Charity Manip for wildwinterwitch's "Bird People"!
Hey look, it's my manip tag. Long time no post! Yikes. So there are are a variety of reasons I haven't posted any manips in a while (an extended trip away from my computer, work being crazy busy, having a RL PS project to do for a friend) but none of them are particularly interesting. However, when I have been doing PS, I have been working on a manip for wildwinterwitch, who won a manip by graciously bidding on me in the 
fandom_helps charity auction. She was kind enough to let me post her manip so others could see it, so many thanks to her for that!
The manip was an illustration for wildwinterwitch's lovely fic Bird People, which is part of her Cloisters 'verse (which she just posted a new part of!), but can be pretty much read as a standalone. So check it out, if you're so inclined, because the manip won't make much sense without it!
Please click for full size!
Notes:
These are very, very long, so please feel free to skip. Oooh boy, this manip. I'm really happy wildwinterwitch was so patient about it, because I really took forever and a half to get this to her. I started in back in March, I believe. In any case, this is by far the most complicated manip I've made, mostly due to the amount of parts. I'm not going to say the number of layers this has, because it goes past ridiculous straight into insane and probably whatever goes past that. In any case, as it was a fic illustration, I wanted to make sure I got the details right, so first I read the story several times and took notes. In it, the Doctor and Rose are on a foreign planet, celebrating (in costume) the festival of kivuala with the natives. At this point in the story they have retired to a private garden for...well, I'm sure you can guess. The background was the first thing I constructed, as it had a lot of different elements and I wanted to get the "feel" right before starting on the characters. So I threw a billion parts at the canvas, then went back and removed about half of them as I started piecing together the final design. The setting, as detailed in the fic, is a lush garden at night time. So I started with a few large trees with a lot of greenery to give a feeling of isolation, as well as floral things (the fic mentions a mix of plants, and the garden being in full bloom). I didn't find any trees I liked the way they were, so all the trees are composites of several images. I then added the tiled floor (also mentioned), and the three burning braziers, (mentioned as well) some of which are composites as well. The fountain was not from the fic, but I think it helps make the setting seem more "garden" as opposed to just forest or park. The lanterns were also something described, and I had fun making them glow. I originally had a few more, but it ended up being a bit of overkill with the bright lights and the colors taking away from the Doctor and Rose so I scaled the number of them back. I also originally had a lot more fauna floating around, more prominently featured, then a beta pointed out it was kind of weird so I pared it down to a dragonfly, Atlas moth (I looooove Atlas moths!), snail, and 2 birds. There was a chandelier mentioned, that I originally had in there, but the background was just looking too busy at that point so I nixed it and am just going to pretend it's out of frame. After positioning and building, I cleaned up all of those parts mostly by hand because the edges were fiddly (also: I'm insane), added coloring and shadows for the night-time vibe, and smoothed the edges. So that was mostly it for the background- I didn't do anything particularly special, but there was A LOT of cutting and pasting and moving bits around. The Doctor and Rose were a challenge. I needed a pose that conveyed a sensual, quiet moment that also had the bodies facing relatively forward so I could change Rose's outfit, the Doctor shirtless, and their faces in a position that I could (relatively) easily add masks to them. I ended up choosing a perfume ad. I like it for the most part, though I'm a bit concerned it might look a bit too "romance novel"- hopefully not too much? Anyway: the Doctor. The three main things I got from his description was that he was shirtless and wearing trousers held up by a blue ribbon, he had a tattoo on his shoulder of Rose's name in Gallifreyan and he had been painted blue as part of his costume. (Because I'm an idiot, although I read the fic several times I somehow missed the description of Ten's mask as being feathered and with a gold beak. Whoops.) I didn't have to change the body of the model much- he was missing half of his left arm, so I reconstructed that. I also reconstructed part of his chest to go with the new head and neck he was getting. The pants I just added color and texture over, and a new belt. The tattoo I spent too much time messing with considering you can't see it very well at full size. I also purposely switched the arm it was on just because you couldn't see his other shoulder, and I wanted to get the tattoos in some way since you can't see Rose's either. I consulted with wildwinterwitch on Ten's blue-ness. I was originally going to use a brush to paint on varying levels of blue, to have smear marks and bits of skin peeking through in places, but she clarified that the paint was more like a dye, and he should be completely and evenly colored, like a smurf. To get the shade and effect I wanted, I used 4 layers of varying blue set on color burn, soft light, overlay and linear burn, with highlights added to the face, lips and fingernails. His face worked out well, though the top of his hair was cut off so I replaced that. The hardest parts of the faces were choosing the right combination of faces and masks. I'm not the best at decision making, so that combination of about 10 faces and 5 masks