Part 3 of 3 of my alts/extras for btvsats20in20 Round 5 (souper-dooper pimpage at no extra charge)
kikimay paid me a great honor by chosing my Surprise/Listening to Fear blend icon ( #19 in my last post) from my last set of alts as her new default icon. This is the second time she's snagged one of my "rejected" alts, so hello to the motivation to continue sharing.
These are the S6-7 alts for Round 5 of btvsats20in20, with the exception of #1 (Tara from S5). BTW, the voting topped out at 24 participants - almost made it to my prophesied 25! The current voting polls are closed to new votes but starry_night will be posting tiebreaker voting shortly for individual icons with sets.
FYI: bangel_4e just posted the sign-up post for Round 6 and I'm already nervous and excited about it. M'lady snogged requested that I chose Season1 btvs as my claim and how could I refuse her?
Teasers
[Gallery exhibit and thinky thoughts inside the foyer....]
001
002
003
004
005
006
007
008
009
010
011
012
013
014
015
016
017
018
019
020
021
022
023
Table generated using angelamaria's Icon Table Generator.
Icons by their own makers.
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You know the drill right? Want, take, have, but give proper credit and feedback is always a lovely thing. Don't steal, hotlink or archive on other sites without my express consent beforehand, lest I set the Hounds of Hell upon you - and a hideous plague of boils. IF I'm in a really charitable mood.
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#1 - alt of my #19 entry; one of the few times this round I went for the more complicated gussied-up version for my entry over the simpler one which shows off Amber's beauty to better effect and with less distraction. Explain to me what I was thinking when I made that decision, please?
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#2-5 - the first icons I made for this round, when my primary ideas were: 1) OMWF, 2) "Dance Without Sleeping" by Melissa Etheridge - #3 was the only icon I kept that uses lyrics from that song; and 3) Buffy hairporn. 2-3 here are among my favorite things I made this round. These icons definitely helped me settle on the idea of a muted rainbow. I never got #5 to my liking - her hair looks fantastic whipping around in the cap but I couldn't quite capture the effect in the icon to my satisfaction. But hey, shiny!
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#6-11 came from a screencap of a Dead Things outtake I found on smg-france.net thanks to starry_night's rec. (I don't recall ever seeing photos of this outtake before much less a clip online. Anyone?) Sarah runs through a gamut of facial expressions in what can't be more than seconds, but that particular image just struck me as so pretty I had to make a go of it. I feel pretty comfortable calling these "Not Too Damn Shabby Considering the Source Material"; it's somewhat ironic that the thing missing in these icons is the definition of her nose, which is so distinct in the other icons. Without that, these could be of almost any generically pretty girl. #11 was going to be an entry up until the last minute when I had the usual crisis of confidence re: lack of intergration of texture and image.
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#12-18 I worked on these icons from the balcony scene in Dead Things right after the OMWF icons; I was originally going to stick to muted effects, and use the colors in the cap itself for my yellow icon, but it's obvious that this is where I went "astray". 12 was very nearly my "indigo" entry for the longest time. I used my Goffe Street auditorium photos for the textures in 13, and a blown-up detail from one of my sweetheart's semi-abstract equine paintings for #14 for the scarred and "painted" effect on Buffy's face. But my favorites in this set are again the simplest, 15 & 16.
I had fun at least, but I'm a little uncomfortable, in hindsight, with the fact that I was focused on the image itself, on Sarah's face (and her earring) as an objet d'art that I wanted to experiment with and make "pretty" ; and that I completely ignored or just plain forgot the actual context of this moment (which isn't pretty or pleasant at all). And isn't that, in essence, the definition of "pornography" - not in terms of fun, consentual adult "erotica" but in terms of "dehumanization"?
OTOH:
I've been known to do that a time or ten.
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#19-21 From Lessons; these were among the only alts I made that were never contenders as final entries. 21 was a lot funnier in my head than in actual execution; too bad because this round is the first btvsats20in20 set I submitted with no humorous icons. I think I felt the absence more keenly than the lack of greenery. #19 was an accident: I added a dark blue background to the original cap then meant to erase a portion of it but my hand (or the mouse) slipped and I ended up with this pattern in the background; if I had tried to draw that on purpose I would have made a complete hash of it. I added some light leak filters and voila! Accidental-on purpose background effects. Interesting as opposed to good.
Nothing to say about 22 except I can see the influence of tempertemper's recent Darla and W/T icons in the coloring (or lack therof). 23 is my #7 entry without text. I really like the way this turned out although it's not a dynamic image per se; but I love the way her body emerges from (melts into?) the shadows. This icon, and #2 & 7 of my entry set were actually cropped from a finished banner; I couldn't have achieved that exact look overwise.