Ask the Icon Maker: Answers; Part 2

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In which I answer the last half of the questions I received. In this section I talk about: how I achieve light on my icons (a few icons explained and one quick tutorial), icon trends (mostly just me talking and being a dork), and icon makers who inspire me (cue cheesy music).






Everyone and their mother ambiguous_opal, raiindust, and lacedcrown asked HOW DO YOU GET THE AMAZING LIGHT EFFECTS YOUR ICONS HAVE?
The icons that were asked about specifically were:






So the general answer to this question is: MAGIC. Ahaha, no. I don't know really. Each icon is different. I just...look at the icon decide where I want light in particular and then emphasize that. Then the way I "color", I guess, adds to that until you get what I get. Uh. It is sort of one of those non-explainy things. But, um, I'll take each icon in question and explain what I remember doing, and THEN I'll make an icon from scratch and see if I can explain the process as I go through it? Yeah. Okay.



So, lacedcrown asked about the light/depth/contrast in this image. Mostly because, if you look at the original screencap, you'll see that it is kind of orangey and blah looking.

Anyway, this icon looks like a combo of light blobs (for focus points-side note: these are different for each icon, but I usually use some around the face), soft light layers (for bright/intense color and warmth), and High Pass layers on soft light. Um. The light blobs would add the points of focus, soft light for contrast, and High Pass layers for contrast/depth that wouldn't over do the orange. High Pass is pretty good for that, and by that I mean deepening the shadows without necessarily ruining the light in an icon or making the colors go funny. Lol, I love how I just repeat myself over and over in this paragraph. WHATEVER. You get my point.



ambiguous_opal asked about this one, and she mentioned stripy-ness which, idk, I can't answer that. Lol! BUT. I can tell you all about this icon. Ah huh. Basically, I had just finished browsing around icons, and staring at a certain maker's icons (and, once again, debating whether or not I like them. I can never make up my mind. Sometimes I'm all 'hidden depths!' and other times I'm like 'too blurry and indistinct'.). Anyway, on this particular night, I was definitely on the 'hidden depths' boat, and I wanted to experiment with that. So, shocker of all shocks, I STEPPED AWAY FROM THE SOFT LIGHT SETTING. I know. I know. Horrifying. Well, um, sort of stepped away. ANYWAY. In all the points of really bright light, I used the brush tool (large, round and soft with light beige and then blurred), and then I used paint daubs which I talked about...um, somewhere before. So basically, light blobs + light texture (on soft light, lol)= this icon. And, uh, I think I stepped off my usual sharpening a bit too. Hm. Oh! TREES. The trees make it stripy? I don't know.



This one is just simple brush work. SO. LET ME REC YOU SOMETHING AWESOME. THIS TUTORIAL by neversleeps is basically my icon bible. No, seriously. This was how I learned light. I've adapted it, obviously, but. Yeah. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I have read this tutorial. Anyway, I'm more likely to go the integrated approach, as you can see in the above icon. I want my icons to be 'oh, isn't the light pretty?' and less 'clearly she used a light blob there, there, and there'. I hope I've been successful at that. BUT JUST FOR KICKS. I think I probably used a brush around Nicci's face, but it got covered up when I decided to go the crazy composition route. Uh. But the light by Richard's face is definitely a light brush. The light on the top's of their heads was just in the icon because A)LotS is PRETTY and B)They were outside. So sunshine.



In retrospect, I think the only reason I chose to use this cap is because I thought no one else would be inclined to do so. So it was ~unique~. The expression on Quinn's face is strange and I hate yellow. But whatever, the Movement is cool. Don't ask me to explain that. Ahaha. So anyway, I think this was the work of curves layers (one on normal, one on soft light; I picked that trick up somewhere that I don't remember. It was probably just a tutorial in passing. Tutorials with too many numbers make my head hurt and don't help me. *nods*), and also brush work. Hm. The original screencap was rather dark, if I remember correctly, and kind of grimy (if that makes sense). So I wanted to brighten everything up using my brush, and I put a stripe of light straight through Quinn (using her face as a focal point) and then some light brushing around her. And I blurred that. The additional soft light layer that I am 100% certain was used would have given the light that extra POP.



Hello first icon I made when I discovered Paint Daubs! Uh, actually that's a lie. It wasn't supposed to be an icon. I made it for some Gabrielle/Ares thread activity on the XOC and it was, like, a picspam story thing. I don't remember. Anyway, it was the standard brush work/soft light layer combo, but with the added light texture short cut maker: PAINT DAUBS. Paint Daubs basically makes stuff that looks like THIS. Anyway, I was surprised that so many people actually liked this icon. But, yeah, Paint Daubs, when used correctly, can make a sort of dreamy, paint-like effect. It's nice (but it has its downsides, and I over use it now, for sure).

Okay, so now that I've explained all those icons individually, I'll give you guys a quick tutorial on light (which will basically just be me making an icon as I write this). Let me just go find a cap...So I just grabbed a couple caps from here (Throwdown from Glee), and I blended them together to get me starting base.



