Fandom Snowflake Challenge #9

[aadler]

Taking on the meme/challenge here.

Fandom Snowflake Challenge #9

In your own space, create a fanwork. Don’t think you have to limit yourself to “write some fic” or “create some icons”, though please do if you like that. But also consider art, graphics, podfics, musical scores, meta, fiber arts, videos, recipes, or whatever other combination of the words “fan” and “work” strikes your fancy. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment here saying you did it.

Following the recommendation from the site, I looked back to the wishlists on Challenge #7, and did a Murder, She Wrote userpic for sixbeforelunch, shown below.

In addition, for that same challenge I had previously done cover art for evandar’s story, “On Leave”.

There you are, then.

Comments

[prisca]

Oh, these are both great.

[aadler]

Thank you.

Wow!

[ysabetwordsmith]

That cover art is so beautiful.

Re: Wow!

[aadler]

I won’t claim total credit, I use an AI art generator as my starting point, then adjust the basic image till I think it looks right. (Not for the userpic, though, it wasn’t necessary there.) I’ll agree that it turned out decent, though.

Re: Wow!

[ysabetwordsmith]

Oh, now that's a clever use of AI that I haven't seen before -- as an underpainting! I've done art excercises where we took a picture out of a newspaper or magazine to use as an underpainting. I'm not an artist but I can recognize some of the techniques. And that approach would fix some of the worst problems with AI, like how it's illiterate and doesn't know how many body parts an organism should have. Often the broad strokes are good, it's the details that suck, so you just fix those flaws and get a good image. Clever.

Re: Wow!

[aadler]

Because I’m not a trained artist and haven’t been willing to spend the money for proper tools, I use multiple techniques. AI art generator is a beginning; I’ll use Paint.net and some of the image adjustments in PowerPoint (I always use PowerPoint for the captions, because I can go back later and change them if necessary), and then save and sometimes reduce with Microsoft Paint. Occasionally I’ll do layering with Paint.net, but most often it’s through PowerPoint. I aim for ‘good enough to look nice’ and don’t worry about professionalism, and that’s been satisfactory for me so far.

If you want to see the cover art I have for my own stories (most of it, at the beginning, done by others), this link will take you there. I used AI art generator only for the three most recent.