beelikej | Artwork for ReverseBang 2013 [The First]

Yes, I am aware it's 2014 now, but I worked on this challenge between September and December of last year, so I'm archiving it with my 2013 artwork. :-p
I submitted three pieces for this edition of the

spn_reversebang and used very different media for each of them. This first presentation is a further exploration of paper-cutting. My goal was yet again to see how much I could reduce shapes and colours while still creating recognizable characters.

In a Reverse Bang artists make fan-art which is posted anonymously for authors to choose as inspiration for fanfiction. I made a papercut image of Jensen and Jared casting each other's shadows. (Entry #2013) My prompt was picked by the wonderful

firesign10 who wrote an intense and emotional story about bodyswapping. (Don't worry, it has some lighthearted moments too;) I made a couple more paperpieces to illustrate the story. May I present our awesome collaboration:

Fic Title: A Mile In My Shoes, A Lifetime In My Head
Author:

firesign10
Artist:

beelikej
Medium: Paper!
Fandom/Genre: Supernatural/RPS, Non-AU, Drama
Pairing(s): Jared Padalecki / Jensen Ackles
Rating: NC17
Word Count: 19,920
Warnings: mental illness; suicidal ideation; magic
Summary: One morning Jared and Jensen wake up and find they've been body-swapped. At first it's pretty funny as they deal with being in each other's body! But things quickly get serious when Jared falls ill and Jensen can't seem to help him. Secrets can't be hidden when you're in your partner's head...

Art is rated G and contains no spoilers, so you can safely look at it before you go off to read the story.

Artwork
The storybanner is made by hand, cut out of paper layers (no glue). I made the torn corner on top transparent in Photohop and added a little shading for the white background of my author's journal.

A closer look at the paper layers:

Alternatively click on the storybanner above or here for a big version. To study even more details, check out the photo of the unedited original paperpiece in the Making of section below;)

Headers

Dividers

(Same size as above, but reduced here to save space;)

Portrait
(Click for bigger!)

Icons
01.

02.

03.

04.

05.

06.

07.

08.

09.

10.

11.

12.

Below I babble A LOT about inspiration; this section also includes source photos and (paper)sketches
[Click to skip and go to the thank yous and comments]

From idea to presentation
Ever since I tried to photograph my first paperpieces, I've been playing with light and shadows, so that's where the original idea of creating actual shadowshapes with the paper came from. Of course the main inspiration for the artwork came from these guys:

Credit: Jensen 2006 ©SGranitz | Jared 2009 ©unknown | SPN Promo ©The CW Network, LLC.
J2 portraits from ChiCon13 ©wolfpup2000

During brainstorming for the prompt and later the story with 'my' author, I collected some images that also influenced the direction of the art:

Credit: I'll Chase You - Sherlock ©pscs5 | Chiwetel Ejiofor ©Peter Hapak
Claire Fisher art ©Six Feet Under | T Mint Tánc ©BlaBlaSah

Process: Banner

Although I'm still not able to reduce the guys to impressionist shapes, I feel like I came yet a little closer to that minimalistic Vintage poster that inspired my first paper-experiment.

For the banner I edited two full body photos of Jensen and Jared that I used to trace silhouettes. I cut those out of different coloured paper for each of the layers.

When I tried to figure out the best way to draw shadows, I didn't get the desired result because they kept falling over before I could capture the outline (duh)....

In the end I made photos of their papershapes from different angles. I distorted these even more digitally to make their legs fit to each other and traced the print on black paper. I made about five different cuts before I was more or less satisfied with the result.

Here's a set up with one of the firsts shadow shapes; especially getting Jared's wide stance to fit with Jensen's bow legs was a bit of a struggle.

If you look closely you can see I tried yellow hair for Jensen before settling on the final four colours (blue jeans, black shirts, pink skin and orange hair) :-)

Dressing the guys was loads of fun *g*

FYI: I sketched the mugs in the headers straight on the paper without a reference, I figured it wasn't such a difficult shape, until I got to the ear, haha. Besides messing with the mugs, I also had to cut a lot of versions of the shadow to get a fitting distortion. In the photo you can see the crumbled up mugs in my fist and the cut out shapes out of the shadows ear that accidently(!) made a :/ face, *giggles* Note to self: next time find or make a reference picture.

Fonts via Dafont.com:

Aristotle Punk - Andrew2 [SickCapital.com]

All Over Again (all caps) - David Kerkhoff [Hanodedphotography.com]

Process: Portrait
The first idea of the portrait of swapped Jensen and Jared was a quick pensketch; this evolved into the half-face version after

firesign revealed more of the guys state of mind.

On the right a quick papercut set up I made to show my author how I imagined their faces together.

For the final portrait I made a neater trace and cut template to work with. I used the same colours paper as for the banner:

The scariest thing was to tear the paper to the right proportions, pfff. (I should have been braver, because I think the portrait would benefit if I took off half a centimeter of either one of the guys, but I was afraid to lose Jared's mole and Jensen mouth;)

I experimented with another background colour and the paper vine, but my author and I decided the plain green worked best:)

Last but not least: colours and edits
One of the hardest part of the process is putting the whole design together and getting the colours right in photographs. Not only is there a big difference with using flash, but because I took the photos next to my window for natural light, the intensity of the colours also varied due to the weather and time of day.

I had been making photos from every finished set up with days in between, but in the end I had to disrecard all those shots because the colours were just too different. After I finished the portrait I spent one afternoon putting all the designs back together for one photoshoot with the same light.

I aimed to make as few edits as possible, but my A3 sheets of paper weren't big enough to get the right ratio of the banner in one go. So I cleaned up edges and folds in Photoshop. As a final peek behind the scenes, here's the unedited set up for the banner:

Click on image for huge original format (3264x2448 pixels).

That's all. I hope you liked this look behind the scenes;)

Thank you!
Thank you,

firesign10, for turning my art into an overwhelming story and taking me on that journey with you. I'm really happy I made a friend along the way.
Also praise to the new

spn_reversebang mods for keeping this challenge going for another year. (I may have been grumpy about the shift in dates, but I do appreciate you all for your hard work)

Thank YOU for stopping by. I welcome all comments; positive or negative or in depth analyses of techniques... No matter the content or length of your response, it's nice to know you took a look at my art!

J.

All my earlier fandom-designs can be found through my masterlist of artsy creations.
If you're most interested in other paper-art, check out the papercuttingarttag;)

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From:

sillie

Oh my, this is so awesome. I love the look behind the scenes, so much work omg. But the end result is once again so awesome. Love it. <3

From:

Artwork for ReverseBang 2013 [The First]

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