29. 2020 icon progression
HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!
Hope 2021 is your best year yet. After such a weird and seemingly bad year, I hope the next one brings lots of happiness (love, laughter, friendship, purpose, and a dance 😉) your way ♥♥♥♥♥
My idea for this year's icon progression is to have a couple of longer explanations for the process behind 1-2 representative or favorite icons per month if I remember enough. We'll see! Brace yourself for long ramblings (pls skip those).
layout credit: rocketgirl2
January
jan.
Both my best icons from 2018 and 2019 were from January... so I felt both this responsibility to make something great but also to switch it up? (I don't know what it says about me that the best icon is from January.)
This time around, I didn't make that many icons in January, unlike last year (2018 was quieter, and yet that Saoirse icon stood out immediately).
Spotlight: I really like how the Dunkirk icon came out - not only because the colors do evoke the vibrant blue summer sky but the sun texture (desaturated, probably sized down slightly) truly adds something. I also like the Narnia icon for Susan - the hair painting, the flower texture erased to seem like a hair piece, Aslan as the background texture (it was part of the og screencap, to the side).
February
feb.
All year I've felt like I didn't make many icons in February didn't have that many icons but it did, and somehow there were small batches that were amazing, imo?
* The One Pair, Five Icons small battle from itsabattlefield was a great opportunity to make some Shibert icons, which were a new OTP at the start of the year (RIP, AWAE).
* The kiss prompt at tvshowsic? I love all four icons dearly (and picking between this Jafael icon and the B/B one always hurts me; that one's so colorful!).
* The B&W small battle from itsabattlefield got some solid icons out of it (and I love the variety of grays I got in this icon).
Spotlight: I've felt like I told the story about this AWAE icon on its post (link above) but I'll try and summarize it- I wanted to do some floating, negative space-heavy icon that was simple yet beautiful. The frame texture hadn't even been what I had in mind (it was some other, slightly more modern technique) but once I saw it in the folder, I knew it'd work out even better. The background is halfway between clouds and paint and it works really well? I dig it a lot.
March
mar.
This month, my main set was for the TV Tropes challenge over at fandom10in30 @ DW, whose premise I loved instantly. It was the first time in a while I made more than 5 icons with the same fandom for an actual challenge (if we don't count that CJ set from late last year that I did for myself) and it was fun to just try and stretch those muscles. It made me realize that a lot of TWW's tropes are in things that are hard to show on an icon but I tried my best.
The other challenge I dug a lot was elitesimplicity's "One Decade" in which every icon you entered had to be from a different decade. In fact, the other two icons I chose are from this one. Spotlight: Aimee's was fun because green isn't a color I use a lot but here's so prominent. I think the hints of color from the headphones + the music texture are just fun. (The scene itself is… not.) The crop and the coloring are fun and overall, I think it's a beautiful icon that just pops.
April
apr.
A couple of solid batches of icons are here: itsabattlefield's techniques (here represented by the S60 icon) and iconthat @DW's 1980s' challenge. (I surprisingly didn't pick the icon that won something, aka the droids, lol). I also entered the bingo at the7days, and... god, even if I like a lot of them individually, I don't love it as a set. (Since it was such a productive month, I also struggled to pick icons.)
Spotlight: attempts at originality! Wow.
* The first icon (Jack from TIU) was another one that I started playing around with; maybe the fully colored versions look better but I think this mix of B&W and color came out really nice! You could argue it's about memories on more than one level.
* Crops! I love the closer crops in these Chernobyl and AWAE icons, and the coloring in the former just looks incredible, if I say so myself. Fun coloring!
* And finally, that S60 icon. I have mixed feelings on that show but I've been trying to get this icon right for the last 2-3 years (to a place it was close to my vision) and I think I finally did. The simplicity of it is great but I love the little composition details - e.g. how the Cal and Allison just fade into the background and sit on the text without it being extremely obvious.
May
may. also may.