And I guess the first thing to do after that, when it comes to light at least, is to pick out where the icon is darkest and what parts of the icon you want the main focus to be on. In this case, Finn in the upper left corner is the darkest part of the icon. And I want the focus to settle on his face down to their intertwined hands and from Quinn's face in the upper right corner down to her face in the bottom right.

Once I had that all figured out, I didn't go straight into making my icon. I wanted to play around just a little bit first. Seeing as Finn's face in the upper left corner was so dark, I decided to play around with the Variations tool just a bit thinking I might lighten him up a smidge. Once I had the Variations tool open, however, I added some color in too.



The result of one click to the Green section, one click to the Red section, and one click on Lighter. I've made the image slightly warmer (the red) without overdoing either yellow or red (by adding the green). Plus brightened it up a bit!

Okay, so now that I've got some color to my base, I'm ready to start on the first touches of light in my icon. So I create a new layer and grab a soft, round brush (size 130-ish, color: light beige, opacity: 60%). Then I brush over the points of focus that I want/where the icon is darkest/etc.



(Note: This layer has already been Gaussian Blurred at this point, but I didn't Blur it until after the next step. It's something I want back and did because there was too much focus on Finn's sweater.)

Then I went and duplicated the layer that had the Variation changes on it, dragged that to the top, and set it to soft light.



And then I Copy Merged the whole thing, put that new layer on top, and set it to soft light as well...


But, I don't know, I looked at that and I wasn't happy with the contrast, so I copy merged a new layer on top and used the High Pass filter on it. I set that layer to soft light as well, and then I had to play around with the opacity. At full, it was far too strong. It ramped up shadows and made them look a little silly, so I kept pulling the opacity down until I was happy. So it was set to about 40%.



It's a small change, but I like it a lot better. It gives back some definition that we lost during brushing.

And then I got stuck. I tried out a Paint Daubs layer, but wasn't happy with the results. Then I tried a plain soft light layer, and it was far too saturated that way. So I just sat and stared at Photoshop for awhile. And then I decided to copy merge onto a new layer, and use the Diffuse Glow Filter.



Diffuse Glow Layer >> Diffuse Glow Layer on Soft Light
Basically, this did the same thing the soft light layer did. The only difference is it also brightened up a lot of areas instead of making them darker which gave the icon a different feel. More glowy.

At this point, I thought -maybe- that I was done. So I copy merged everything onto a new canvas and resized to 100x100.


Unfortunately, I was not pleased with this result. It was still a little too dark.

I went back to the big canvas, and looked at it for awhile. I knew a soft light layer wouldn't work, and I didn't want to use a Variations layer again. So I tried a Curves layer. I just lifted the line on the RBG setting a little bit. Of course, it didn't work just straight out. It made certain points on Finn's face too bright, and the right half of Quinn's face (on the bottom) too bright as well. So I used a layer mask to mask away the parts that I didn't need.



And then I sharpened (on a new copy merged layer) because I was pretty sure this was going to be the final icon. Then I copy merged onto a new canvas and resized.



Now, normally, I'd be concerned about the yellow/red saturation on Quinn's face. However, in this case, Finn's got the dark, cool colors going on in his half of the icon, and the brighter, warmer colors around Quinn balance things out.

So, yeah. That's basically it. Find your focus points and the dark places, and work with them. Haha. I don't know how else to explain it. *dies*

Now to break things up a bit, raiindust asked I'd also love to see your opinion on trends - on what you think works now, what doesn't work, and what you think might be coming in sooooooon.

So, uh, when I first saw this question...I started compiling a rant in my head. But, it has been a bit since then, and my rant has died down quite a bit so.

COLORING TRENDS


"PINK"
Okay, so my icon example probably isn't the best of this trend because, to be honest, I don't even know how people make icons in that pink/brown/muddy/beige/mauve/whatever color. It befuddles me. At any rate, this particular coloring trend isn't really my favorite. I usually don't save icons that use this coloring, and I don't typically follow icon makers that use it in excess. However, this trend is dying down, I think. The people who still use it are the people who've made it their style. I know a few makers that use it, and it has been their coloring style for quite some time. I'm not going to hold that against them. :)



"OVERSATURATED YELLOW/GREEN"
Fuck yeah, I love this coloring trend. I know it can be done very, very badly. I've seen it done badly, but just about everything can be done badly so there's no point in picking at it. But seriously, a lot of people do this trend really well, and I'm not tired of it yet. I find it interesting to look at, and there are so many ways to vary this particular coloring (which, I guess, deviates from the "trend" aspect, but whatever).

IN THE FUTURE...
Uh, well. Icon trends sort of circle around with slight variations. So we're probably get around to seeing a return of the high cyan/red selective coloring mess. (Another coloring trend that I could never quite master, lol.) However, it will probably have something new added to the mix. Like, instead of straight red, the cyan will be combined with the weird pink coloring trend or something. IDK. Actually...o.O I think I'm already doing that. Haha.

