shapes :-)
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The last banner was made for curiouswombat's plot_wout_porn story, The Winter Garden. In the story, Hadirin the elfling finds a new playmate in a strange, lifeless garden. The story was inspired by a photograph curiouswombat took herself, so I used that as a background, though I pulled, pushed, twisted, darkened, lightened, and generally altered it quite a bit.
Hadirin's a recurring character in curiouswombat's stories, and she supplied me with a picture of him, and one of his mother, Tindómë. The original picture of Haldirin is cropped just above his hairline, and that dictated the maximum depth of the banner. I flipped the image of Tindómë, and rotated it slightly, to give her the right body language, and make her look as though she's cuddling/protecting her son. But the lighting on the two faces was still so different, it was obvious they'd come from separate photographs, so I lightened her, and darkened him, and then selected and lightened Haldirin's nose, cheek and chin to give him more shape...
The elfling playmate I found using Google (expecting the police to break down the door and arrest me at any moment). He has a brilliant face, with dark, expressive eyes that are readable even when he's been made tiny, but he also had a watermark across his face, which I had to erase. Then, to give him that 'trapped in the garden' look, I selected the wrought-iron of the gate, rotated him slightly, and slid him underneath...
Yes, overall, I'm quite pleased with the result!
If anyone else on my f-list would like a story banner, please comment on this post!
This banner was made for eilonwy1's The Hidden Heart, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast with Hermione as Beauty and Draco as a very lonely Beast. The roses, Arthur Rackham illustration, and rose quartz pendant on a fine silver chain (which I had to draw onto the screencap) all appear in the story. The image I used for Draco shows Tom Felton with a slight moustache and beard, and with his hair gelled into rough spikes, which I thought was appropriate for a man who's living as a recluse, and I used the clone tool to give him a pony tail.
I do prefer working with pictures that show the cast looking that bit older...
...
This one was made for curiouswombat's A Powerful Absence, a poignant story in which Elrohir, one of the sons of Elrond, is killed in a freak accident, leaving his twin brother bereft. The story focusses on the difficulties immortals have in dealing with something that should never have happened to them, and with a loss that has no foreseeable end. curiouswombat asked me to use a particular image for Elladan and Elrohir, Daeron, by Ebe Kastein, which has a very strong blue colouring. I decided that the blue would be too overpowering on a banner, but it took a lot of manipulation to make the colouring more natural, and to combine (not one, but two copies of) a drawn image with a screencap of Imladris!
...
This banner was made for eilonwy1's The Challenge, or the Taming of the Skrewt, a romantic comedy set in the sixth or seventh year at Hogwarts. Runes and galleons are important to the plot, so I included some of those, plus a very pissed-off Hermione (I love her little potato-face in this screen cap), and a rather more sophisticated, worldly Draco. But eilonwy1 didn't like the image of Draco I'd chosen, and suggested an alternative. So here's the final version:
...
This banner was made as an exchange_bingo prize for strawberry_kait. It illustrates her compelling dmhgficexchange story, I would find a way, which shows Hermione suffering from PTSD after the war. I was particularly pleased with this banner, partly because all the screen caps (apart from the one of Tom Felton) are from Deathly Hallows I, and partly because I had to build Hermione's left shoulder up from various geometric shapes :-)
...
The last banner was made for curiouswombat's plot_wout_porn story, The Winter Garden. In the story, Hadirin the elfling finds a new playmate in a strange, lifeless garden. The story was inspired by a photograph curiouswombat took herself, so I used that as a background, though I pulled, pushed, twisted, darkened, lightened, and generally altered it quite a bit.
Hadirin's a recurring character in curiouswombat's stories, and she supplied me with a picture of him, and one of his mother, Tindómë. The original picture of Haldirin is cropped just above his hairline, and that dictated the maximum depth of the banner. I flipped the image of Tindómë, and rotated it slightly, to give her the right body language, and make her look as though she's cuddling/protecting her son. But the lighting on the two faces was still so different, it was obvious they'd come from separate photographs, so I lightened her, and darkened him, and then selected and lightened Haldirin's nose, cheek and chin to give him more shape...
The elfling playmate I found using Google (expecting the police to break down the door and arrest me at any moment). He has a brilliant face, with dark, expressive eyes that are readable even when he's been made tiny, but he also had a watermark across his face, which I had to erase. Then, to give him that 'trapped in the garden' look, I selected the wrought-iron of the gate, rotated him slightly, and slid him underneath...
Yes, overall, I'm quite pleased with the result!
If anyone else on my f-list would like a story banner, please comment on this post!