Cover Art and icons: Do Not Go Gentle

[starrylizard]

I decided to have a play with photo shop CS, since I currently have a 30 day trial version, and was inspired by the fic Do Not Go Gentle by forlornhope42 which I read avidly every week. In the fic John is a Leukemia patient and Rodney is sent to keep him company...of course they fall in love. (Currently up to chapter 65 and still going...I don't mind if it keeps on forever. :D)








The idea (quoted below) touched me and hence the butterfly in the picture. Also in the background is the beach and blue sky of Wisteria Cove, which becomes John and Rodney's place of sanctuary while John recovers.


Quote from Chapter 22:
”[Butterflies] help people to die easy because they take their souls to paradise.”

Rodney was so shocked by this statement that he stopped from turning the wheelchair around. ”Who said that?”

”My grandpa said it, and when he was dying he asked me to paint many many butterflies for him and I did and when he was gone he came back to me in my dream and said that he was happy where he was because all my butterflies were with him. And I had been so sad but he made me happy. I know he and our butterflies are with me all the time.”

”Does your mom know about it?” Rodney asked calmly.

”I told her, but it made her sad, so I don’t talk to her about grandpa’s butterfly anymore. But I paint lots of butterflies for Alana. Come on, let’s go back down the corridor.”

Rodney obeyed, asking because his curiosity got the better of him: ”What will you do with the butterflies if Alana should live?”

”Then we will play with them”, she said. “And we will be happy. Either way, someone will be happy.”


Credits:
The Shep manipulation (no hair!) is from kyokoaegis, but I added the skull cap.
Butterfly and beach pictures were found on gettyimages.com
The McKay image is taken from a high resolution screencap from 38minutes posted by dbw. She posts great screencaps.

Comments

[kyokoaegis.livejournal.com]

Wow! Just wow! That is truly beautiful! It's the perfect cover for Skein's story, and Rodney's so cute ^^ Also I don't like butterflies at all, but on your fanart it looks cute and sweet... (and Sheppard's is looking much better with the hat)
Also technical question, what is the colour effect you used? it's really beautiful ^^

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

Thanks! ^_^

I'm only just learning about photoshop. I'd love to be able to manipulate things...like stick people's heads on other bodies and stuff, but I can never do it. *le sigh* I have yet to figure out blending options and such.

The colouring effect is one I recently read about in a Photoshop magazine. Basically you set the image to Greyscale. Then you go image > image mode > Duotone and chose the tritone option. Then you select the other two tones you want to use. In this case I chose a darkish blue and a sort of burnt orange colour.

[kyokoaegis.livejournal.com]

I'd love to be able to manipulate things...like stick people's heads on other bodies and stuff, but I can never do it
I never tried too... It's probably not easy to do ^^ For the moment I'm just added new scalps to someone's head (like I did twice for Joe), or put two characters together on the same picture... And even that is not an easy thing to do, because the lightness/contrast is not exactly the same so the result is sometimes weird.

And thanks for the tutorial ^^ I'll see if I can translate it in PSP, because it's really beautiful.

[tardis80.livejournal.com]

oh, these are lovely. the butterfly and the hands were a nice touch. and the john manip is really great.

also a tip: if you use the blur tool around the edges of cut and pasted figures, they blend more easily into the background.

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

Thanks.
Blur tool huh. I'll give that one a shot. There are several tools that seem to be for blending, but I'm yet to figure them out. There's a sponge too, but I can't quite figure out what it does. Tips always, always appreciated, so thanks again. :D

[forlornhope42.livejournal.com]

Please don't get me wrong: you had me in tears! This is so generous of you ... what you said about the story and especially the creation of the covers and the icons. Thank you for taking the time and the effort to make these - they mean a lot, big lot, to me!

As for the tears ... don't feel bad about those. They were tears of joy, you know?

You made a special day extra-special. Wish I had the words to say how much.

Hugs you like mad
Skein (grateful like whoa! and then some)

PS: Hope you don't mind if I point people from my LJ to here ...

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

Point away. I LOVE comments! :D

You're most welcome. I'm glad you like it. I was just playing around with the program and it was a lot of fun.

*hands you a tissue* :D

[forlornhope42.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tissue - it was well used before ... uhm, sorry, TMI!

I've been coming back to look at those pictures - and I have to say, with the distratction of the bald head gone, I can't help but staring at John's eyes. They are so beautiful.

I'm still so grateful for kyokoaegis starting this and you running away with it - you are amazing!
Skein

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

*blushes and hugs*

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

This is really great. I'm glad you did the Bald!John manip, because it emphasizes (which the fic often lets me forget) how very different than the usual Sheppard he looks in this story. And I *love* the Rodney-expression, great choice.

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

Thanks!
The bald manip that kyokoaegis made was pretty freaky for me, so I couldn't help but use it...though I had to add a cap. Can't have him too weird-looking. *grins*

[knights-13.livejournal.com]

WOW!!! Nice job. That's a beautiful cover for Skein's story. I love how you worked all the key stuff into it. :)

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

Thanks ^_^
It was fun!