posting it to the right comm this time because LJ decided to change them once the update failed. I'm sorry I took too long to post this, LJ. Thank god I realized the mistake right away and could delete the other one quickly. This is like the time I sent a half-written email at work I meant to discard. en fin... Sul sul! Remember how I said I was trying to enter the biweekly challenges? That... didn't exactly happen, oops. Mostly because after the first week of November, my inspiration left the building. Again. I blame getting the application my team was working ready to go into production and being busy with all that. (It's gone wonderfully, btw. I think no one expected that we'd only get a couple tickets total... thus far. It goes national on Tuesday after a 'trial run' in six of the most populated provinces.)
I'm currently working on making icons for the Mystery Bag challenge that monthlyinspo so perhaps/hopefully I'll get to post some icons for that in the next couple of weeks. And I'll definitely participate in bestof_icons once again :) (Since I'll be working this time around, nominating might take me longer but whatever. I'll try.)
Onward and upwards... [48 icons] [22] The West Wing [3] The Good Place [2] One Day at a Time, Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card, Tatiana Maslany, Dolly Parton's Heartstrings [1] Superstore, MIB: International, Victoria, Fargo, Lilo & Stitch, Marie Antoinette, The Help, Red Band Society, A Star is Born, Gilmore Girls: AYITL, Veronica Mars: The Movie, The Avengers, The Crown, Parks and Rec, Miranda
[comments]I honestly don't remember making these anymore. Where did time go? What I like about capicontest is that I often get to icon things I haven't watched, or wouldn't have thought of iconing otherwise. So in that sense, it's always fun working with different caps and making new things. IIRC, I tried to go with more muted or pastel-y colors this time around, even if vibrancy slipped a bit. I particularly like the Victoria icon :')
This was an inspiring theme. Gosh, the more I thought about what to icon, the more shows/movies came to mind. I combined proposed caps/fandoms with the ones I came up with. [I was in a chatty mood today] I tried to go with a more pastel-y, old-school feel for the Fargo cap (a show I've passively watched whenever my mom was watching after I got home from work). That cap was amazing. I loved the ASIB shot and I tried to make the details work - be it the hair or the tear. I really enjoyed RBS while it was on, despite having never watched the original and for this one, I just wanted to highlight the colors and composition already present. For the alts... well, most of the work is on the fake-ish backgrounds. (AYITL had its own nature background and I changed it, lol!) ODAAT is probably my favorite anything out of the things I iconed here and I was sad I didn0t go for it. I love Elena and how fun she is.
[brief comment]Alas, I didn't participate in the community as much - and I just need to make one icon per week! (Most of them were made a couple of hours before I went to bed on Sunday. Woohoo.) I just love how weirdly colorful the Cap one looks, haha. The Help was all about shadows and making sure the sadness of the cap came through. And I just loved The Crown's beach scene -- so for this one, I tried to make sure the water and sand were visible. They not always were :P
[etc]Full of last-min icons, which have become my preferred method of doing anything, oops. Schurverse shows are the best and have some of the best friendships. In this case, I just took some of my most recently saved caps and made something with them -- though the Eleanor-Michael one I had to take myself because it wasn't the split second I wanted. I also recently finally watched Clear Card and I just loved the composition of that screencap. (The show has some gorgeous animation and lighting!) Sigh. I love friendships. I feel like some other good friendship icons I made in the March post, which was an example of me taking a simple theme and running with it :')
Random icons :D [Spoilers for Heartstrings, I guess?]
[these are three shows I watched this past month]I feel these are a good collection of some of the fiction tv I watched in November-ish. * I watched CCS: Clear Card and was really into the animation. Because I read the manga in the summer and was reading future numbers while watching it, it was An Experience. Here I tried to give a soft look to a pretty cap. * I binged all of Miranda in like a weekend (coincidentally and not purposely, the weekend it turned 10!) and loved it. I am not too happy with the icon but Gary and Miranda were adorable. And I had to make the screencap myself from Hulu so it was potato quality. * I also watched all of Dolly Parton's Heartstrings. I didn't think of making caps until I was done watching the one that ended up being my favorite, Sugar Hill. These two are technically December icons but I just had the idea last week and had to make it. Maybe it didn't turn out exactly the way I hoped it would but I actually really dig it. * Last min addition because I had somehow missed it: that TGP icon! Inspired by something said on the companion podcast.
BUT... surprise? I did finish that self-imposed challenge I talked about in the October post, where I took a random round of character20n20 and made icons for it! It's usually what I worked on whenever I had a couple of hours to spare. I wish there was more coherence in the set as a whole and in every section but the truth is, it's all over the place as I attempt to fulfill the themes. I also def took more than 20 days but the aim of this was to finish and that I did... even if I could've kept going. I chose CJ (a familiar face 'round here), so I'm sure that'll surprise everyone. (At this point, not only do I love her, she's honestly one of the few characters I'm inspired by that I also have enough screencaps of. Damn it, cap sites that took down 9 seasons' worth of stuff 😭 Why did I get back into iconing after that had happened? I lost so many screencaps when my old-non-Mac laptop died.)
Anyhow, I give you thee... C.J. Cregg from The West Wing.
10 THEMES
Citric Extreme Close-up Half empty/Half full Heartbreak Favorite Outfit
The funniest part about this is that I would keep making icons about it. I mean, a couple of icons here are from this afternoon! (One ended up fitting the monthlyinspo themes so much better, color-wise.) My inspiration comes and goes, really.
[some thoughts... you know I love going over them, heh.]For some of these, the idea was to use completely different scenes or screencaps but I simply couldn't work with them. (To start with, some scenes are just excessively dark and the quality leaves to be desired. For some others, I had repeatedly used them for similar themes and there comes a time you need to stop them. I do want to highlight Heartbreak, which is definitely one of my favorite icons I made this month? Idk. It was one of the first icons I made for this and I think the blend and background are nice. I might talk myself out of it. I also played around with who to feature in Recast and had so many worthy people. I just think Tatiana Maslany would do a great job balancing the comedy and drama. I usually have a go-to heartbreak/pain scene that I had probably used many times. So I obviously went for yet another scene I've probably worked with even more - just not in this context. (But it has natural lighting! And it's from the last season! Everything's better!) For the category, I liked playing around with backgrounds, knowing I had to keep them. The WH had many sets rooms so we see her around a lot but really, all the characters do move around. I tried to go with different vibes in these. Artist's Choice is a mish-mash of so many things. AC1 is an alt for Wander/Category, where I tried to highlight the people and play around with the background (I actually have what the cap looks like with nothing but cropping). AC2 is a recoloring of a cap that I actually really like. (I also have the original after cropping it. Don't ask me why.) AC3 was me trying to do a faceless portrait because gosh, her eyes in this cap look odd but I love the posture. I ultimately think it's clunky but I like everything else. AC4 and 5 are simpler -- pastel/shadows and fake background/texture work respectively.