Fanart: SPN_gen_bigbang - The Winchester Boys and the Tremors of Doom
Fic title: The Winchester Boys and the Tremors of Doom
Authors: 9tiptoes and zara_zee
Artist: cassiopeia7
Media: Ink, Copic & Prismacolor marker, paint marker, pastel pencil.
Genre: SPN.
Pairing: Gen.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Show-level violence.
Summary: “You know what we need? Shore leave.”
Having just finished up an emotionally-taxing case in upstate New York, Dean decides that the Winchester brothers deserve a little ‘quality R & R’, so he talks Sam into a pilgrimage to Vegas. A road trip along scenic, historical Route 66 lands them in a ‘living Ghost town’ in northern Arizona, but what started out as a short layover to enjoy the local entertainment quickly develops into something more sinister when a couple of teens go missing. The Winchesters join in the hunt for the missing kids and soon find themselves on a case that’s bizarre, even for them; a case that could’ve come straight out of one of the sci-fi movie matinees that Dean used to drag Sam to as a kid.
Artist Note:
Virtual roses and chocolates to my authors, the amazing 9tiptoes and zara_zee, who not only wrote a story my Muse could sink his creative teeth into, but were super enthusiastic from the earliest ideas and scribbles, were uber-patient with their over-burdened artist, and most of all, were buckets and buckets of just plain nice. Thanks, ladies, you made this collaboration FUN, and it was a privilege to work with you!
As always, thanks go to my lovely beta quickreaver, who once again led me through the arting wilderness, to ash48, who unknowingly offered encouragement before I ever set pen to paper, and to the Divine Miss M. herself, maichan, who added the spark of animated life to one piece, then threw rocks and jeered and poked me with sticks offered gentle guidance until I learned how to do the second one myself. And so, basic gif animation is now one of my dubious semi-skills, LOL. Thank you, bb!
A whole lotta smishes to the eternally patient dear_tiger, whose unexpected enthusiasm and encouragement for this project went way beyond the pale, and you know why. You are truly the goddess of goddesses -- thank you!
Finally, thanks to reapertownusa for your enthusiasm, your help, and for running this challenge like a boss!
If you've seen the original movie, you know exactly what's coming.
If not, be warned that ALL ART IS A MAJOR STORY SPOILER!!
Sam produced an epic bitch-face and then folded his arms across his chest.
They sat in silence until the tension was so thick in the air that Dean couldn’t stand it anymore.
“You know what we need?” he said, “Shore leave.”
“Wow,” Dean said quietly and then whistled low. “How do we miss
stuff like this when we’re on the road all the damned time?”
“Only one way to find out,” Sam offered, hefting a rope out of his bag.
Dean leaned forward. “Christo,” he whispered in Blossom’s ear.
The horse snorted and tossed her head, but her eyes didn’t go black
Sam did some fast and dirty calculating and came to the conclusion that he really
didn’t want to be underground with something that could make a 5 foot in diameter hole
ten feet below the surface of the ground. Not without a helluvalot of fire power.
“Pull me up outta here!”
Dean could feel Ronnie tense up in terror. He tightened his grip around the boy’s chest
and whispered a command into the back of the boy’s head . . .
“Don’t move.”
“No. No way in Hell."
[Other bits and pieces: Unfinished art and a couple other things.]
So with the Indiana Jones theme running through the fic, of course I had the idea to steal appropriate the animated-map scenes from the movies. It took me about five seconds to realize that this would require some knowledge of computer animation, which I lacked in spades. So after spending a ridiculous amount of time drawing and coloring the maps and the travel paths (map-drawing looks simple, but it is HARD, yo), I fell begging at the feet of the marvelous maichan, who took pity on me and created the first divider herself. She then taught me how to do the second.
Animation by The Goddess and Queen of All Gifs maichan:
(She whipped this up in about 30 minutes. I hate her.)
Animation by n00b cassiopeia7:
And BEHOLD. A dummy shall LEARN! It's a friggin' miracle!! (And it only took hours and hours and HOURS of cussin', keyboard-slammin', more cussin', and struggling through the wilderness of psychotic Photoshop / animation terminology ("Tweening"? Really?) Maichan even made me do MATH, blast her!)
Original messy sketch:
Final drawn maps (text added in Photoshop, because, as you see above, my handwriting sucks):
Travel path laid out in marker on a tracing paper overlay:
This was an adventure-and-a-half. I'm fairly new to Photoshop, so Maichan had to not only teach me what to do, she had to teach me how to find stuff, too. Then, of course, we had different versions of PS, which naturally contained different menus and command names and made it even more difficult for me to figure out what the heck my teacher was talking about, so . . . it took a lot of time.
Also? That animation stuff is HARD. Maichan called it "simple." "Simple." Yeah, and I'm the Easter Bunny -- nice to meetcha.
Note to self: Next time, do animation OR straight art. Because both at the same time? Yeah, no.
Unused art:
The original layout for the worm scene.
Could NOT get the layout to work, so canned it and kept the two pieces separate.
Sam gets an unfortunate taste of early-90s technology and blistering-fast modem baud rates. Love the idea, but ran out of steam on the execution.
*remembers sucktastic AOL well*
*owned a 3600-baud modem*
Icons:
