galathea | AFA Awards 2010

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! ;)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Congratulations for your awards! I'm glad you had fun at the ceremony. Unfortunately, I can't have a look at the wallpapers (though I think I remember some of them) - it's doing the warning thing again...

Oh geesh, I forgot about that. I'm going to replace the links with the links from my LJ gallery. :) And thank you! *hugs*

All good wallpapers. *nods* :D

Thank you, Kallie! :)

Congrats hon! Not that I'm at all surprised. *G* You know how much I love your art! *hugs*

My computer blocked the links though and I can't see what's posted.

Thank you! *hugs back*

Your computer blocked what links? The awards? Because the wallpaper links all go to my LJ gallery and shouldn't pose any problems.

This one and others...

http://saltnburn.misplaced.co.uk/images/awards/afa10snepisodic1st.jpg

This is what I get on the page...
http://s613.photobucket.com/albums/tt215/TWpics2009/?action=view¤t=Screenshot2010-03-14at10558PM.png

That stupid, stupid stuff. :( It's so annoying. My site is actually totally virus/malware free, it's a completely different site on the Misplaced domain - which hosts my site, too - that has the problem. But Firefox and Google don't make that distinction and simply block the complete domain! :( Sorry you can't see the awards. Guess I need to upload them to LJ too. /sigh

That is stupid. I'll see if I can get around it but at least I can see the art for now.

I have uploaded the awards to Imageshack and changed the links. You should be able to see them now! :)

Excellent! Thanks! :)

For the record, "The Way We Were" and "It’s A Brother Act" are two of my most favorite. :)

Aww thank you! *hugs* I love those two wallpapers very much as well. They both make me smile. :)

Congrats!!!!!!!!! What achievements! I'm glad you're being recognized/awarded for you gorgeous work. :)

Thank you, hon! :) It's always a great motivation boost to get some recognition.

Congratulations!! It's awesome. You totally deserve those. Hehe, it's funny, but you know that I've never seen "a brother act" before?! I must have been gone from LJ at the time you made this piece*gg* Anyway hope everything is ok with u and see u & ur art again soon :)

Thanks, Helen! *hugs* You've never seen 'Brother Act'? Cool, so you had at least some 'new' art to look at!

I am fine, thank you! How about you? Still stress at Uni? Heven't seen you around much lately.

It certainly looks as if everyone had a lot of fun at the award ceremony - kudos to everyone who helped plan and prepare!

Congrats on all your awards, which are all thoroughly deserved.

Yeah, it was fun and everybody is always very committed to the ceremony. :)

Thank you, hon! *hugs*

Oooh, I automatically love your "It's a Brother Act" piece because you manipped Dean onto the guy from "The Illusionist"--one of my favorite movies ever! :D It's nice besides that too though, the play on words and such, and the composition...

Congrats on all your awards, they are great pieces! :) As far as improving, I am still not knowledgeable in the ways of fanart, but it seems to me that there just might not *be* much room for you to improve, I mean you are already at such a high caliber...*shrug* Not that that's at all helpful, but...

Hope that Show will inspire you more as well, it makes me sad to see you so disappointed by it, given what an uber-fan you are! *hug* At least though you liked the last two epps, right? So hopefully it will continue its roll...

Aww, heh, you're the first one to actually recognise that Illusionist poster, or well, at least the first one to tell me. Sam is manipped on a different image of the same movie, btw. Basically both Sam and Dean have the body of Edward Norton. *g*

ROFL well, I know there is room for improvement, I look at Olga's work and I am green of envy. I am not sure if I can ever reach that level, but she shows me that there are still many levels above mine.

Nobody is sadder than me about my own disappointment with the show. I am not sure though, if my trust can ever be fully restored. It might be repaired somewhat, if the writers return the show I fell in love with to me, but these trust issues will always linger in the back of my mind. Well, yeah, I adored 'The Song Remains The Same', but even in an episode like that the repercussions of the writers' failures earlier in the season are still tangible. I can only hope that the rest of the season at least has the resemblance of consistency and direction and preserves the character integrity of Sam and Dean ... or well, what's left of it anyway.

Lol, well it is one of my favorite movies, as I said! :) I'm assuming you've seen it too, or did you just take images from it?

Lol, both of them are Edward Norton, sounds like Fight Club!

Nah, I don't know the movie. Just googled some keywords in regard to magicians/illusionists and found promos from the movie that fit my idea. :)

Heh, I always knew Dean was just Sam's imaginary friend. *g*

Ooooh well you need to add that one to your list along with "The Brother's Bloom"--it's such a fantastic movie, so beautiful and emotional and gorgeous and well made and gah! :D It kind of reminds me of "The Brother's Bloom," both movies make me go "d'awwwww!" And it's all about illusions and stuff....

I want to watch it again now....I got it on DVD!

AFA Awards 2010

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