049; Muted
This guide was requested by monstersinyou and scoobyatemysnax. I'm a little nervous for this because it's my first guide. Well, not really. I made one a long ago but it's such a mess and useless I don't even categorize it as a guide. Also, I already apologise because I know they'll be a lot of spelling mistakes. English is not my mother tongue, and I'm sure it isn't for a lot of people here either, so I hope you understand! I know it's a big deal at anon_icon, but I hope you can forgive me! And if you don't, well, then do not read further if it's a big thing for you. You've been warned! I hope this is at least useful and understandable.
01) Looking for the perfect cap.
You need to think wisely before trying this kind of coloring on every cap, because it won't look good in each one of them, but I think you can say the same for almost every coloring style. Vibrant coloring won't look good on every cap, pastel coloring won't look good on every cap, and it won't do with muted coloring as well.
Not TOO much. I recommend caps that aren't too damn dark, because dark caps can be a pain in the arse sometimes and hard to light it up correctly. You can always add some darkness later. But a little bit of darkness is a really good thing here. Now don't you think that lighter caps are wonderful! Lighter caps may not content shadows and/or enough contrast. Even if you try to add some contrast, it could get really tricky and unnatural. Wich could be cool, because unnatural coloring is awesome if doing well, but that's not something we are looking for here. But if you're going for light caps, then I recommend you to use far crops, so the coloring won't focus on the face but more on the background and the composition itself. They usually would look good.
But I will be focusing more on close crops since I use muted tones a lot more in this kind of cropping.
Basically, you need your subject to be face-cleaned. No big amount of light on it and no big amount of dark either.
HELL YEAH caps examples.
As you can see, there are some caps that are a little dark, but they also have a good ilumination on the face, and a nice amount of contrast, so it is more than possible to work with these caps. Supernatural caps usually work really well because they're dark but they're also "clean", so it easier to work with them.
Big Fat NO NO caps examples.
So you're saying I can't make a decent muted toned icon with these caps? No, I'm NOT. I'm not saying that. I'm sure a lot of you can make of this nightmare caps, really beautiful muted icons, but I totally can't, and if muted tones are not your thing (yet), I recommend you not to touch them.
02) Inspire yourself.
Use music as inspiration. I like listening to music while making icons. Music gives me the feeling I need to complete an icon, otherwhise I feel like it's not finished. I use to listen to soft, delicate music, not complex nor with lots of instruments. Acoustic music is the perfect thing. Minimalistic but touchy music for natural, muted and emotional icons. I'm listening to Birdy's first album while making this guide. I also have a wonderful app on my android called MixRadio where you're able to listen to music based on the kind of music/bands/mixes/feelings you like. You're able to listen to "Sad" music, you're able to listen "Hozier"-a-like songs. It's wonderful and you can find a lot of good songs you never listened before! Though, I'm not really sure if it's available on other countries, but if you live in Spain, you should totally give it a try!
Some songs I love to listen while making muted icons:
Bon Iver - Re: Stacks, Birdy - White Winter Hymnal, Damien Rice - The Blower's Daughter, Daughter - Run, Kathryn Ostenberg - You Are.
But not everything is on the music, right? I'm not really into large graphics. They can be really useful for inspiration, but I'm just not too much into it. My love for icons is a lot bigger, even being the smallest thing! So here is a little icon praise for muted icons I love.
burymyregret | partitioning | monstersinyou | starkwars | scoobyatemysnax
theotherayn | neverberoyals | poisonfield | partitioning | oviedo
03) Sharpen the shit out of it.
Sharpening is a very important thing to do in this kind of coloring (and even more if you're trying close crops too!), because the coloring is more "natural" than others, so if an icon is oversharpened, it will be a lot more noticeable. Some examples so you can understand my ramblings:
1.
2.
3.
4.
1. It's too blurry. I don't even have a reson to explain, it just need sharpening!
2. Sharpened! Tho it's already nice, there're some parts in her ear and some parts of the hair that are a little bit oversharpened.
3. That is the perfect sharpening (for my taste). It's exactly the same as the second one, but I used the blur tool to blur the parts that I felt were a little bit too sharpened. Look at her ear on the second and then look at the third, you'll see the difference.
4. You know you totally oversharpened it when the icon looks too crispy. There're some crispy icons that will look good with the proper textures and coloring, but we are not looking for it. And sometimes an oversharpened icon is just not only crispy but pixelated and it will definitely look LQ.
So I tell you how I do it. I normally do the same. I use smart sharpen. But you know, just because I like to be called smart.
Just kidding................. maybe not.
Anyway, I usually use these settings
And if I find that even like that the subject is too sharpened overall, I just lower the opacity until I'm satisfied.
04) Color the thing.
And now you're ready to start coloring your icon. I'm gonna use some of the icons that monstersinyou used as example to request the guide so you can see what I do on different caps.
First of all curves. You can use anything you want to light up your icon. I know some people duplicate the original layer and set it to screen, or just use levels or anything else... but this is what really works for me.
Original+Sharpened vs Lighten Up
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As you can see, they all have a rich and beautiful natural color, so you only need to make a few touches here and there, so you won't wash out the original natural color the cap already has.
In the case of Dean icon, I felt I needed more contrast, so I made a black and white gradient map and then I set it to soft light. I always do that when I want more contrast. It gives a depth feeling I really like. I did exactly the same for the Tris/Four icon. For the Stefan one I did something a little bit different I do a lot when the cap I'm using is a little bit too dark. I used a gradient map as well, but this time I did something like this. I always use pale/pastel/grey colors so the skin is lighter. Change the gray for pastel blue, green or yellow so you can see you can also make different muted tones. You don't need to stick to the natural/brown! Experiment with every color!! Just make sure the center color is white or almost. If the contrast is too strong, just lower the opacity until you're satisfied with the result.
Black color is your enemy. You need to avoid black as much as you can. How can we fight against it? I usually make color fill layers with dark shades of brown, grey and green. But it's just depending on wich color I'm looking for. Then set it to screen and lower the opacity as you want.
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34% opacity
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80% opacity
+
> >
50% opacity each
And now it's when I don't follow the same steps, or even similar.
For the Dean one, I just popped out the reds on the blood using selective color and then I made a pale orangish color fill layer set to multiply and lowered the opacity so the skin is not so white. The left part is dark, but not dark enough so I just painted a black bubble and set it to soft light and then we're done.
For the Divergent one, it has a beautiful pinkish color, and I want it to pop it out a little bit more. So I just made a color fill layer on a pale pink tone and set it to soft light and lower the opacity. Then I duplicated it because it was too light and I set it to multiply. Icon finished!
For the Stefan one, I just added a black and white gradient map and set it to soft light and lower the opacity to add a little bit of contrast. And that's it!
You want an icon even a little bit more muted? Not so much color? Like this one?
Then just make a black and white gradient map and lower the opacity around 20%-30%.
Other icons I made with this technique, if you want to call it like that.
And that's it! I can't wait to hear your thoughts about this! And I'll be more than happy to see what you come up with ♥
I hope this was what you were looking for and that it's at least helpful! I really enjoyed to put my thoughts on muted icons here. I didn't know I could talk about a style of icon like this! :D
Feel free to request anything else ;)
Ask The Maker 2015 || My Thread