Well, first off, this wallpaper was created for Round II of Gideon's Pool Party. The word I was trying represent is "Beauty," and I think I did a pretty good job of doing that, even though what I have isn't exactly the most original concept ever.

Onto the process. I started off with this Suion scan that I found over at Anime Project Alliance (thank you Nuriko. Oh, and that is also a shrunk down version of it, I used the high resolution one to outline the city.) Then my wallpaper looked like this after I painted and vectored and threw it all together. That was just kind of ugly, though, so, I knew I had to switch it up. I then filled in the bottom part of the wallpaper, and still knew that I needed a new character to replace the shape of the girl. So I found this nifty I'll Generation Basketball scan, by the artist Hiroyuki Asada, and it worked perfectly for what I had in mind. The challenge required that I added a pattern to the wallpaper, which was a real pain trying to find something to work well with it. I didn't upload the pattern version here, because I like the simplicity of the one without it, but here it is for anyone who is interested. No smaller resolutions of that because I really don't care enough.

Haha, award for the crappiest description of a wallpaper ever goes to me. Oh well, I guess.

The title is completely inspired by the song "Adam Lives In Theory" by Lauryn Hill. It's such an amazing song, I seriously recommend not only checking out the song, but the entire MTV Unplugged album that it is on. It's so honest and full of emotion. :/ It's beyond just music. I can't explain it. I can only urge you to go and become obsessed with her music like I am. Here is a link to another song by her on the same album that I love just as much: http://youtube.com/watch?v=EyOhUXsGqak

Lauryn Hill

"See, fantasy is what people want, but reality is what they need, and I've just retired from the fantasy part."

Damn, this is the longest description I have ever written, I think. Before I'm finished, though, I want to let you all know that I posted a new Journal entry with some of my older wallpapers that I am proud of. Go check it out if you have some free time.

EDIT: Oh! Happy birthday aplastictree. I would dedicate this to you, but I would be lying if I said my original intent was to make this for you. I hope you have a good one, though. Actually, I find dedicating wallpapers to people in the first place to be completely ridiculous. It's like saying, "Hey, if you don't like this wallpaper, you're an asshole! Alright, have a good day!" Haha, like, why put someone on the spot like that? Whatever.

EDIT 2: I forgot to thank Gideon and w00tazn for their help. Seriously, thank you guys.