010 | Tutorial & Wonderous_Stuff
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plus talking about the text on
This is a tutorial that firstillusion asked for over at the Ask the Maker activity that icon_talk is running. If you have any questions about my process or icons, or anything else you want to know, drop 'em over here and I'll get to them as soon as possible!
This first icon was made for a challenge at therainbowtree. One of the options for the challenge was to make an icon of a "crazy" person, so I chose Topher Brink (from Dollhouse).
I started by copying this cap onto a 400x400 px canvas and resized it/dragged it around until I had the crop I wanted. For this cap, I thought it was appropriate to go with a close crop that frames Topher's face and kind of accentuates the way he's looking down and heightens the emotion of the cap.
Though I was originally working on a 400x400 px canvas, all thumbnails here will be 100x100px because it's not really necessary for them to be that big for a tutorial.
Part I, coloring:
I always start with a curves layer to brighten up the image and pull out some of the colors. I'm not going to give the numbers I used on any of my adjustment layers here, because things are different for every cap. But with my curves, I bumped up the red, heightened the green/magenta contrast, and bumped up the blues a little bit.
I did a levels layer next, basically reinforcing the curves layer. I know Levels and Curves are basically the same, but I feel like they give me different kinds of control over the cap, so I use both of them 99% of the time. The biggest change you can see here is that the cap is lightened up a bit more, though there are a few minor tweaks on the colors.
Then came color balance! I absolutely love color balance layers - they're a great way to add contrast and pull out colors if you're working on a colorful icon; if you're not, you can just use them to back up what you did with your Curves and Levels layer. I knew I wanted a pretty monochromatic look, so I used this one to just do a few minor color tweaks because I wasn't quite happy with how the icon was looking, coloring-wise.
Now, I really need some more color in this icon so it's time for selective color! Ever since I got Photoshop, I don't think I've made an icon without selective color, because it's such an easy way to pump up colors. Usually I'll just go straight down all the options and just play with them until they look good to me (not a very refined method, I know…), but since there were no greens, cyans, or blues in this icon, I just skipped those. Anyhow, I used the layer to pump up the yellows and reds and change the hues of the whites, neutrals, and blacks to make the icon just looks a bit warmer.
The icon still looks a bit dark to me, so I put on a brightness/contrast layer to make it a bit brighter.
Now I'm pretty happy with the coloring here, so I copy+merge all visible (cmd+alt+shift+e) and set it on soft light at 60% to add contrast. That makes the icon a bit dark, so I duplicate my base and set it to screen, 10% (still under all the adjustment layers).
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Unfortunately, that kinda made the icon look a bit less colorful. I added two gradient layers (see my layers panel here to save me the trouble of trying to explain them); the first to lighten up the lower lefthand corner of the icon, and the second to add intensity of color that went with the light and shadows of the icons.
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So to recap, the coloring progression here was this:
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NOW I am happy with my coloring (at least for the time being), so I copy+merge everything again and move on to making the icon be more than just a colored box.
Part II, Textures (and more coloring):
I want my icon to have kind of a grungy look, so I take this texture by midnight_road and set it to soft light. However, that makes the icon a little bit darker than I want it, so I invert the texture (cmd+i) and set it to 25% opacity.
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Then I decide (for some reason-honestly, this icon was made in a very ~chaotic sort of order) that I want to even out the coloring a bit, so I create a new layer and fill it with a black-to-white gradient that starts at the upper lefthand corner like so. I set that on soft light, 20%.
That sucks some of the color out of the icon, though, so I add a vibrance layer to pump it back up a bit, and then copy+merge and put the resulting layer on soft light, 50% to add some more contrast.
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At this point, yay! The icon is starting to get some nice deep colors, which I love. But I don't want it getting too dark on the right side, so I add this texture by 17tvfreek on soft light, 30% to both lighten it up a bit and add some more grunginess
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Time for more intensity of color! I add this gradient, which contributes to the lightening up effort, and then do another vibrance layer.
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At this point, I feel like I'm almost done, so I start looking at all the little things that are bugging me and figure out how to fix them.
The first one here is Topher's chin. It's all jagged and LQ looking, which I do not want in my icon. So I copy+merge everything and take a blur brush to the layer to fix it.
Then I duplicate that layer and sharpen it with unsharp mask (filter > sharpen > unsharp mask) and set it on 20% opacity. I mask bits of that out, then do a copy+merge and sharpen that layer as well, this time on 100% opacity. This one has a lot more masking. For reference, I turned off the masks on the last example below so you can see what the icon would have looked like without them.
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Now I decide that the icon isn't quite grungy enough for my tastes, so I grab this texture by crystalplane and set it to screen, 10%. This makes the icon a bit too red, though, so I put a black and white adjustment layer on it as a clipping mask (cmd+alt+g) to take care of that.
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Then, I add this texture by jordannamorgan to make it a bit darker. It's set on soft light, 30%. And then I'm not the biggest fan of the lighting 'cause it's sorta too light on the left and too dark on the right, so I add a black and white circular gradient (like so) on soft light, 50% to kinda even that out a bit and shift focus to the middle of the icon instead of the sides.
