BigBang Source Post 2012

[beelikej]

Since my fandom art challenges are not only inspired by wonderful fanfiction, but also need visuals of famous people, stuff I don't have or places I haven't visited, I often rely on the internet to provide me with images. This is a thank you post for sites that willingly or unwittingly catered to my needs.
Besides sources I'm also sharing my own meager sketches and bits of the design process for those of you who are curious about that:)


Sources for To See The World In A Grain Of Sand
(A steampunk J2 version of Around The World In 80 Days!)

Images of J2M
After participating in several challenges for a couple of years now, my personal archive of SPN related images is quite huge. You can find all the sites I browsed for pretty pictures under the sources artwork-TAG.
This time I added to my Misha Collins collection from the Strange Pictures Of Misha Collins Tumblr:)
The School of Jensen and Jared is no longer in session, but it's still a great site for photos of J2:)

Corsets
The glorious steampunk corsets Jensen and Misha are wearing, can be purchased online at the The Corset-Story. I did adjust the shape to fit their bodies and my preferences, but the original corsets are absolutely awesome, go check them out! I took inspiration for the use of corsets for men from Upon A Midnight Dreary (see image below).

Inspirational Images

My Illustrator drawing of the Mecha was based on screencaps from Wild Wild West, courtesy of fuyu_yuki

For Jensen's outfit I made screencaps myself from the Hornblower series, episode The Dutchess and The Devil (You may have seen some shots of pretty on my Twitter:) after I found the above image of Ioan Gruffud in my archive. I thought that fancy dress up fit Jensen perfectly.

Jared is dressed in my brother's clothes; I used a photo of him that I found while I was browsing the photo-album of his trip to India for inspiration. I changed the colour to fit the story. I also adjusted the neckline; for that I used my own shirt, the one that also serves as a background for all the images. (see list of ingredients below!)

Some of the sketches/drawings for the transportation devices in the dividers were done freehand, for others I used references from Kleurplaten en zo, a site with colouring pictures for kids:)

My own sketches and photos
This is the finished story banner with a sneak peek at the layers I build.
(Click to zoom and/or scroll down for a step-by-step image)


Here are all the ingredients I used to create the image:


I bought aquarium sand and poured it out over different backgrounds (a shirt, white paper, hardboard). I then buried my own pocket watch in it and made loads of photos. (so, so many photos...)


After some digital sketching I realized it looked too modern, so I asked my mom if she still had that old clock she got as a wedding present and she send me a photo of it.
For the background I wanted to do something with a map of the world or maybe a rotating globe. It was impossible to get an actionphoto of that (stupid steady-cam), so in the end I used the stills and just blurred the text somewhat in Photoshop. I turned the video I shot of the spinning globe into an icon *points at userpic*.

Here's a step by step of the layers I had left after a lot of experimenting and fiddling:

(Ask me if you want to know more about the filters;)

And last but not least, my earliest sketches of Jared, Jensen and Misha, that were the basis for the dividers. I tried to capture their faces with a minimal amount of lines. I scanned these and traced them in Illustrator in the (hopefully) same fluid style as the font I used in the banner to connect all the artwork together.


The spidery thing at the bottom is the first sketch I made of the Mecha.

You can find the finished artwork with a link to the story here!



Sources for A Crazy Little Thing
(A romantic comedy with Jared and Jensen:)
Before I started on designs, I made a moodboard to decide on the best Jensen/Jared combination for this story. Click for big version:


For the banner I selected images from the J2 Breakfast set of the VanCon2010 photo-collection made by raloria. The beautiful photos of Jared were found in Sweet and Talented (the hoodie) & Pic de Stars (tracksuit).

Sources for other photo-materials:
SHOTS: VisualPhotos
LAPTOP: SmartPassiveIncome
TEXAS: UTexas
BOWLING: PopSci/Scitech
TOILET: Insolite.Skynet
HELL ON WHEELS HELMET: ChopCult
MOTORBIKES REFERENCES: Her-Motorcycle & QCQL-blog
FONTS: 1001FreeFonts (Aver Display & Blue Norma)

I made more sketches for the bowling date and the Hell on Wheels logo, but neither of those designs ended up in the final artwork:)


And that's it! You can find the finished artwork with a link to the story here!

- J.


NOTE: Obviously credit goes to the original photographers, but their names are not always attached to the photos, if so I only mention the site where I found the images. Sometimes I forget to keep track during my frantic Google searches. If you notice original material that you are the owner of or know the origin of, tell me and I will credit!

J.