This might have been my most productive month? Whew.
I am actually proud of the the7days' 7 genres batch - I made it in a week (something I can't simply do; I overthink my picks too much) because I had somehow missed the first posts and reminders and it's such a fantastic prompt?! I had to enter. I'm actually proud of that set and how colorful it is - definitely one of my favorites this year.
While I missed those posts, I was making my second set this year for fandom10in30 @ DW, where there was a mystery box challenge (with so many great prompts and inspos!) and I actually won?!?! It wasn't a set I loved at first, either, but I truly like a lot of the individual pieces and it ended up working as a more or less cohesive set.
Also here, the elitesimplicity's Unknown challenge. I love how this Russian Doll icon came about. Love the crop; love the vibrant coloring with a hint of muteness that is unusual for me.
As for the spotlight - JTV! It's not a complex icon but I went crazy with my liberal use of different light gradients and textures for this, to make it so vibrant and yellow (a color I also don't use much). I think the pièce of resistance here is the petals texture that just 1) blends so well with the icon and J/R 2) truly fits the J/R motif from the show. It tickles me when I can add that type of layer to the composition of an icon.
June
I don't seem to have made any icons this month. Part of it was due to my other laptop's battery problems (the charger wasn't working or connecting well). I have not gotten used to this laptop yet and hate how most icons I make look in it.
Another important part was probably being busy with work but let's ignore that.
July
jul.
There is a bit of a trend: darker colorings, for the most part, more muted tones.
I love that Pose icon so much - seems to have that the squad/community feel the show has. Also taking out its real background was hard (this was made for elitesimplicity's LGBT). I thought my capicontest's Zoom entries were strong overall but the coloring for this one took me by surprise - such a noir feel, especially the way the coloring brings out the red. And tvshowsic's Never Iconed Before gave me the opportunity to try and icon shows I had never used before (Babylon Berlin, Catastrophe, For Life (2020)) and I love the crop and earthy tones of these two.
Spotlight: the unexpected cohesiveness and zoom-like nature of those tvshowsic entries. :D The Pose icon. I know it aint much and it probably isn't even the best here (I'm partial to the The Notebook icon) but I love the warm gradients, the pink colors, the texture that brings together that pink/yellow scheme… and how it reminds me of that scene. Pose has been one of my favorite binges this year.
August
aug.
HELLO, MY FAVORITE SET THIS YEAR? (Probably? It was when I posted it. I do love 7 Genres and Muted/Vibrant, too.) I feel like no one feels like I do but it's my most cohesive set so far this year and one I truly loved making. Maybe it's because I worked on it over my vacation and forced myself to think about it and play around, and having that time clearly shows. I think it's fun and closer to the ideas I had in mind for some icons (for the most part, I tried to respect the original's prompts). Also, my two good Mandalorian icons were from this month. Please clap.
Spotlight: I'm obviously going to talk about the first icon, which I'm proud of and probably overrate but it took me forever to figure out and make, SO. It was the last icon I made in this batch, almost giving up on it until some other moment. My original idea was to make an icon about the 'pick something' line, with Toby and Danny (and maybe Bartlet/Santos too) but I just couldn't find a Toby screencap for the episode that worked well. Somehow, I started playing with the other caps I had for other icons and decided I could make it about the very last scene and the conflict they've argued over in the episode. Could it be better? Sure. (In December, I changed its background colors and it shone even more, imo.) But I'm just proud of myself for making anything like this. It's almost as complex as I've done… and love there are some ~~layers to it.
September
sep.
This was a month dominated by the first ever somein30 challenge - a fun technical game that I decided to try and enter hard mode and… I don't really know how I feel about the set, even three months later. It's grown on me and I like a lot of the icons on their own. I think I was so high on the August set I hated everything else but I worked on it for weeks, in whatever free time I had.
