Demon Piper

OK so in Book 1 (spoilers if you haven't read it), The Babysitter, Piper is a witch who is disguised as a 17-year-old girl who is the twins' and their brother's babysitter while their parents are on vacation. She is trying to kill the twins, as revenge for when they wished on a magical Christmas carnival well to be grown up (SVT Magna Edition Big For Christmas, a rip-off of the movie Big) and were trying to drive a donut truck (as 12-year-olds in grown-up bodies) and caused a five car pile up. Later in that book, they found the carnival wishing well again (it disappeared after they made their wish, for the plot) and wished to be 12 again. But they didn't wish to reverse the effects of their first wish, so presumably anyone who was hurt or killed in that car wreck remained injured/ dead. So that was my backstory/ reason for Piper wanting revenge (like she was one of the other people in the five-car pileup). Which I personally think makes more sense than the SVT miniseries The Frightening Four where randomly, there's a new old haunted mansion, the Sullivan mansion (how many old, run-down houses are there in Sweet Valley?? at least 3), and all of a sudden, Mrs. Wakefield hates Halloween (she never hated it in other books! Is it too much to ask for a little continuity if we're making up villains who want to kill the twins?)

So, anyway, Piper reveals herself to be a witch, scares the hell out of the twins and their brother, Jessica "banishes" her (I decided that the Saccharin Valley Universe was trying to even the playing field seeing as how the twins are the main characters and even though they're in danger many times, they never actually die, so a book of witchcraft appeared at library for Jessica to check out and use), and then she comes back as a demon to terrorize them some more. This was a plot from approximately 22 years ago, when I was a teenager (and we didn't have self-publishing on Amazon) and really thought the demon-witch aspect was sexy (asexy, because I'm asexual and it's a horror-parody of a middle-school series, so no actual sex; I just thought that was cool. Better than fake-zombie girl/woman Eva Sullivan, at least). Now I think it's rather clunky (the reason she appears as a green-skinned demon with ram horns is because she has a spell to be possessed by a demon called the Nyx, which gives her demon strength but takes away her witch powers; and her demonic self has a weakness: iron; so the twins have a better chance of defeating her), which is why she doesn't appear as a demon in later books in the series... just a witch. A witch hell-bent on revenge, settling for casting various spells on the twins if she can't kill them. Because it's fun and vents my various frustrations with Sweet Valley Twins.

I was always trying to draw demon Piper, by hand in the SVT books I was defacing, in Microsoft Paint (remember, this was the early 2000s), my Corel software, and eventually in Illustrator. But it never quite looked the way I wanted it to.

Here's one from a clip art that I modified (although her hair looks pink):

doesn't look demon-y enough, just a girl face with horns. (also mouth misaligned)

 

Next I was playing with my Corel software (again, early 2000s) which had pieces of people (face, hair, features) that you could put together in Corel Print House Magic Lite (I know, I'm old):

this is Piper when she's revealed as a witch (with the silver triangle on her forehead, something I stole from The Headless Cupid)

then an attempt at a demon face (added in MS Paint) from the Corel Piper face, with clip art ram horns

then another demon face with different ram horns. Close, but not quite.

then in Illustrator, trying to make light and shadows, and horns, without a reference photo underneath. Also, I don't know what the face is from. But, it looks terrible. 

 

Then still in Illustrator, using a photo of a dude wearing "Hellacious" FX makeup (I was perusing various websites like Scream Team looking at prosthetic makeup to use as a reference, but there were no female demons)

 

Then in Illustrator, but without a realistic portrait of Piper (although I used to scan magazine photos of models who looked like her - again, behold the early-noughts technology) so I ended up using a photo of someone (probably male) in "Gargoyle" make up from a Halloween kit of cheap prosthetics (Reel FX by Rubies? Something like that. I also used to hoard images from searches, inevitably of various prosthetic makeup kits on models). Looks demon-y but not female. (Also that necklace is a hot mess).

So, the whole point of this is, I finally discovered a way to use GIMP to modify the photorealistic GAN portrait of Piper to look demonic. So I used some GAN portraits of Piper. I made her slightly older in GAN so she would have lines on her face. In GIMP I used those lines to create the outlines of the demon features (pointier nose, chiseled cheekbones, witchy chin, heavy forehead). I did this with "move pixels" and "grow area". I made her teeth and eyes demonic - that's easy in Photoshop/GIMP; I've been doing that for awhile now using a layer mask - and added ram horns from a stock image. Used smudge/ blur and various filters to make it cohesive.

I think it turned out pretty good (for 20 years of trying to render this character!)

without horns, with open mouth (looking like the edges of her makeup needed to be blended better):

 

without horns, closed mouth, two different styles:

with horns:
 

 

 

 

So, that's fun. I'm also doing witchy versions - like "Fallon's" grandmother Brighid when she turns into a classic Halloween witch in Book 2, The Witch; Piper as "Faith Green" the older woman in Book 6 The Babysitter II (who's basically the evil twin of "May Brown" from SVT #54);  and I'll probably try to do Jessica in "hag face" after Fallon Morrison flings a curse at her (in Book 2). Then I can do vampire faces (Jessica turns into a vampire in Book 5 The Vampires Part 2); and I'll try to do demon Tobias too (in Book 1 it's demons all around, because in 1998 I was obsessed with the movie Legend and Tim Curry as the Lord of Darkness).

 

I just found another typo in The Babysitter. Dammit. Also I never uploaded the updated Book 2, The Witch, where I changed the name of Piper's "cousin" from Craig Ross to Craig Riordan (so he only has so many aliases in Saccharin Valley [Tobey, Tobias North, Harlan O'Connell, Craig Riordan], otherwise it's confusing. Also it's probably bad that he's described as her "cousin" but they're really boyfriend and girlfriend and not related*).

And I'm still waiting for my copy of Book 7.

*and also 17 and 16, respectively, and not her being 12 and him being like, 20, obvs, because ew