I Just Wanted to Post an Image Thread

[JOdel]

Well, I just finished another publications project, and sent the checkfile off to the author for final approval before posting. It's another Potter Fanfic, written for the last of the SS/HG Exchanges: Winter 2012. The fic is currently posted there and on the author's page on ff.net. The Red Hen edition will be on my site once I get final approval.

It's not as long a work as the last one that I posted the illos for here. Only a dozen of them, but this one had me in a bit of a quandary, because two of the illos are diptychs. And the way they are built, the page border, with the spine and gutter of my faux 2-page spread masks the center of the illustration (and was intended to). So those really need the whole spread in order to be seen as they are intended to be seen. My faux 2-page spreads are built to fit on a landscape-oriented letter-sized page. So they are going to exceed the 800 pixels that I usually try to keep my posed images within. I also want them to be reasonably sharp, so I'm going to up the resolution a little.

I gather that screen resolution for most Windows PCs is 96 ppi (or at least used to be). Which is better than the 72 ppi which used to be standard for Macs (I have NO idea what the resolution is for a Retina screen), so I will be doing the exports at that resolution. I think that this will put them as something over 1000 pixels wide, but there have been images larger than that posted in these forums.

In any case, in all fairness, I felt I really ought to export the spreads for the rest of the illos as spreads as well, rather than just extracting the illo from the setting like last time. Which will mean inflicting the facing page of text on you for the rest of the images.I tried to place the illos facing the text that describes the action, but it doesn't always work out that way. I'll clarify where it didn't.

The final hitch in the getalong is that for this project, I ran all the final images through SnapArt4's oil painting filter. I've also got the rendered versions, so I'll post both. I prefer the oil paintings, frankly. I think what they lose in detail -- and they do lose detail -- they gain in atmosphere. And also look more like book illustrations. Which was the whole point.

All that said: the fic is 'Recapitulation' by Mundungus42. Set some 30 years after the Battle of Hogwarts. PoV character is Hermione Weasley. She married Ron, had two children, Rose and Hugo, as indicated in the epilogue, and got a degree in magical architecture. Shortly after Rose went off to Hogwarts Ron was injured in the line of duty (in this fic he remained an auror, rather than going to work in the shop with George) and has been unconscious in St Mungo's ever since. Hermione supported herself and the children as an architect.

When the story opens. Hugo Weasley, currently a music student in America, (in Britain music magic has been classified as Dark since the Romantic era, due to its ability to raise an emotional response in its audience), is expected home for the summer, accompanied by his first serious boyfriend. Who turns out to look exactly like a young Severus Snape, who has been dead for some 30 years.

First, the oil paint version.

And now the rendered version.

 

[Miss B]

WHOA!!! Always good to see you doing fanfic (especially Harry Potter) related renders again. This is totally amazing, as it's hard for me to find any differences. Nicely done!!

 

[JOdel]

Despite the shock of young Victor Hall's appearance, the visit seems to be settling in rather nicely. Hugo and Hermione explain who Severus Snape was (Hermione gives Victor one of the better books on the late war which explains what is understood of Severus Snape's role in it).

She also gets an impromptu demonstration of the suppressed art of music magic, watching Victor practice a piece for a recital.
The oil paint version.

And the rendered.

 

[JOdel]

The differences aren't particularly evident in the long shots. But they do become quite evident in the closer ones.

I can't seem to get rid of the extra copy of the rendered version on the above post. I've deleted it twice but it's still there. The text goes, but not the image.

 

[JOdel]

From what Victor has to say regarding his (supposedly) Muggle father, Mitch Hall, Hermione grows suspicious. Having a brother-in-law in the Ministry department in charge of foreign travel enables a 24-hour visa to America to investigate.

The boys are at school in New York. But Victor is from Solano Beach, in southern California. The son of the owner of a coffee bar near the beach.

Hermione finds the way to Mitch's, and confirms her suspicions. Mitch Hall is indeed Severus Snape. California, and surfing, has suited him. He has made a good life for himself, and his son. Vic's mother is not mentioned, and not in evidence. Victor does not remember her.

Oil Paint.

Render.

 

[JOdel]

Later that evening, back in Hogsmeade, Victor is clearly intrigued by the whole issue of resembling the war hero, Severus Snape. And he wonders whether there is any way to find whether there is a connection. Hugo brings up the blood stain on the floor of the Shrieking Shack (now a historical site. Hermione is one of the curators) and suggests that they see whether Victor has any genetic connection with that.