TECHNIQUE TRENDS


"TEXTURES THAT AREN'T"
You know, text "textures", things from FFFound or whatever, stock photos, etc. I don't know. This trend doesn't bother me so much. Maybe it is because I don't use textures all that much. Most of what I do only involves the screencap I'm using. I don't think using the text textures is lazy either. I think, like all things, they have their place. They can be used well as long as you don't abuse them. *nods*



"CONJOINED TWINS"
Lol, this icon is the closest thing I've got to this trend. >.< But, um, it doesn't exactly illustrate it well. Basically, it is those icons that have two heads blended together. Most of the time they share an eye or someone is coming out of someone else's mouth or something else equally weird. I don't know. In the icon circles I move in, I hardly ever see these, but they end up at ugly_icons almost weekly. Once again, I don't really have an opinion. I guess, sometimes, they can be scary looking, and I never use them/save them. But, eh, some people like them. (A variation on this technique involves silhouettes which I actually quite like. It's very creative and interesting to look at.)

IN THE FUTURE...
Oh, I don't really know. Probably more textures that don't make sense. OH! Text textures in alien languages! That could be fun. Or maybe use of the Dingbats font. Someone should start that; it would be hilarious.

TRENDS OF THE ICON MAKING WORLD
Locked Icon Communities [NO]
It is completely pointless, and if you lock your community and I am 10x less likely to give a crap about your icons.

Password Protected .psd files/Textures [NO]
Maybe it is just because I don't make textures/give out .psd files, but the only upside to this is you get millions of comments which is only an upside if you're an attention whore. However, if anyone else can enlighten me as to a practical reason for doing this, I am all ears.

Elite Icon Communities [HELL TO THE YES]
Love them; don't care about the whiny little weirdos who hate them because they can't get in. They are useful, and if they are well run, they are heaps of fun. I wouldn't be the icon maker I am today if I hadn't been rejected from almost every elite icon community on LJ at some point, lol.

TUTORIALS WITH EXPLANATION [YESx1000]
I am glad to see that, because of the effort put forth by the moderators of certain communities, that the tutorials we are starting to see more of now are the ones that have more than simple recipes. A bunch of numbers teaches me shit all.

IN THE FUTURE...
Okay, I am an idealist when it comes to the icon making world. I want it to get better not worse. I want to see less posts at iconrants, and more posts at teachelite. I want to see less at ugly_icons and more at iconpraise or iconwoah. I want to see more tutorials and less .psd files for simple things. I want to see good icon makers get lots of praise, and bad icon makers to get lots of helpful hints from good icon makers. I want people to stop locking their icon communities, and realize that it is about the sharing, not the popularity. I want all elite icon communities to put as much effort into their constructive criticism as I do.

Let's make this happen, people. ♥

ICON MAKERS WHO INSPIRE ME
Asked by raiindust

Okay, so first of all let me say that there are tons of icon makers that I love and adore. But that's not the list I am making. I am making a list of people who inspire me, and that doesn't always mean that they are one of my favorite makers (although, a lot of the time it does).

DRANKMYWAR





As if you all didn't know that she was number one on my list. Basically, this girl is my entire reason for being an icon maker. If she didn't exist, then I wouldn't be the same. When I first started making icons, she was HUGE in the icon making world. Everyone, as far as I knew, knew who she was and loved her work. And for good reason too. At times I hated her, but mostly I loved her. I worked harder because I wanted to be as good as she was. Lol, and I don't even know her. But she is my ultimate icon inspiration.

NEVERSLEEPS





I linked her tutorial earlier, and as I said that tutorial was the building block to my finding and creating my own style of icon making. Like, I seriously wouldn't be making icons the same way without the existence of that tutorial. Plus, would you look at the icons? They are always so powerful, and amazing. The cropping, the text, the lighting, everything! Basically, icons to die for.

LUCKY_PENNY01





I don't even know how these colors can coexist on icons like this. Everything by this maker is draw droppingly amazing. It's like this massive wall of constant inspiration. I am so glad all the icons are back up now.

DEKOLETTE





I don't even know what to say here. I don't know. It's like looking at an art canvas. Everything is so stunning, and you can just stare at them for hours and hours and never get bored. At least, I never get bored.

LACEDCROWN





I am sort of afraid to gush here because I actually know Jillian, but I'm going to do it anyway. Basically, this girl was inspiring me before I even knew who she was. In fact, she was inspiring me in three separate places at once, and I didn't even know they were all the same person. I thought about putting some of her older icons up, but then thought better of it. But let's just say that she is a long time favorite of mine. A really long time. And I've seen her work evolve from amazing to the super amazing, and I never cease to wonder how she does it.

ELENA_HEPBURN





Totally awesome about sums it up. Haha. I've never found another maker that does everything so well. Coloring, composition, text, textures, animation, and funny all at once. There are always neat little surprises in the icon batches. It is actually fun to look through all the icons. Elena_hepburn has whimsy, y'all.

Anyway, like I said, if this were 'Your Favorite Icon Makers', this list would be slightly different with top spots taken up by people like raiindust, ambiguous_opal, and many others who delight and impress me with their amazing work on a daily basis. Someday I'll probably make a list of all my favorite makers. Just not today. Today was for the inspirational, and the people above are definitely the icon makers that inspire me to do new things, to get better, to find out how things work, and a few of them I owe a great deal for sharing their work with us and helping me get to where I am with icon making today. /cheesy

And that's all folks!

PART ONE