each was hard to wrap my mind around, especially since faces that looked good without masks didn't necessarily look good with them. I'm happy with the mask I chose for the Doctor though- the final composition between him and Rose is a bit of light/dark, so I thought the black smooth mask went well with the lighter filigree of hers. The ribbons around his wrist are part of the fic too. I'm not entirely happy with how they came out, but I think they look okay. Rose was a bit more complicated. The notes I had for her were that she was wearing a short, silken nightdress, that she was covering in shimmering body lotion, and that her mask had lots of golden feathers that blended into her hair. The model was too skinny, so I filled her out and also made her slightly shorter and curvier. She was originally wearing a tank top and underwear, so I replaced it with the nightdress. The dress was a little too short, so I made it longer, and it was also worse quality that the rest of the image, so I tried to smudge out some of the artifacts. I also had to reconstruct Rose's chest/breasts, since neither original image were working for that. Her hair is constructed of several pieces, as is the mask, and are the feathers. I did color and shading work on all of them to blend them. I sort of varied a bunch from the story description of the hair (the mask was supposed to be more like a feather hat), but I think this version captures the feathers-into-hair part of it well. I kind of overdid it with the sparkles, but I like sparkly/glowy Rose, so that's my fault. The glow/sparkles are several layers as well, with different effects. And then, since it was night, I added a whole bunch of shadows and filters over everything, so that you can't even see a lot of the things I fretted over. Lol. Anyway. I think that's it for notes? That is this manip!
Next up I have some commitments for the Tencest+fest I am running, and after that hopefully some Nine/Rose as promised.
Credits:
Faces came from:
-BilliePiperFan.com
- DavidTennantFan.com
The base bodies came from:
-An perfume ad for Emporio Armani
Background:
I'm embarrassed to say I started this so long ago I either don't remember, or didn't write down where the billion background parts came from. I think most of them were just found through google search, apologies. :P
I also have a Resource Page, if anyone wants to check that out.
Thanks ever so much to my intrepid betas, gleeful_t,
rattus_aerius, and
thaurfea for making this manip not suck with their awesome advice. An extra special thanks to eloriekam, who isn't one of my betas, but was kind enough to give it a last minute look when I was flailing and trying to finish it :)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Comments are super, super awesome and let me know when I've done something right!
(I know that sometimes manips get reposted; as this manip belongs to wildwinterwitch, I ask that if you repost it anywhere, you link back to her fic, and don't change it/use it for anything else)
This entry has traveled in time from DW at: http://redcirce.dreamwidth.org/126238.html. You can comment here or there using OpenID!
sharp sticks
fandom_helps charity auction. She was kind enough to let me post her manip so others could see it, so many thanks to her for that!
The manip was an illustration for wildwinterwitch's lovely fic Bird People, which is part of her Cloisters 'verse (which she just posted a new part of!), but can be pretty much read as a standalone. So check it out, if you're so inclined, because the manip won't make much sense without it!
Please click for full size!
Notes:
These are very, very long, so please feel free to skip. Oooh boy, this manip. I'm really happy wildwinterwitch was so patient about it, because I really took forever and a half to get this to her. I started in back in March, I believe. In any case, this is by far the most complicated manip I've made, mostly due to the amount of parts. I'm not going to say the number of layers this has, because it goes past ridiculous straight into insane and probably whatever goes past that. In any case, as it was a fic illustration, I wanted to make sure I got the details right, so first I read the story several times and took notes. In it, the Doctor and Rose are on a foreign planet, celebrating (in costume) the festival of kivuala with the natives. At this point in the story they have retired to a private garden for...well, I'm sure you can guess. The background was the first thing I constructed, as it had a lot of different elements and I wanted to get the "feel" right before starting on the characters. So I threw a billion parts at the canvas, then went back and removed about half of them as I started piecing together the final design. The setting, as detailed in the fic, is a lush garden at night time. So I started with a few large trees with a lot of greenery to give a feeling of isolation, as well as floral things (the fic mentions a mix of plants, and the garden being in full bloom). I didn't find any trees I liked the way they were, so all the trees are composites of several images. I then added the tiled floor (also mentioned), and the three burning braziers, (mentioned as well) some of which are composites as well. The fountain was not from the fic, but I think it helps make the setting seem more "garden" as opposed to just forest or park. The lanterns were also something described, and I had fun making them glow. I originally had a few more, but it ended up being a bit of overkill with the bright lights and the colors taking away from the Doctor and Rose so I scaled the number of them back. I also originally had a lot more fauna floating around, more prominently featured, then a beta pointed out it was kind of weird so I pared it down to a dragonfly, Atlas moth (I looooove Atlas moths!), snail, and 