Resulting in another demonstration of music magic at work. Vic and Hugo evoke a powerful response from the stain. Powerful, and disturbing. Victor does not read as being related to Severus Snape. He is Severus Snape.

Oil paint.

And render.

 

[JOdel]

I think that will do for today. I'll upload another batch tomorrow.

 

[quietrob]

Pinging for Jodel awesomeness!

 

[Miss B]

I can't seem to get rid of the extra copy of the rendered version on the above post. I've deleted it twice but it's still there. The text goes, but not the image.

I should be able to take care of that for you JOdel, as I did it recently for Bonnie, though I'm seeing 2 of the Painted version and only 1 of the Rendered version.

OK, fixed!

 

[Miss B]

Pinging for Jodel awesomeness!

Yes, she's good at this form of art. When Faerie Wylde was still an active forum, she used to post all kinds of series of artwork she was working on.

 

[JOdel]

Thanks for getting rid of the duplicate. And thanks for the complements.

 

[Desertsilver]

These are wonderful! Did you create the' background- borders; not sure what you call it that surrounds the pictures? It really gives it a warm, storybook feel.

Did you use some kind of template to create these? Can they be seen on Kindle? i might actually read a book on Kindle if it looked like this!

 

[JOdel]

The faux 2-page spread? Yes, that is a template file which gets used as the base for most of my publication projects. That consists of the cover, with the inner spine, which you can see around the edges, the endpapers, the stacked pages and the gutter. I've got four variants of it. This one with the standard gilt edge, one with a deckle edge, one with no edge treatments, but a parchment texture overall, and one which is a perfect-bound trade paperback. They're Photoshop files, so all the individual elements can be edited independently.

You'll also see, as we move through the collection of these illos, that I shift the gutter through the bookblock as we "read" the story. I only give it three shifts, so they may come as a lurch to the reader, but gives a clue as to where you are in the overall story arc.

The borders are built on top of the background spread in a separate group. I've drawn a couple of the older ones that I've used from scratch, in either FreeHand (r.i.p. 2005) or Photoshop, but most of my borders are built using commercial clip art, either from the Aridi collections (Aridi Computer Graphics, it's a dot com. Gorgeous stuff. A lot of Arabesque) or from graphics design elements from a subscription service that I've had since '98. It's changed ownership several times in that period, but is currently a devision of Getty Images. The collection is called LiquidLibrary and has a lot of vector art rather than only stock photos.

My publications are all exported and posted in .pdf. I've been doing this since 2003 and the software used for most ePublishing nowadays didn't exist back then. And it doesn't give me the control that I want. I'm a control freak, and I don't *want* my pages 'dynamically' changing shape and proportion at the whim of the reader. Or typefaces, either. I am not sure whether .pdf can be displayed on a Kindle (or other eReaders, I am unfamiliar with all of them) but it is definitely readable on a computer screen. That's what they are designed for. They are built to fit on a standard letter-sized page, so they *can* be printed, but I don't recommend it. The background graphics (on every spread) will choke the printer, and eat up ink and toner like nobody's business.

The whole collection is on my website; www.redhen-publications.com, in the Publications collection. It's nearly all Potterfics at this point, but there are a couple of Oz books and a series based on Dragon Age. The non-fiction work is an older project and not designed for online reading since it's a working craft manual and tabloid size, and not really designed for online reading.

All that being said; I'll move on to posting another set of illos for the project which will be added to the Red Hen collection once I get the authors approval.

 

[JOdel]

Hermione sent a Patronus message to Severus after returning from the Shrieking Shack to let him know that Victor was aware of the secrets that his "father" had been hiding from him all of his life.

When her Floo flared later in the night she thought it might be him. It wasn't. It was St Mungo's Hospital. Ron, whose condition has been deteriorating over the past year, has reached the critical point. She and Hugo are advised to come quickly.

They gather at St Mungo's with the rest of the family. Ron's parents, his surviving siblings, their spouses, his grown children, Hugo and Rose with her husband, Teddy Lupin. As they wait, Hugo asks Hermione's permission to "do something". It is another, and even more powerful, example of music magic in action, as the family sings Ron to rest. Hermione is sure that she sees one last moment of lucidity before his eyes close for the last time.

