I don't have photoshop open atm, but tomorrow I'll take a go maybe. I love icon challenges XD
uhh, lesseee. - did you color the lineart? I usually put a color layer of a low opacity (or low saturation) over the lineart, it'll keep the color from looking too grayed out. - sometimes when I do skin for pale people I'll do the shade with a bit more rose or yellow tint to it to try and give it something more that way. - hair is a great place to add some more volume. white is awful for that XD but a blue tint can help a lot. = right now the skin color looks a little gray to me, or more on the yellow-gray and not enough on the warm scale.
Also, a trick I do on all of my icons at the end is that I flatten the icon. Select it, and then paste. (So you have two duplicate layers). Set the top to soft light, use a small blur and lower the opacity a bit. IDK WHY but it helps sometimes.
My color layers are above the lineart in their own "multiply" layers, so I can stick a layer in there above the lineart. That does look like it helps some, just from experimenting. It's annoying because to me it seems like the line width is really variable between icons, so like that first one up there looks great to me but like this icon ^ I never use because it looks weird.
And yeah, I keep futzing with his skin tone, and it's already less gray than it was in my first go at these, but without any other real color in the icon a really strong skintone looks strange to me. :|a
. . . oh. I see. Uhh this is an outdated tutorial, but. THIS is basically how I do my icons. I find it gives me pretty good control of the colors and such.
. . . I should really do a new tut, since that one is obsolete for like my new style, but it's the same idea.
Personally I like super shiny things, so to me that looks like the problem. But aside from that they're not really bad! I suck majorly at explanations, but I can try to explain you how I color stuff usually?
What are you using to color, photoshop or something else? And are the levels on multiply, or on something else? Usually I make the skin layer in multiply, then change it to color burn, duplicate and put the new layer in linearburn (... or linearburn first and color burn then, I have a hard time remembering because my photoshop is in italian), and duplicate again and put it in soft light.
I usually do the same combination for hair as well, but it depends on the artstyle! As for the screentones, I do the thing I explained in my tutorial here.
I HAVE NO IDEA IF IT HELPS but I hope it did :(a if not I can just color them for you but aaah that's no fun
I am using Photoshop 7. XD And I have single color layers are on multiply.
Possibly I should play with duplicating my layers more - I remember that tutorial of yours, and it definitely seems like a start. :|a
YEAH I WANT TO COLOR THEM, and there are a bunch to color, but I also want to try something different than I have currently and I am failing to come up with anything attractive. :/
OH RIGHT for Soul's hair you should go with white-with-a-hint-of-blue as opposed to just plain gray, because it looks better and is less difficult to work with!
I think playing around and see what works is the best way to learn, so you should try and see what works and what doesn't!
If it helps I can upload some PSDs of icons/stuff I colored, so you can see what layer is on what and so on, check out what you like and see if it works for you and so on!
I did consider not coloring them! And maybe just doing an overlay or something. But idk, I like color, and even picking a slight overlay color was proving too much for my creative senses last night. \o_O/
Estelle's icons are colored lineart on a multiply layer OVER the colors I used, with a single color burn/dodge color for all the shadows (lazy? Oh yes; easier/faster? Also yes.) with a finishing gradient fill on a screen layer over them, to soften the colors and do that thing to the background.
I can open ps up and show you what my layers look like, really quick, this evening if you'd like?
Though you've already got AJ and Blackstar to help you, and they make lovely icons, so :3
As far as the actual shading on stuff goes -- I've just been taking cues from what exists. Like, all of Yeager's icons I was looking at what style of shading they put on his face in those few icons I've got from the opening, and imitating that; I did likewise for estelle.
The icon you used to reply to hitode, for example, would give you a sort of idea on how to shade the face/hair, depending on the light source
Yeah, I keep going back and forth on my shading. I like things better with shading but when I put it in it ends up looking sloppy. But half of my icons already have screentone shading and half of them don't, so they need something on the other ones. Like, #2 icon up there has a little bit of shading I put in myself, because otherwise it looked awful.
