Nana Rock, yeah!

This paper features Okazaki Shinichi of Ai Yazawa's popular shojo series, NANA. When I first obtained this scan, it featured the entirety of Okazaki's band, the "Black Stones." After a few edits, I had Okazaki by himself, with the original bright pink background of the scan. I pasted this to the 1024x768 paper with a solid bright pink background as well. I got a lot of inspiration to make this wall from the song "Do you want to" by Franz Ferdinand, which has a lot of the British punk rock elements featured in the image. I used three main sets of brushes for this, beginning with "damn dirty" around the border, which gave the background a deteriorated, "grungey" look. Next, a small set with three brushes called "growth" which had a combination of plants and spirals to give the effect of something growing out from the corners (thus, "growth"). Then, an enormous set, "textile florals," I used a lot of leaves and flowers as well as varying the opacity and rotation of each to give it both a retro stamped look and a wild feel remniscent of the carefree attitude of the band. I tried to capture Ai Yazawa's simple, yet detailed elegance in this paper, giving it a grunge feel as well as very wild and unsure tone experienced by many of the characters at midpoints in her manga. Finally, I looked up quotes of famous rockers to capture that wild, carefree mindset on life experienced by so many people of the rock and roll world, this one coming specifically from "Rush, the Pass." After a few more touch-ups from the "damn dirty" brush set, I "colorized" by changing the hue and saturation to a dim orange which was both complimentary to the brush set and much easier on the eyes than the bright pink. Overall, the theme of this wallpaper can be decsribed as the free lifestyle of British rock.