And the original render;

 

[JOdel]

Hermione has lived as a virtual widow for the past 12 years. But now she is an actual one. She mourned the loss of her husband long ago, but now that he is beyond all hope (and his recovery was always beyond hope) the loss does hit harder than she'd anticipated.

Hugo is also in a difficult position. Victor has left, having admitted that he had already known who Severus Snape was, and indeed knows a great deal about the war (although not, one gathers, about his own origins). Hugo decides to spend the day trying to find out the channels that he needs to work through to repeal the ban on music magic, since he still intends to teach it, and now will be needing to do it alone.

Hermione feels a need to get away. She still has her 24-hour visa and has used only a couple of them. She reaches Solano Beach just before dawn and wanders along the shore grieving. She sings along to an old Beach Boys ballad that she hears from what she believes to be another morning person's portable radio, and inadvertently finds herself performing a piece of music magic al her own.

And the original render;

 

[JOdel]

She returns home, with a sunburn, and she and Hugo discuss things. It's been a while for both of them to have some time together.

And Hugo presents her with a ticket to the Mahler 8 at the Hollywood Bowl, later that evening. Hermione may not be a singer or a musician, but she appreciates music, and Hugo is a loving son.

Not at all to her surprise, she spots Severus and Victor in the crowd. They make their way to a different part of the ampitheater and Hugo does not see them.

And the render;

I dislike having to use random photos for my illustrations. For one thing, apart from the ones through my subscription service, I can't be certain on the copyright. And the ones off the web are always low resolution and distinctly sub-optimal. This one was posted anonymously on a site called; aviewfrommyseat.com and I have no idea whether that is one of the sites which claims ownership of anything that gets posted on it. In any case, I gave them credit in the colophon and will hope for the best. I'm not making money off of this, after all.

A load of postwork went into trying to bring the image up to par, as well as to build one of the private boxes from the Bowl for the parts that got rendered. It isn't exact. The chairs and tables aren't right, and the angle is not from the direction that the boxes actually are, but I didn't do too badly at extrapolating a 72ppi image into a 300ppi composition. For that matter, the Mahler 8 wasn't performed at the Bowl anyway. It was at the Shrine Auditorium and that was in 2012, when Hugo would have been about 5. The fic takes place somewhere in the neighborhood of 2028-2030, btw.

Whatever.

 

[JOdel]

The phone message mentioned in the text above, was indeed a text message from Severus. A stroll up to see the view brings the two couples face-to-face. Severus and Hermione leave the boys to patch up their differences, and adjourn for ice cream and a discussion of Victor's origins and the dangerous book which Severus is keeping out of more dangerous hands than his own.

Unless that can be neutralized, he cannot return to Britain.

The render;

And I'll upload the rest of them tomorrow. Like I say, there are only a dozen of them in this work.

 

[Miss B]

I look forward to seeing them JOdel, as these are as amazing as the past series you've done over the years.

 

[JOdel]

Thank you!

I do like to have projects to work on. I'm a designer, but not really an artist. And an illustrator, rather than a portraitist. Most of the pinup fodder in the markets is sort of useless to me, although a lot of it is beautifully done.

Half the time I never hear back from the authors I contact. And sometimes they get swamped and don't follow through -- or finish the fics. I may never be able to upload the full version of the last project I posted the illos from here. But the graphics-only version will go up in February, if I can't get the full version rebooted. I do have another one in progress, but it's a whole different ball game and I'm not doing the illos for that one. The author is a pro, and intends to provide her own. No idea how long it will take before that one is complete, but probably by the end of the year.

Thank goodness for the gift exchanges. When I manage to catch the sign-ups before they close.

 

[quietrob]

The phone message mentioned in the text above, was indeed a text message from Severus. A stroll up to see the view brings the two couples face-to-face. Severus and Hermione leave the boys to patch up their differences, and adjourn for ice cream and a discussion of Victor's origins and the dangerous book which Severus is keeping out of more dangerous hands than his own.

Unless that can be neutralized, he cannot return to Britain.
View attachment 30174
The render;
View attachment 30175
And I'll upload the rest of them tomorrow. Like I say, there are only a dozen of them in this work.

Hey! Isn't that the diner you made for class? Nicely done!