Faction icons XLIII
Among the various tiny Forever Knight factions of the "miscellaneous assorted" variety, these are the last three to get icons. I think it's fair to say that they are very "miscellaneous".
The Friends of Gillian take their name from one of the scriptwriters on the series, Gillian Horvath. More than once, she wrote fans into the show by using their names for characters (though I think the faction can also be claimed by those whose names were used by other writers). From what little is written about the Friends of Gillian, I gather that fans could sometimes be quite enthusiastic in assuming that an identical personal name meant they'd been honoured by character-dom. However, it definitely did happen a few times for real.
The DracPack are fans of both Forever Knight and a slightly earlier show, Dracula: The Series. Geraint Wyn Davies appeared in a couple of its episodes; and quite a number of guest stars were also in the show, either as regulars or as guests. The DracPack is, however, not affiliated with the actors but with the various characters these actors play in Forever Knight.
As for the MacGregors: they're actually fans of Nigel Bennett, and got their name after he read a Beatrix Potter story aloud at a convention. Not a formal fan club, but a purely fan thing, they are generally counted among the factions.
Friends of Gillian:
As soon as I thought of making an icon for this faction, I knew that it ought to include a picture of Horvath. Fortunately, although I had feared that this would prove impossible, I actually located one quite quickly on a Highlander site.
A page from a script was used for the background. (Okay, okay. As with the Nitpickers, I fudged this by using a screen capture of one of my own FK4 stories so that I could get a clean image.) The foreground picture of a woman's hands on a keyboard was taken off the web.
DracPack:
For this icon I obviously first needed to identify the actors who appeared in both Forever Knight and Dracula: The Series. Aside from GWD, the only one of whom I was sure was Geordie Johnson, the star of the other show, and the one most commonly cited when people describe the DracPack. However, the faction is supposed to be for the characters played by any actor from both series. I therefore started googling.
There are a handful of websites devoted to Dracula: The Series, and from these I was able to get the actors. Most useful, though, was K'lin kaShante's Lucard Picture Gallery. Although it cannot rival NAT's Episode Archives in size and scope, I did manage to locate screen captures of everyone in their Dracula: The Series roles.
Compositing the icon was a nightmare. Obviously, Geordie Johnson had to be the dominant figure, since he seems to be the primary focus of interest for DracPack members. I did want, though, to fit in as many of the others as I could. In the end, I decided to leave out GWD, on the grounds that, as the star of Forever Knight, he probably isn't of specific concern to this rather specialized, outwardly-focused faction.
The logo is based on that of Dracula: The Series. For the "-Pack" part of the name, I heavily relied on the R in "Dracula"-taking off its tail to make the P, and flipping up (and re-shadowing) its lower half to make the K.
MacGregors:
Clearly, this had to be a Beatrix Potter-themed icon. Fortunately, Peter Rabbit is readily googleable. So is Mr McGregor. (Yes, the faction name is spelled differently from the name in the book. It's not my fault! All the fan lists-or, at least, those that include the faction-spell "MacGregors" with an "a".)
I selected a nice pair of pictures, clipped them out, and immediately realized that I would have to darken them. Several times, in fact. Potter's lovely water-colours wash right out when they're composited with more saturated pictures. I don't think the heavier saturation and deeper tones are noticeable though: it simply produces an overall equivalence.
For the background, I used a section from a picture of a children's library. Nigel Bennett was found...somewhere or other, I can't remember.
And then I had to put it all together! In the end, in order for Peter and Mr McGregor to be adequately prominent, I laid them on facing pages from one of Potter's books. The composition needed that white background for adequate contrast.
As with other icons that have multi-coloured backgrounds, the logo proved a problem for the same reason. However, by outlining it heavily, I finally got it legible.
The Friends of Gillian take their name from one of the scriptwriters on the series, Gillian Horvath. More than once, she wrote fans into the show by using their names for characters (though I think the faction can also be claimed by those whose names were used by other writers). From what little is written about the Friends of Gillian, I gather that fans could sometimes be quite enthusiastic in assuming that an identical personal name meant they'd been honoured by character-dom. However, it definitely did happen a few times for real.
The DracPack are fans of both Forever Knight and a slightly earlier show, Dracula: The Series. Geraint Wyn Davies appeared in a couple of its episodes; and quite a number of guest stars were also in the show, either as regulars or as guests. The DracPack is, however, not affiliated with the actors but with the various characters these actors play in Forever Knight.
As for the MacGregors: they're actually fans of Nigel Bennett, and got their name after he read a Beatrix Potter story aloud at a convention. Not a formal fan club, but a purely fan thing, they are generally counted among the factions.
Friends of Gillian:
As soon as I thought of making an icon for this faction, I knew that it ought to include a picture of Horvath. Fortunately, although I had feared that this would prove impossible, I actually located one quite quickly on a Highlander site.
A page from a script was used for the background. (Okay, okay. As with the Nitpickers, I fudged this by using a screen capture of one of my own FK4 stories so that I could get a clean image.) The foreground picture of a woman's hands on a keyboard was taken off the web.
DracPack:
For this icon I obviously first needed to identify the actors who appeared in both Forever Knight and Dracula: The Series. Aside from GWD, the only one of whom I was sure was Geordie Johnson, the star of the other show, and the one most commonly cited when people describe the DracPack. However, the faction is supposed to be for the characters played by any actor from both series. I therefore started googling.
There are a handful of websites devoted to Dracula: The Series, and from these I was able to get the actors. Most useful, though, was K'lin kaShante's Lucard Picture Gallery. Although it cannot rival NAT's Episode Archives in size and scope, I did manage to locate screen captures of everyone in their Dracula: The Series roles.
Compositing the icon was a nightmare. Obviously, Geordie Johnson had to be the dominant figure, since he seems to be the primary focus of interest for DracPack members. I did want, though, to fit in as many of the others as I could. In the end, I decided to leave out GWD, on the grounds that, as the star of Forever Knight, he probably isn't of specific concern to this rather specialized, outwardly-focused faction.
The logo is based on that of Dracula: The Series. For the "-Pack" part of the name, I heavily relied on the R in "Dracula"-taking off its tail to make the P, and flipping up (and re-shadowing) its lower half to make the K.
MacGregors:
Clearly, this had to be a Beatrix Potter-themed icon. Fortunately, Peter Rabbit is readily googleable. So is Mr McGregor. (Yes, the faction name is spelled differently from the name in the book. It's not my fault! All the fan lists-or, at least, those that include the faction-spell "MacGregors" with an "a".)
I selected a nice pair of pictures, clipped them out, and immediately realized that I would have to darken them. Several times, in fact. Potter's lovely water-colours wash right out when they're composited with more saturated pictures. I don't think the heavier saturation and deeper tones are noticeable though: it simply produces an overall equivalence.
For the background, I used a section from a picture of a children's library. Nigel Bennett was found...somewhere or other, I can't remember.
And then I had to put it all together! In the end, in order for Peter and Mr McGregor to be adequately prominent, I laid them on facing pages from one of Potter's books. The composition needed that white background for adequate contrast.
As with other icons that have multi-coloured backgrounds, the logo proved a problem for the same reason. However, by outlining it heavily, I finally got it legible.