Artwork for ReverseBang 2013 [The Third]

[beelikej]

Another addition to my 2013 artwork for the spn_reversebang has been lying in wait for a while, but is finally unlocked now (Feb. 12). This is the second set of artwork I made, but due to circumstances beyond my control I'm presenting it last. Which is fitting, because it was originally the third prompt I submitted;) I made an effort to do something very different than for my other designs, so no papercutting this time, instead I messed around with Illustrator, markers, crayons and Photoshop...

In a Reverse Bang artists make fan-art which is posted anonymously for authors to choose as inspiration for fanfiction. I hadn't planned another prompt; I made this piece as a speedchallenge to myself to see how fast I could set up an illustration with melted crayons. Since it came out reasonable recognizable and the mods were practically begging for more art, I decided to submit it last minute after all :-p (Entry #2024) My superhero trope was chosen by cherry_kiss_8 who wrote a story featuring all of our SPN/RPF/WB/CW favorites! This inspired me to draw the whole crew in comicbookstyle...



Fic Title: Go Save The World, I'll Be Around
Author: cherry_kiss_8
Artist: beelikej
Medium: Illustrator, marker, melted crayons, Photoshop
Fandom/Genre: Supernatural/RPS, AU, Adventure
Pairing(s): Jared Padalecki / Jensen Ackles
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 14,500 (ish)
Warnings: Mild violence. Mention of bomb threats, use of guns and other weapons.
Summary: Jensen is a superhero, Misha owns a super lab, Richard is a super evil genius and Jared just wants to go one week without a guy with a bad moustache and a super evil monologue trying to ruin his goddamn life.

Art is rated G and there is one slightly spoilery scene, but you can safely look before you read the story.


Artwork
The original drawing for the banner above:

Outline with black marker, colouring with melted crayons. To make the drawing fit the comicbook theme, I added those rough newspaper style halftone dots to the image. There are several ways to do that; I chose to not use the PH-filter version, but did a little more advanced photoshopping (see process steps below;)

Character portraits
Not in an entirely random order; Felicia is my favorite, so she's on top. The halftone dots are best experienced in the original sized image. The smaller portraits can be clicked to see bigger. (Please be patient when the page loads;)


Yes, I drew young Jensen and older Jared; they are the same age in the story, but it's situated in present and past, so there :-p


Can you guess by the badge what Misha's and Osric's supertalents are?


I have a soft spot for Chris ever since he was Lindsey in Angel, woobie.


I vote for more ladies in this fandom!



Obviously the guys are cool, but there is a definite overdose of men...


Not that I'm complaining ;)

Scene
I meant to do portraits of every character, but when I read the second draft of the story, it felt more fitting to capture Samantha in a scene:


Dividers
I quite like how these texts look on my black background, but on the left you can see the effect I intended them to have (on the author's page)





Icons
I only made myself icons of the ladies:

In the first portrait of Genevieve she had her hair down, but I had an unfortunate incident with black crayons and redid the drawing. If you click the icon on the right, you can see the melted mess up close.

If anyone is interested in one of the other portraits for a userpic, let me know;)


The Process
Below you'll find a step by step of how I created the images: from pencil and line-art to marker and melted crayons plus the digital addition of the print-effect. [Click to skip the tour behind the scenes]

Banner set up
Click on images for a closer look

As my initial goal for this drawing was speed, for the prompt I set up a quick pencil sketch which I then coloured with melted crayons and finished off with marker lines.


After claiming and settling on a title and story premise, I redid the whole drawing for the banner. This time I traced the photos in Illustrator. I copied a print of this lineart with marker to make the image less mechanical. Then I coloured the marker version with melted crayons.


There are two methods to remove excess wax: rubbing with a tissue or scraping with a knife. Neither will completely hide your mistake :-p


Before and after shading. I was inspired by the awesome old comics in the Comically Vintage Tumblr to make the eventual art look like that and forced myself to experiment with hard shadows, among other elements. (There are a couple of example images of old comics in my Credits- and sourcepost)

Finishing touches in Photoshop

As I said I used a more complicated method than the 'halftone'-filter. I made a black & white version of the coloured drawing, turned that into a halftone bitmap (dots per inch depend on the size of your file, for the 700x500 pixel banner I set dpi to 150 and used a 65 lpi round halftone.) I then layered that bitmap on top of the colour and set it to a soft light filter. To make sure the black lines were solid I added a 'photocopy' filter on top. Tadaah!
Click on the detail gif to see the whole banner in steps.