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Then I add a quick vibrance layer, and I'm done with that bit!
So, recapping: the coloring here went like so:
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And the touch-ups and texturing:
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Part III, Text:
I'm pretty sure I knew from an early point in this icon that I wanted to have text on it, but text is always the last thing I do because I don't want it to get messed up by all my blurring and sharpening and adjustment layers.
I didn't know what text I wanted on the icon, though, so the first thing I always do when that's the case is go look at quotes - Wikiquote is a generally a good place to find/double-check them. Since the theme of this icon (if you can even remember that) was "crazy," I wanted to do something from the end of the show; but since the cap looks really sad to me, I wanted it to be a sad quote. I eventually took one from one of the last conversations between Topher and Adelle (SPOILERS in case you might someday watch Dollhouse):
DeWitt: You said it could only be activated manually... You're not coming back.
Topher: Small price to pay. I didn't want to cause any more pain.
I thought that quote was really kinda perfect for Topher's character and what happened to him at the end of that show and I could talk about that for ages, but I'm not going to because this is a tutorial about icons, not about how much I love Topher. UM. Right.
When Janie asked for this tutorial, she mentioned cool text placement, but I don't really think I can take that much credit for this. First off, there weren't many places to put the text anyway, and then I was totally totally totally inspired by Shawna (longerthanwedo's) thing where she does text on people's cheeks. So…sorry I couldn't provide any more insight on that choice. XD But it just felt right so I went with it.
Then it came to picking the font. There are a ton of font guides that go more into which fonts are appropriate for which situations and whatnot, so I won't go into that one here. I probably played around with a ton of fonts before realizing that I needed a fixed-width font (one similar to Courier), and I eventually settled on Letter Gothic Standard. Then I spent a little bit of time playing around with settings because it needed to be small, so it fit on the icon, but big enough to be readable.
I ended up with it on medium weight, size 9 pt., with crisp antialiasing and the color set to white (#ffffff).
That's a little bit too obtrusive for my tastes, though, so I gaussian blurred the layer (filter > blur > gaussian blur) at probably .1 or .2 px to make it less harsh. Then, to add a little bit of framing, I made a small white line (1 px wide) on the left side of the block of text and gaussian blurred that as well, then set it to screen 60% to finish off the icon.
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And that's that! I hope that was not too confusing, but if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask me!
Since Janie also asked about my text on this icon, which I did differently, I decided to talk about that as well. I'm not going to provide a tutorial for the rest of the icon, just the text part.
This icon was made for last round at inspired20in20 and was supposed to represent a facet of John's personality, so I chose the text "you're very loyal, very quickly" (which is said to John by Mycroft) because that line = John's side of his friendship with Sherlock, pretty much. I was going for a sort of similar look with this text as compared to the last icon, with the small, kinda blurred text (because if you notice, the icon right now has kind of a vertical grain going on, so I wanted to match the text to that).
When I'm doing small text, I normally look at fixed-width fonts because they are just so much easier to keep readable, in my opinion. This icon is done in Inconsolata, 7 pt., right aligned, antialiasing set to strong and leading at auto. The color is a light yellow that I pulled from the icon with the eyedropper tool.
So once that text is on there (notice that I just started with "very loyal very quickly, so the first bit of this is only going to have those four words), I want to make it look pretty. Because right now I really do like the right justify, because it makes it line up with John's face, but I don't like how the left edges are all jagged. :| So I play around with the tracking of each line.
At first I have both the first and third line ('very') tracked at 300, and the second line ('loyal') at 100, while the last line ('quickly') is at 0.
Now, I'm not very happy with this. It's kinda oddly placed on the icon, because although I wanted it overlapping John's face to kinda balance out all the darkness over there, it's too high to balance the whole icon. Also, the word 'quickly' looks really cramped. At this point, I played around with the settings (mainly the leading) for awhile to try to get it to take up the right amount of space. When I spread out the leading, though, it looked weird, so I eventually decided to add another line of text.
As for the tracking, I added +50 to whatever value I had for each line to make 'quickly' more readable. Then, I moved the text down and to the right a bit and did a gaussian blur at .2 px on it.
Yay! That's looking a lot better. However, it's not vertically blurred, which is what I want it to be. I try doing a motion blur on it (filter > blur > motion blur), but that makes it unreadable. When I try lessening the blur, it doesn't really give me the effect I want. Not cool.
I really want that blur look, though, so I duplicate the text layer and do a motion blur on that, then set it on 50% opacity and drag it under the other text layer. Legibility + blur, success!
As before, if you have any questions, let me know and I will do my best to answer them! And if there's anything else you'd like to know, ask me here!
Also, some exciting news - the other day, I woke up to a message inviting me to join wonderous_stuff, a multimaker comm (with 11 makers other than me, all of whom are, well, wonderous) that has monthly challenges to inspire and push its makers. I won't be deserting this icon journal by any means, but I (we) would be flattered if you watched the comm to see what we come up with!