Well, it's that time again. I need a button to go with Dreams of a Father, which will be the next story to be published on the website. I can't offer more to the winner than a sneak peak at the first chapter of Dreams of a Father, but hope that will be enough to get some good entries.

For this button, I do have some thoughts without giving away too much details of the upcoming story. The overall theme should be contain the colors of red and black (although not limited to those colors), and should evoke something reminiscent of what parents might dream of for their children as the overall concept, or the struggles that a parent will go through for the sake of their children.

Thanks to all who are willing to give this a shot! Entries should be posted in this thread, and I will make a final decision two weeks from Friday. The creator of the button will, by posting here, give the right to use the button on Gay Authors for the promotion and use in relation to the story of Dreams of a Father.

Thanks again!

*screams like a little school girl with excitment*

G

I had a play around and made this, it's not too great but oh well, I'll try to make a better one later .

Wow! A darn good start. I look forward to seeing more!

I thought something like this would go with the motif. If you, or anyone else, has any suggestions for changes don’t hesitate to let me know. It’s a pleasure to be doing something like this.

Steven

I really don't like my first one and I'm trying to make a second, is there ANY clues you could give to make it easier? Please!

Sphen, that looks pretty good but perhaps it should have the child separated from the parent, while the father reaches out to him, given the way DoH ended...

Demetz,

Good suggestion. I went the way I did because I wanted to go with the idea of the dreams fathers have for their children. Personally, I think the two biggest dreams any father has for their child are for them to be happy and to be dependent, to be able to take care of, and support themselves any future family. I drew the father throwing his son in the air for two reasons. One, to show this idea of independence, letting the child go and allowing him to “fly free.” Secondly, if any of you have been around small children you’ll know that one of their favorite games is to be picked up and tossed in the air. You are pretty much guarantied to get some kind of giggle or squeal of delight. I think, if you ask any father what they want for their child, somewhere in the top three of their list will be for him to be happy. I was trying to show this through my images.

As for referencing the ending of the previous story, I brought in flames to show the struggles, both physically and emotionally, that Garret will have to go through to get his son back. Also, I wanted to give hope in the use of a spot of light in an otherwise dark sky.

Now I know you guys didn’t really want to hear all that but writing it down helped me solidify my thinking on the design (I wrote most of these ideas before the creation of the design). I could be totally wrong and the whole thing could be totally off but that’s why I’m posting this, so everyone here can let me know if the concept or intention is going in the wrong direction.

Thanks

P.S. sorry it’s so long

Actually, I found it a very interesting read and I appreciate you posting it

Really rough attempt -- I'd want to redo the stars and clean up the figures' lines, at least, but it's 2AM!

EDIT: Done.

Here's my submission... can't decide if I likes it or hates it. lol I might make another.

Gil, I love it!

Oh wow, once again I have to say I like all of the entries. They each have something to recommend them for the story. It's going to be tough to make a decision. The deadline was supposed to be yesterday, but it sounds like a number of the creators want to tweak their artwork a little. I'd like to extend the deadline up to Tuesday since I hope to get the first chapter posted late next week.

Thank you to everyone!

They do look pretty good. I'm curious how you guys made them. Is there a certain site or program you guys use? I'd like to make one but I'm not entirely sure where to start

G

I'm admittedly rusty with my skills, but I like these challenges Dan throws out. It's difficult to convey meaning in such a limited space, and the additional constraints make me think, which is kinda fun.

The file I did is comprised of five layers. From top to bottom:
1. Text
2. Text glow
3. Silhouettes
4. Red glow (with mask)
5. Stars

I started with a photograph of a guy with his kid. I used Illustrator to auto-trace the figures (just 'cause I'm lazy) and then simplified those outlines before exporting the resulting silhouettes to Photoshop. That was layer 3. For the second revision, I traced the figures manually in Illustrator. Well, I traced the kid fully, but I only bothered with the visible part of the father. I exported to Photoshop again and used the Smudge tool to modify the outlines a little more, since a few of the angles looked strange at the finished image size.

