Karin Rochelle – Contest Winner

Project Description

MISSION: To change an author into a vampire.
NAME: Karin Rochelle aka Katch A. Fallingstar
AGE: Forever-Young
HAIR COLOR: Pink
EYE COLOR: Blood red
GENRE: Fantasy-Horror

This last spring, we ran a contest to celebrate the release of The Butterfly Payoff, a book by Kellie R. Stone. Karin Rochelle won that prize: a personal transformation photo manipulation.  All the winner had to do was click in the comments of the following image and opt in with Kellie.

As you  can see from the image we used for the give away, this morph is almost a caricature of the original image.  Karin’s prize is meant to be fun and whimsical.   This required very little over painting.  Side Note:  We liked the transformation so much that we later turned the Amber-elf into a premade book cover.

After winning, we requested images from Karin and she chose her transformation: a vampire, preferably in front of graves and a castle.  What I didn’t know at that time was that Karin  was  thinking of her book series when she made this request.

By the time Karin sent me some images that I felt could work, my schedule had filled up with emergency jobs. It took a while for Karin and I to get our schedules aligned again but when we finally did, the real magic began.

Karin had lost over 50 pounds over the course of the summer, so she wanted to use updated images.  She sent me a beautiful image, but unfortunately, it wasn’t very clear and her wonderful facial features did not show up.  Due to my busy schedule, and the fear that I  would not find a chunk of free time again soon, I decided to use the image instead of asking her to reshoot.  Bad decision on my part, as this required tons of work to reconstruct hands and facial features.  Fortuntly I had the images from earlier in the year to help pull in her lovely cheekbones.  In the end her face is about 90 percent hand painted.

Do I regret it?  Hell no.  It’s a cool pic.

Will I do that again? If I get paid enough.  😉

During the process I consulted  with Karin several times, and she added steampunk to the equation.  I love steampunk so I was happy to incorporate it.  Eventually I discovered that she hoped to use the image for promotional work for the book.  That discovery made the steampunk request make more sense to me, as I had read her first book and understood the tie in with the Victorian period.

Initially, I tried her image in graveyards but the pesky branch she was leaning on didn’t work with gravestones.  Then I chanced upon the maze image, and that inspired a whole new direction.  Her clothing was created from several items.  The hair was over painted, and I added the curls to give it a more steampunk feel but stuck with her natural hair color.  Speaking of hair color, it was what inspired the soft tones in much of the final image as well as the skirt stock choice.

We went through a plethora of birds before I fell in love with this fella.  I was so glad when Karin agreed on this  one.  He needed a little bit  of work to bring out his badassness but I think he’s a bird that suits her book now.

The castle  is Cahir castle, located  in Cahir Ireland, and I believe featured in the book.  It was the only piece  of stock I needed to purchase for this.  Often I end up purchasing several pieces of stock for each art piece so that was a nice bonus for me.  There were many other images used as well. Pocket watches,clothing pieces, gears, more birds, and another clockface.

This last week we completed her graphic.  She was so excited that she has decided to use the image for the re-release of her book Echoes of Emilee: love’s timeless legacy, which  inspired  the personal transformation artistry.