The better color choices have definitely worked with the skin. What Black*Star said about the hair would also make the icons better. Have you tried some adjustment layers? A Hue/Saturation layer with an increase in the saturation would bring out the colors a bit more. Too much increase would make the colors eye-blindingly bright, but just enough would give them a nice look.
Also the quality of the manga would have an effect on the icon. The base for the first one looks really nice, it has nice, crisp black lines, while the base for the third one is not that bad, but the jaggedness of the lines would have an effect on the look of the icon.
I tried some more saturation, yeah, which they definitely need one way or another.
Also yeeeaah, the only reason I like Medusa's manga icons as much as I do (even the ones that are just green-tinted), is because I have iconned every panel of the manga that Medusa is in and thrown out all the ones where the quality/style did not work as well as I wanted to for an icon. >_> But yeah, these are some of the best of the set as far as Soul's go. Ideally I would get a better sense of quality before I put color on and go "augh"
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uhh, lesseee.
- did you color the lineart? I usually put a color layer of a low opacity (or low saturation) over the lineart, it'll keep the color from looking too grayed out.
- sometimes when I do skin for pale people I'll do the shade with a bit more rose or yellow tint to it to try and give it something more that way.
- hair is a great place to add some more volume. white is awful for that XD but a blue tint can help a lot.
= right now the skin color looks a little gray to me, or more on the yellow-gray and not enough on the warm scale.
Also, a trick I do on all of my icons at the end is that I flatten the icon. Select it, and then paste. (So you have two duplicate layers). Set the top to soft light, use a small blur and lower the opacity a bit. IDK WHY but it helps sometimes.
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And yeah, I keep futzing with his skin tone, and it's already less gray than it was in my first go at these, but without any other real color in the icon a really strong skintone looks strange to me. :|a
*goes to play with things more*
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. . . I should really do a new tut, since that one is obsolete for like my new style, but it's the same idea.
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And it looks good in some cases, and is very quick payoff when there are only a few colors, but. Not really working for Soul's.
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What are you using to color, photoshop or something else? And are the levels on multiply, or on something else? Usually I make the skin layer in multiply, then change it to color burn, duplicate and put the new layer in linearburn (... or linearburn first and color burn then, I have a hard time remembering because my photoshop is in italian), and duplicate again and put it in soft light.
I usually do the same combination for hair as well, but it depends on the artstyle! As for the screentones, I do the thing I explained in my tutorial here.
I HAVE NO IDEA IF IT HELPS but I hope it did :(a if not I can just color them for you but aaah that's no fun
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Possibly I should play with duplicating my layers more - I remember that tutorial of yours, and it definitely seems like a start. :|a
YEAH I WANT TO COLOR THEM, and there are a bunch to color, but I also want to try something different than I have currently and I am failing to come up with anything attractive. :/
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I think playing around and see what works is the best way to learn, so you should try and see what works and what doesn't!
If it helps I can upload some PSDs of icons/stuff I colored, so you can see what layer is on what and so on, check out what you like and see if it works for you and so on!
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Seeing what you've done probably couldn't hurt!
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I can open ps up and show you what my layers look like, really quick, this evening if you'd like?
Though you've already got AJ and Blackstar to help you, and they make lovely icons, so :3
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The icon you used to reply to hitode, for example, would give you a sort of idea on how to shade the face/hair, depending on the light source
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Also the quality of the manga would have an effect on the icon. The base for the first one looks really nice, it has nice, crisp black lines, while the base for the third one is not that bad, but the jaggedness of the lines would have an effect on the look of the icon.
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Also yeeeaah, the only reason I like Medusa's manga icons as much as I do (even the ones that are just green-tinted), is because I have iconned every panel of the manga that Medusa is in and thrown out all the ones where the quality/style did not work as well as I wanted to for an icon. >_> But yeah, these are some of the best of the set as far as Soul's go. Ideally I would get a better sense of quality before I put color on and go "augh"
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