Spotlight: I simply love the greens on that Bones icon - they look so soft and fairytale-like. The original cap has very dark blues so for the unnatural coloring, I went with this sea green that would still look nice. (It's a v mild unnatural route, I guess.) The other half of the hard mode was text texture and I found that one (don't call this love) that fits B&B at any point in their courtship. I guess I'm just fascinated by how soft and lovely this looks - compared to the harsher versions, you can tell there is a bunch of grungey textures, some starry like and many gradient maps, hah.
October
Another month I truly didn't open Photoshop (and LJ, for the most part) and was mostly out - unlike June, I just couldn't bring myself to d. It was an important month for me personally. Started doing things I should've done forever ago, like telling my bosses I was interested in a change of project (of course, they conveniently forgot and had to remind them in November… and it's early December and I'm still waiting for the actual change.) and worked a bit on myself. I'd also say I just didn't have time and wasn't in the right headspace.
November
nov.
Most of what I said in October applies here but the funny thing is that I looked at this month's somein30 challenge and kept thinking that it'd be fun to make something for it. (But first, I warmed up with some elitesimplicity lol).
So ofc, out of nowhere and with a week?, ten days? to go, I decided to make a set. Even if it was just 5 and awful. It helped me reaffirm I'm a natural, vibrant-ish coloring person when it comes to my own iconmaking. And that not being able to decide got this set from 10 to 15 to 16. And I still really dig it - the contrast between both styles just looks pretty.
It's nothing adventurous and I feel like they might be too simple, yet some of these look pretty despite not having made anything since the previous somein30 round.
Spotlight(s): That Queen's Gambit icon that was the people's choice for the set took me a while because I kept making it both muted and vibrant depending on the amount of each I had for the set - somehow the constant ended up being the green makeup in the eyes and the fact it looks too pink to my eye sometimes. OTOH, that TGP icon was fun and actually preserves part of the dirt on the feet from the original cap because removing it made the feet shape strange. I think the choice of a blueish purple and the flower texture give it a nice touch and complements colors already present.
December
dec.
I didn't do a lot this month either, yikes. I did love a few of the challenges (like Memory Lane at somein30 that inspired me but c'mon - my fandoms have been pretty constant even if we've added + I didn't want to go back to check sunny-raining) but in the end, I only made the remakes activity for bestof_icons - and lots of the requests happened to be icons I liked (some I even loved), including my most favorite icon of the year. This is always a really fun activity, particularly when ~~older icons are chosen or inspiration strikes, and you can make a whole new icon, or when an icon that wasn't quite there becomes something else (I'm thinking of this first CJ icon, for instance).
The icons I picked seem to have a bit of a palette going on and that's amusing.
Spotlight: Wait, me, talking about a different version of an icon I've already talked about? For that ~~fave icon, this gave me the chance to change that icon's background color (the original was gold because of the post palette, iirc, IDK why I didn't choose the lavender I made this month) but then I tried to remake it in a way its essence remained but was also different… and I think it still looks cool. Some of the remakes were more succesful than the others. I also made a couple of Taylor Swift icons (yet not as many as I'd have liked) and some stock icons so it was a bit of a full circle thing with January. For more on my chosen icon of the year head here, where I talk about it in a lot of detail.
Goodbye, 2020
looking back… It was not my most productive year, against all odds, and I keep being somewhat inconsistent when it comes to resolutions… but hey, I'm quite proud of some of the icons I made this year! I think I have my small niche and a somewhat defined style. It can be hit or miss but I'm slowly trying to step out of my comfort zone from time to time, with mixed resultls.
looking ahead… I'm hoping to participate in the current your_favourites challenge if I get the time in the next couple of days? I'd love to say I'll participate in a challenge a month but I can't control my muse and work (both professional and personal). I'm also hoping to keep evolving and trying out new things and keep improving my current "technique".
Here's hoping 2021 is a much better year for everyone and that I'm slightly more consistent with my iconmaking :)
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2020's icons
December
November
September
July/Aug
May
March
February
January