2 birds. There was a chandelier mentioned, that I originally had in there, but the background was just looking too busy at that point so I nixed it and am just going to pretend it's out of frame. After positioning and building, I cleaned up all of those parts mostly by hand because the edges were fiddly (also: I'm insane), added coloring and shadows for the night-time vibe, and smoothed the edges. So that was mostly it for the background- I didn't do anything particularly special, but there was A LOT of cutting and pasting and moving bits around. The Doctor and Rose were a challenge. I needed a pose that conveyed a sensual, quiet moment that also had the bodies facing relatively forward so I could change Rose's outfit, the Doctor shirtless, and their faces in a position that I could (relatively) easily add masks to them. I ended up choosing a perfume ad. I like it for the most part, though I'm a bit concerned it might look a bit too "romance novel"- hopefully not too much? Anyway: the Doctor. The three main things I got from his description was that he was shirtless and wearing trousers held up by a blue ribbon, he had a tattoo on his shoulder of Rose's name in Gallifreyan and he had been painted blue as part of his costume. (Because I'm an idiot, although I read the fic several times I somehow missed the description of Ten's mask as being feathered and with a gold beak. Whoops.) I didn't have to change the body of the model much- he was missing half of his left arm, so I reconstructed that. I also reconstructed part of his chest to go with the new head and neck he was getting. The pants I just added color and texture over, and a new belt. The tattoo I spent too much time messing with considering you can't see it very well at full size. I also purposely switched the arm it was on just because you couldn't see his other shoulder, and I wanted to get the tattoos in some way since you can't see Rose's either. I consulted with wildwinterwitch on Ten's blue-ness. I was originally going to use a brush to paint on varying levels of blue, to have smear marks and bits of skin peeking through in places, but she clarified that the paint was more like a dye, and he should be completely and evenly colored, like a smurf. To get the shade and effect I wanted, I used 4 layers of varying blue set on color burn, soft light, overlay and linear burn, with highlights added to the face, lips and fingernails. His face worked out well, though the top of his hair was cut off so I replaced that. The hardest parts of the faces were choosing the right combination of faces and masks. I'm not the best at decision making, so that combination of about 10 faces and 5 masks each was hard to wrap my mind around, especially since faces that looked good without masks didn't necessarily look good with them. I'm happy with the mask I chose for the Doctor though- the final composition between him and Rose is a bit of light/dark, so I thought the black smooth mask went well with the lighter filigree of hers. The ribbons around his wrist are part of the fic too. I'm not entirely happy with how they came out, but I think they look okay. Rose was a bit more complicated. The notes I had for her were that she was wearing a short, silken nightdress, that she was covering in shimmering body lotion, and that her mask had lots of golden feathers that blended into her hair. The model was too skinny, so I filled her out and also made her slightly shorter and curvier. She was originally wearing a tank top and underwear, so I replaced it with the nightdress. The dress was a little too short, so I made it longer, and it was also worse quality that the rest of the image, so I tried to smudge out some of the artifacts. I also had to reconstruct Rose's chest/breasts, since neither original image were working for that. Her hair is constructed of several pieces, as is the mask, and are the feathers. I did color and shading work on all of them to blend them. I sort of varied a bunch from the story description of the hair (the mask was supposed to be more like a feather hat), but I think this version captures the feathers-into-hair part of it well. I kind of overdid it with the sparkles, but I like sparkly/glowy Rose, so that's my fault. The glow/sparkles are several layers as well, with different effects. And then, since it was night, I added a whole bunch of shadows and filters over everything, so that you can't even see a lot of the things I fretted over. Lol. Anyway. I think that's it for notes? That is this manip!
Next up I have some commitments for the Tencest+fest I am running, and after that hopefully some Nine/Rose as promised.
Credits:
Faces came from:
-BilliePiperFan.com
- DavidTennantFan.com
The base bodies came from:
-An perfume ad for Emporio Armani
Background:
I'm embarrassed to say I started this so long ago I either don't remember, or didn't write down where the billion background parts came from. I think most of them were just found through google search, apologies. :P
I also have a Resource Page, if anyone wants to check that out.
Thanks ever so much to my intrepid betas, gleeful_t,
rattus_aerius, and
thaurfea for making this manip not suck with their awesome advice. An extra special thanks to eloriekam, who isn't one of my betas, but was kind enough to give it a last minute look when I was flailing and trying to finish it :)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Comments are super, super awesome and let me know when I've done something right!
(I know that sometimes manips get reposted; as this manip belongs to wildwinterwitch, I ask that if you repost it anywhere, you link back to her fic, and don't change it/use it for anything else)
This entry has traveled in time from DW at: http://redcirce.dreamwidth.org/126238.html. You can comment here or there using OpenID!
sharp sticks