Daddy's Home - Thank you for Voting my Icon Best Crop at Slayerstillness 51 - icons plus banner art!
But first a word from our sponsor: Cast your votes for the top three icons plus Best Crop and Color NOW if you haven't already at whedon_elite Challenge 125, "Muted Coloring.". There are 20 lovely icons to choose from, and only ten votes cast so far so more are definitely welcome! Now back to our program:
THANK YOU for voting my Angel and Drusilla icon "Best Crop" at slayerstillness! And congratulations to teragramm and tempertemper for their beautiful winning entries! I was tickled to see everything I voted for on the winner's slate. Not that I need anyone else to vet my choices, but I like seeing these things go as they should. Nevermind that there wasn't a bad icon in the bunch.
Check out the complete set of winning icons here - I love reading starry_night's reasoning for her Mod's Choice Awards; then see all the awards banners here. I didn't choose a BMC this round because it simply didn't feel necessary (go the the banners post and all will be explained.)
I adore teragramm's Helpless icon. Truly, madly, deeply.[MY ICONS AND THINKY-THOUGHTS AFTER THE CUT]
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
I suddenly realized that I've never seen a smushname for Angelus-Drusilla. "Dangel" perhaps? "Drangel"? "Drungel"?
9 - 13
Now that I'm looking at these again I'm sort of kicking myself for not entering 12-13. I think I was bothered by the fact that I couldn't get the area around Giles' mouth right with that one. In hindsight I probably shouldn't have let it bother me so much because I like the color and luminousity of it otherwise, especially on the right side of the image. Textures in #3 and 12 - 13 a combination of textures by colorfilter and lookslikerain.
The father/daughter icons (Angelus-Dru and Giles-Buffy) were obviously the ones I lavished the most attention on; which is contrary to my usual habit of focusing almost exclusively on the women; but I do seem to have this "thing" about surrogate (not biological) fathers and daughters (BtVS, Doctor Who, Moulin Rouge). My father died when I was three and I had two abusive, shitty stepfathers after that. Analyze away, Dr. Freud.
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