Portraits set up

Tracing the digital lineart with marker and getting ready to play with crayons. (1. Heat paper with iron, 2. Rub melting crayon in desired spot until paper cools down and wax gets solid; you have about 15 seconds;)


Osric was one of the test portraits in the early stages (together with Chris), and I ended up changing his pose because I used the awkward hand in neck for Jensen.


Change of location because I had to watch The Negotiator (have seen it dozens of times, but can never resist it when it's on tv and I hardly ever watch tv anymore! Samuel L. Jackson + Kevin Spacey = powerhouse acting *hearteyes*)

Ehm, where was I. Right: if you want to know how long it takes to colour, check the scenes in the film above and below. Ha. I knew there was a reason I took these photos.




The circles and square frames are digitally added to the drawings (see gif below)


All the finished drawings \o/

Digital editing

For the portraits I used photo-examples, which I edited or maniped if needed (Felicia's hair for instance;). I didn't scan the drawings, but took photographs without flash, which gave the paper a yellowish old tone. I digitally added halftone dots (same steps as mentioned above). The circle frame was layered as a mask and I included the badge to go with each superhero.
Click on the detail gif to see the whole portrait in steps.

The melted crayons turned out to look just like an aged and slightly off-coloured print technique, especially when I added the halftone dots. Not being able to stay inside the lines, due to the speed with which I had to colour, gave it that 'rushed for deadline, low quality print' feel I was aiming for! (That's also the excuse I use for colours that came out a little off *cough*Danneel's pink face*cough*) :-p



The End


Thank you!
Thank you, cherry_kiss_8, for giving everyone a part in the story so I could play with others besides Jensen and Jared. Thanks, spn_reversebang mods for stepping in when needed;)
Credits for inspirational images and reference photos, can be found in my RBB 2013 Sourcepost.

Last but not least thank you, visitor, for stopping by. I'd love to know what you think of this set, so as usual you're invited to leave a comment. Whether it's long or short, praise or concrit; it's always nice to know you took a look at my art!

J.

RBB-1: coloured papercut artwork | RBB-2: NC-17 nsfw paperart (JDM!)
All my earlier fandom-designs can be found through my masterlist of artsy creations.

Comments

[sillie]

These are really great! And indeed totally different then your other posts, but oh so awesome. The banner is my favorite, and I love to get a peek behind the scenes to see how you created it. Heh, the melted crayon technique really doesn't sound like something I could do (I always take forever with coloring XD), so I take my hat off to you. Awsome, awesome stuff.

:D :D

[cassiopeia7.livejournal.com]

You drew Osric! ♥

Irons and melted crayons FTW! Your utter creativity KILLS me, woman! I would never guess that's melted crayon -- it could easily be watercolor or marker. And it looks so good! What type of paper do you use that's not affected (i.e., wrinkled, discolored) by the iron's heat? Is it bristol? (Looks pretty sturdy in the photos -- doesn't flop over the side of the desk or table, etc.) But yes, all your hard work was very much successful -- you've really achieved the "look" of vintage comic pages. Brava!

Agreed that The Negotiator is magnificent (and filmed in Chicago, hee), but how on earth can you concentrate on arting while such a awesome flick is going in the background? (I work with music only -- can't have a television going while I'm arting, or nothing will get done.)

psst! I'm not seeing the first group of badges, the "Misha" badge or a couple of the BTS photos . . . just blank space. ;(

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

Thank you! *beams* Heh, I like making a mess with crayons; I'm just not patient enough to take time for serious colouring;)

[trishabooms.livejournal.com]

Absolutely fascinating. The incredible amount of work you put in to achieve the results you do never fails to astound me.

Wonderful work!

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

I did! But Felicia is my faaaaaavorite:) I'm thrilled that you think the look works.

I used the same heavy paper as for cutting: 375 grams Granite white, it's ridiculously sturdy. I did notice some markers can not stand the heat, I nearly lost Jensen's eyes...

I know the Negotiator by heart and did focus on my favorite scenes, but I must admit I did most of the work during commercial breaks *grins* I wouldn't have moved my arts & crafts to the livingroom if I had needed to work neatly. For cutting I usually work in silence (at my lighttable), because I tend to sing and swing along with music. That does work for me with digital fiddling though:)

Ugh, I think Livejournal's scrapbook is having issues at the moment, I had to fight with it to upload pics to my Credits & sourcepost just now. Please check back later if you want to see all of them. Thank you!

