[OOC] Redoing icons

[bewareoftraps]

I decided my icons were too plain and started to color them! But I'm a little worried they're coming out looking not so hot, so here I am to ask you - yes, you - what you think.

Comments

[sigrunic]

I LIKE THE COLOUR AS IT IS but they could do with a bit more brightness/contrast? But that's just me being picky, I say go with the colour icons you did o/

[bewareoftraps]

Yeah, you're probably right; I dulled the color a bit because I was worried about them looking too radioactive but I probably overcompensated. I'll probably end up playing with them and touching them up a little more, so thank you for the input! ♥

[alwaysuserubber]

They look a little dark in that tea stained kind of way on my computer, but EVERYTHING IS DARK ON MY COMPUTER so. :|a

[bewareoftraps]

They probably are a bit dark, I used lots of grunge to dull it down. |D;; Because I'm kind of the opposite, everything looks BLINDINGLY BRIGHT on my computer.

[gothrumefirst]

I actually kind of like the grunge effect-- I really like how everyone's "personal style" comes out when they colour icons. No two people colour an icon the same way!

That said, I think if you're going to colour them all, you should probably clean up your bases first? Maybe it's just me, but I think dodgy scans to me look even dodgier when they're coloured. The second two are fine but the first one could use a little cleaning, I think. Maybe it's a little more effort than most people are willing to put into an icon set but I always think the end result of having really crisp lines is worth it.

[bewareoftraps]

I think the problem lies not so much in the quality of the scans as it does in that Kitoh's art in Narutaru is just really messy - which isn't that noticable while reading it but becomes painfully obvious when iconned. Ironically, one of the reasons I decided to color them was to try and cover up the messiness of the bases...but it ended up making it stand out more. And yeah, I totally agree with what you're saying because I've been wishing they looked a little bit crisper myself. Admittedly I'm not very good at cleaning, but I'll see if a second round of touching up does the trick!

[perfectdays]

There are lots of tips and tricks when it comes to cleaning! Levels are a good start but by no means the only way. The dodge & burn tools are pretty damn handy, especially when you've got terrible scans from JUMP that vary in lightness across the page. But if your main problem is just bad line quality rather than bad scans, it may be that you just have to redraw some of the lines :x. (Personally I recommend doing this on a new layer above the original line art so that then you can measure your progress and any mistakes are fixed easily. I also find that Photoshop brushes always come out a little blurrier than the original lines, so the other reason for doing the new lines on a separate layer is so you can sharpen them later if you want so that they match up with the sharpness of the original lines. If the sharpen filter comes out too strong-- which it often does-- you can always go edit > fade sharpen until you get a consistency that you like.)

[tengu_topper]

Hahahaha, I AM ALWAYS FOR COLORED ICONS! I can't do it myself because I am horrendously lazy and would much rather just figure out a colorscheme instead (Kantarou's are the closest I've gotten to colored, and even with them I didn't really ... go all the way; I want to redo them soon :x).

That said, my work monitor is brighter than the one I use at home, and these do look a tad dark? Not in a necessarily bad way, but it's something I'd keep in mind--the grunge works, it's just a matter of being aware that other people might not see them as clearly. :|a

GOOD LUCK you are possibly better at this than I am. XD