For the star background (#5), I initially used a custom brush (large step value, small size) to 'scatter' stars on a black background at three different opacity levels (20, 60, 100%). I duplicated the layer twice and applied 90-degree and 0-degree motion blurs (horizontal and vertical) to fake a "shine" for each star, then merged all three layers. The second time around, I used a different brush (less starlike, more of a simple dot) at three slightly different sizes and off-white colors to go for a different look. I'm still not totally happy with it, but then again, I'm not getting paid for this either. :P

The red glow (#4) was a simple red background with a gradient mask, so that it higlighted the silhouettes without eclipsing—no pun intended—the rest of the stars.

The text took awhile; I hunted for a font that I liked for quite some time, and ended up discarding various futuristic fonts in favor of something slightly more simple and eminently more readable. I rendered the text to a bitmap layer (rather than keeping it editable on a vector layer), added noise, did a Gaussian blur, changed the layer's blend mode to Hard Light, and merged it with a solid black layer to make the text a bit distressed; I then used a magic wand and cut out all of the black. I touched up a few characters manually with the Smudge tool and the Eraser to remove aliasing, and this became layer 1.

Last, I duplicated the text layer three times; i arranged them from top to bottom and did a Gaussian blur with a progressively larger radius on each layer for a good white glow. (I could have done this with layer effects, but I've never liked the results there.) I merged the three layers and that was layer #2, the last one.

I also played with a few other motifs, but I felt the only sure thing I could add was stars. If you'd like the resulting PSD file, let me know.

This one's better than the last one I tried



Oh and if you flip it upside down it says 'Father of a dream'. Have a look see

That one would be better if the text were easier to read.

The chance to have some small part in Dan’s stories, even if it was just designing the button for it, was too great to pas up!

I used Photoshop to create my button. I started with a black background and added a noise filter and then a Gaussian blur to give the impression of stars. The “beam of light” is a simple lens flare (located in the render filters).

The next layer is comprised of the flames. To get this effect, I simply created a thin line of red at the bottom and used the smudge tool set to about 90%. It’s a fast and easy way to make flames. You can go in and add highlights and lowlights if you want. I shoes not to.

The third layer is the one with the father and child. I chose an image, for reasons given previously, and brought it into Photoshop. I traced it using the brush tool and then added shading to give depth and texture. It helps if you have a tablet. I then adjusted the color to get a nice red and added an outer glow in the layer effects to make it stand out and so it wouldn’t have such a hard line.

Fourth layer was the text. I found one that I could live with and chose red for the color. I rasterized the layer so it was no longer a vector image, added a drop shadow to pop it off the page and an inner glow to give it some highlights ( all of this in layer effects).

Lastly, I created a white gradient layer that was slightly larger than the text, dropped the opacity and moved it behind the text layer just to make it stand out that much more.

Again, I'm going to give everyone a big, Oh WOW! Making a final decision is not going to be easy, and it looks like a lot of hard work has gone into all of these graphics. I feel a strong urge to give something back to everyone who submitted an entry so I'm going to make a slight (good, I hope!) alteration into the contest.

EVERYONE who has made an entry by Tuesday morning will receive the first chapter of Dreams of a Father by PM as my personal thanks (no sharing folks...let everyone else read it when it is posted on Friday). The winner will also receive Chapter TWO as well for their winning entry.

Once again, thank you all! This is not going to be an easy decision because there are elements of every entry that I like. Maybe I can convince Myr to work with me on putting each of them up for at least one chapter, but I really do appreciate all of the work each of you have done!

Yikes! Where does all the time go? It's been busy as hell today and I've just gotten around to taking care of making the final decision. Once again, my thanks to all the entrants and I look forward to seeing the button on the story page when the first chapter is posted!

Thanks and take care!