Rain (June 27, 2002) ~ This one has been knocking about in my head for the last week or so, mostly surfacing when my playlist gets to "Sao Paulo Rain" by Tom McRae, which is the song from which the lyrics in this piece are taken, and also the song that actually plays in "Entropy" when Xander is sucking on that beer brooding about leaving Anya at the alter. I'm glad I managed to get around to actually making it before I got distracted by something else!

I started with the main image of Xander drinking, and then picked images evoked by the song and let them waft like smoke behind him, like they're replaying in his mind as he sits. The smoke by the way is from a beautiful shot of cigarette smoke (who knew cigarettes were good for something after all?) lifted from my exciting new toy: Hemera's Big Box of Art (25 CDs with 32,000 large, beautiful, un-watermarked photos, plus a bunch of clip art I will probably never use, all for $30. I'm quite pleased).

Nothing fancy as far as the blending goes, though I did use a few other shots from the BBoA set to various blends and lowered opacities to add a little texture and depth here and there. The smaller font is Anadale Mono, stetched to various aspects, and for the larger font -- though I'm well aware it's been used to death *everywhere*, I just couldn't resist -- Scriptina. I rendered the text layers & merged them all together, put a slight drop shadow on them, and then masked them with a "dust & filteres" custom brush to get them to fade into the background a bit.

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Val writes:

This has definitely got to be one of your best ever! I LOVE it..the color, the edgelssness the images and that awesome painted effect. I love the text, the way you did it.. the smoke << what or how did you do that? >> the blend of the images.. all of it.. awesome, awesome!!!! Great title on this one too!