AFA Awards 2010

[galathea]

Last night the annual fanart shindig - also known as the Academy of Fanart Artists Award Ceremony - took place, where the best fanartists and wallpapers of the year 2009 were crowned. Thanks to an enormous show of strength and discipline of our generous host slaycandy and our fanart community over at BuffyForums, the ceremony proceeded as planned, despite several set-backs. It really was an exciting and mind-blowing celebration! ♥ As usual I take the opportunity to shortly reflect back on my last fanart year, so just feel free to skip this post. ;)



The interest in the AFA’s is still going strong – after all, it’s probably the most prestigious fanart award - so we had 39 artists who participated this year and nominated over 600 different wallpapers in 30 categories. These last two years the technical standards in our little community over at BuffyForums have reached insane levels and winning any awards at all is a real achievement in my opinion. So, I am very proud that I won 14 awards, although I only entered 9 different wallpapers in 12 of the 30 available categories this year. Obviously I am especially happy that I won 2nd Best Wallpaper Of The Year and 4th Best Artist Of The Year.

The year 2009 has been a really difficult fanart year for me. I went long periods, where I didn't really make any art and felt completely out of touch with fanart and the fanart community in general. I only made 16 wallpapers last year and compared to the 28 wallpapers in 2008 and the 40 pieces in 2007, that's incredibly low. In fact, it's the lowest wallpaper output I had ever since I took up fanart. The reasons were multifaceted of course - real life distractions, lack of inspiration, dissatisfaction with the show – although I guess the latter was the main cause. The overall darkness of S4 and the lack of positive brotherly moments interfered with my enthusiasm to art the show. It was exhausting enough to watch as it is, I didn’t really need to make art about it to depress me even more.

Additionally, I am at a point where I am not quite sure how to improve my art, how to take the next step up, so to speak. I feel that I didn’t really develop much last year and don’t know how to change that. That being said, however, I made at least a couple of wallpapers that I am immensely proud of and where I think I was at a height of my personal fanart achievement. Especially 'The First Seal', 'It’s A Brother Act' and 'Haunted' come to mind, and on an emotional level 'Santa and His Elf', 'Separate Ways' and 'The Way We Were' resonated strongly with me. So, not all was lost last year. I just have to find a way to make it better in 2010. Since I still don’t feel any inclination to branch out into other fandoms – although there are a couple of shows that I am utterly taken with, like Friday Night Lights for example – I am heavily reliant on Show inspiring me this year. So, please writers of Supernatural, give me my fanart inspiring show back! *g*

Obviously I love every award I received, no matter the placement, but some of the awards really stood out for me. No to mention that some of my wallpapers just mean more to me than others and seeing them awarded makes me immensely happy. Click on the links to see the award and the piece that goes with it.

1st Place for Best Supernatural Episodic Piece | Replaced
Obviously I was immensely happy to take first place in one of the main Supernatural categories. It’s like the Holy Grail of fanart for me. The amount of absolutely gorgeous entries in the SPN categories was astounding, so to win the episodic category made me really happy. I think in terms of union of theme and visual approach 'Replaced' surely was one of my best wallpapers last year. I didn’t do many episodic pieces in 2009, but this one definitely satisfied me the most.

1st Place for Best Stock Use | The First Seal
'The First Seal' was my best wallpaper in 2009, there is no doubt about it. I think it was the first time that I actually attempted to build a whole non-existent scene from scratch, and I am immensely proud of how it turned out. It not only won Best Use Of Stocks, but also 2nd Best SPN Group Wallpaper, 3rd Best Use of Lighting and, most importantly, 2nd Best Wallpaper Of The Year. I am very happy that this piece got so much attention. ♥

1st Place for Best Use Of Colour | The Way We Were
That I won the colour category came as a real shock to me. I only nominated this wallpaper on a whim, and I don’t really think its use of colour is really all that special or complex. I don’t do light pieces often and I like how the colouring supports the positive atmosphere of the wallpaper, that’s the only reason I nominated it, but there have been way better entries in that category in my opinion. Colour me surprised!

1st Place for Best Tearjerker Piece | Separate Ways
The popularity of this piece has also been a surprise to me. Mainly because I think that the 'tearjerker' quality of this piece is only apparent if you actually know the scene that it is about. But well, I love this piece as well, so I am not going to argue with this result. *g*

The funniest award I received last evening has definitely been the 2nd Place for Best Male Celebrity for my J2 wallpaper Best Friends. Funny, because I didn’t actually enter that wallpaper in the challenge. I thought it wasn’t really awards material, so I didn’t nominate it, and it was Sayjay herself who just put me up in the category. That it made second place in the end was just endlessly amusing to me.

My biggest disappointment in the ceremony yesterday has been the fact that my 2nd favourite wallpaper of last year, namely It’s A Brother Act received no recognition at all. I love that wallpaper like something fierce and personally I think it’s one of my best works in the last couple of years, and I have no clue why it failed to attract my fellow fanartist's attention.

Anyway, like every year the ceremony has been exhilarating and exhausting at the same time, and I still feel like a truck ran me over. The festivities lasted until 5am this morning and I only got a couple of hours sleep to digest it all. So, take a look at the fantastic awards slaycandy made for the main categories 'Best Artist' and 'Best Wallpaper'. See you around, next year! ;)