[equally-dour.livejournal.com]

Fantastic work, as usual. :)

[laurathelurker.livejournal.com]

I just love your art and even more your art posts. I just love that you walk us through the process of how you do everything. It makes it seem almost doable even though I know there is no way I could do it.

[soserendipity.livejournal.com]

Wow. Just. Wow!

It's so great that you actually do arts&craftsy things for your sets and I'm thoroughly impressed by the amount of time and detail and love you poured into this. Love the final touches in photoshop delivering that certain comic book feeling; wonderfully done, bb! Also, I didn't read the story yet so I've had fun guessing all their talents by the badges; what a genius thing to add! Honestly, wow! The font fits the theme perfectly, too. Very comic book like dividers you made there :).

And one last thing (no idea whether I should just fall on my knees at your feet or kick myself): I actually tried to do the very same thing, a gif that shows the development of one of my pics. But I couldn't export that file into .gif format without destroying all the colors with the switch to either greyscales or that other thing, what is it, RGB or something? So how did you manage to do that?! o.O

I feel like there's one of those speech bubbles hovering over me where only pictogramms are visible. Balls of yarn and skull and bones and question/exclamation marks ;). I had to make a crappy video instead and I so wish I'd seen this before so I could have asked you. But oh well. There's always the next set, right?

To sum up: this is brilliant. All of it. You're perfect! Gah!

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much *blushes*

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

Thank you kindly ;-)

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

Ahw, thanks! I really hope to inspire by that tour behind the scenes, because I had so much fun fiddling:)

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

:-D Thank you for that wonderful and extensive comment!

I was actually surprised how well the gif-versions turned out for this, seeing as the halftoned dots caused several issues in the still png-versions. (I think LJ has problems loading them *pouts*)

I make my gifs with CS2 Image Ready, which is integrated in later versions of Photoshop (as an animation panel). The original layers are indeed RGB (what colors do you use originally, CMYK?) for gifs they are turned into index colours. I set these to "perceptual" the maximum amount of tones = 256) The crispyness of the colours is also determined by "dither", I usually just experiment with those settings, depending on the type of image I'm working with.

Hope that makes sense, feel free to ask for clarification, I love talking about the technical bits of the process;)

[ashtraythief.livejournal.com]

Wow! I finally got around to enjoying this post, and you are not only insanely talented with a pair of sissors, but also with a pen (I kinda already knew this, but still...)

These are awesome, I love the style and the digital editing you did. I think my favorite are Felicia and the almost kiss at the end, although I'm glad you did all the Ladies! (More ladies in fandom, yay!)

I love the old school comic book flair, really, very well done! And as always, the insight in your process is fascinating.

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

Aahw, thank you *blushes*

As much fun as I always have playing with the guys (you know what I mean;) - I was very happy to be able to include the ladies this time.

I'm thrilled that the comic book style worked for you:)

[tmn1966.livejournal.com]

So here I am, finally getting to all of the RBB goodness I missed.

This is so much fun! I love how much you were able to do! And wow, look at your work-space. I love the banner and adore the dividers (so awesome!!) but my absolute favorite is Felicia. I love her pose and her glasses... just everything about her! And can I say that I love that Chris has his cowboy hat on? Guess I just did. hee hee

I am amazed at your attention to detail and how much thought and work you put into your art. You never fail to impress me. Thank you so much for sharing your process!

Well done, bb! ♥♥

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

Ahw, thank you for going back to leave a comment; response to this art-set has been surprisingly lacking (especially since I was getting so used to rolling around in it from the other collabs *grins*) so I really appreciate you catching up!

I amazed myself by the amount of portraits I managed, Felicia is my favorite too;) Of course Chris has his hat on; I mostly know him from the good old Angel-days when he had a funky haircut and I have never gotten used to the long hair he has now, so the cowboy hat neatly covers that (and it suits him, obviously:).

Despite the lackluster response, I really like this technique, so I might explore it more in the future...

<3

[emmatheslayer.livejournal.com]

amazing work wow that's amazing I love this so much

[bflyw.livejournal.com]

I Missed this one!
So glad you picked this one to show in the snowflake challenge - so that I could see it! Amazing! Love it!

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

*beams* Thank youuuuuuuuuuuuuu <3

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

:) It was a busy RB that year! Thank you for coming over to check it out, it such fun to get comments on older art. Glad you like it:)