The answers to your questions about my graphics:
preparationwhat do you do to prepare a screencap before you start working on it, other than cropping? do you always resize to 100x100 right away?
The first thing I do is remove the network logo(s) if there are any. Besides that I leave the screencap alone.
If I want to cut out a character/object to put it on a different background, I do that in a bigger size because it's easier to see and select details that way. But other than that I resize to 100x100 right away. I know plenty of people don't, but I can't imagine it being helpful for me. I know it will end up that size, so I want to see from the start what it will look like. Otherwise I'd be fussing with details you can't see in 100x100 anyway.
how do you decide what picture, cropping, coloring, textures, etc. you're going to use, to achieve what sort of effect and mood? Do you play with things until you "happen to" get something you like, or do you have a general idea of what you want to achieve when you start out?
The only time I have a general idea of what I want to achieve is when I make crossover icons. It requires searching for matching pictures, so I have to think "Maybe if I use this picture of X looking down, I can use that one picture of Y looking up" and the icon sort of forms in my head, but only in composition. For about 90% of my icons, I really just play with things until I get something I like. I wait until I have a batch of un-iconned pictures of a fandom, I open it in Photoshop and play around with every picture until I have some decent icons.
Though sometimes when I'm watching a show or a movie, I see a scene and I'm making an icon of it already in my head:) But that's mostly about what pictures to use, what composition and how to crop. I rarely think "I'm gonna make this icon THAT colour" and actually do so.
I'm curious as to what you've been working on recently technically. Your icons have changed style in the past few batches and sometimes that happens because people deicide they want to focus more on cropping or textures, etc.
I can't say I think about my icon-making techniques a lot, really. Sometimes I realize I'm just painting by the numbers so to speak, and doing the same things over and over again (like using the exact same font or cropping or texture), and then I'll try to actively NOT do that.
But as I've mentioned, I really don't think about how I want an icon to look when I'm making it, so any changes in style were not deliberate:)
inspiration
do you listen to music or anything when you make icons?
I'm one of those people that are always doing 4 things at the same time, while thinking about the 4 things I wanna do next:) Listening to music is mostly one of these things, refreshing the f-list another. But it's not something I need to be able to make icons. What I do need is something to distract me every now and then so I don't turn into a icon-making zombie-robot.
the actual text. Do you have a list of lyrics or anything that you turn to? Or anything like that?
I mostly icon tv-shows, and I mostly turn to actual quotes from the show or even the scene I'm iconning. In a perfect world, every single show would have something like the Buffyverse Dialogue Database , because I find it SO useful if I'm not sure what text to put on an icon, to go check quotes from that scene/episode/character.
blending
I'd love to know how you did the effect of blending Angel/Doyle in this icon
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First, I just cropped both pictures. With this type of blending, I like to have one person facing one side and the other another side. What's important is that you need to have big parts that are black or at least very dark. I moved both layers to a new 100x100 file.
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Then, on a new layer between the top and bottom layer, paint with your brush in that color over the parts that are too light.
colours/light
when you look at a cap, do you always have a set formula of what you do with an icon color-wise or does it evolve and change as you mess about with it?
I do have a set formula in that I always do: copy of the base on soft light -> light blobs -> curves/color balance -> more curves and color balance if necessary, but I don't have fixed settings or anything. I probably couldn't make the exact same coloring for a same cap twice.
Do you try and enhance the colours of caps or make your own colours?
I usually try to enhance the colours of the caps, except when the cap has really dull colours or when it's a cap that's been over-used already and I want to make it different from all the other icons with that cap:)
how do you get such rich and bright colours in your midtones and shadows?
Using color balance mostly, and curves.
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To colour, I use either curves or color balance. I'll show you the difference:
Say, we want to make the picture more red:
curves
color balance
These are extreme reds, but as you can see, curves make the colour much lighter, fluo almost, while color balance keep the same lighting. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. I usually use curves to bring out the colours that are already there, while I use color balance to give grey/green caps a different hue (and then bring out those "new" colours with curves). Color balance can also be useful when you've already made your icon, but you just find it a liiittle too green, then you can just adjust your colours slightly without throwing of your light balance.
how do you get your subjects to be 'dark' without them fading into the background?
A combination of soft light (to make it darker), light blobs (to make it lighter), and painting with colours.
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I use light blobs to give the darker parts some light. To do that I leave the copy on soft light visible, that way I'l immediately see what effect they'll have.
The light blobs look like this (now on a black background to show you)
All on a different layer between the base and the copy leads to this:
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Then I just make the colors a little brighter by shifting the curves just a little bit for every color:
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You can use this same technique to "separate" you background by painting with white (if you find the background too dark) and putting it on soft light (but perhaps not on 100% opacity.)
pertaining to the colours in your icons, how do you get such vivid magentas, reds, and oranges without completely washing the entire icon in the colour.
I mostly use the method I explained above to colour just parts of the icon. I paint some colour and put it on soft light, but you can play around with the blending modes of your painted colour layer to create some different effects as well. The examples you gave were made using pin light:
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You can see that there's purple in this icon, but it's nowhere near as colourful as I'd like.
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same technique:
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A very easy trick to make colours more vibrant:
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one of the things i love most in your icons is this beige skin-tone you have with all these bright colours around it. How do you get that faded beige?
Pretty much the same thing again: I pick the colour I want and set it on a blending mode. With beige, I mostly use multiply because I use it to make skin darker, but on a darker icon soft light works too.
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how do you make your black and white icons...like, what sort of things do you do past the desaturation?
Not that much, really:) Since I can't play with colours, I have to do it with light, contrast (and text).
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how do you get your icons to be soft without being blurry?
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text
I'm wondering if you have any tips and tricks for how to decide on colour and placement - do you have an idea of where to place the text before you start or does it just evolve as the icon does?
When I use text, I always start with white(or very light grey/beige) text. See what font is best, what height,... If that's not enough, I'll try to bring in another colour, for one word of emphasis, one line,...
For placement, I usually start with one block of text: every line roughly as long as the other. Sometimes one word is a line while a whole sentence is another, so that word will need to be bigger than the sentence. Mostly I start to type in the middle of the icon, and I'll move it to a better place if necessary. If the lines just can't be made equally long because it wouldn't really fit the quote or lyric to put one word bigger, try to make a pyramid or a reversed one.(the lines become longer or shorter) That way you can play with the alignment; if you align the text on the left, put the text on the left side on your icon.
To be honest, these things don't come easy to me either. I usually try A LOT of fonts, colors, placements,...before I get what I want. And sometimes even then I'm not sure.
When I'm making an icon and I know already what text I want to have on it, I'll try to crop it so there's enough room, like here and here. A very easy way to make sure you can place all your text and still leaving everything in your icon visible, is cropping one side lower than 100 px, so you have a band to place text on, like here and here.
general
What do you think your biggest strengths/weaknesses are as a graphics maker?
Hmmm. Something I like about my own icons, is that I feel they're very use-able. If I'd compare iconmaking to fashion, I'll never be haute couture like other makers whose icons are always original and fresh and jaw-dropping, but my stuff is wearable and affordable LOL. And some days I feel like that's a weakness, because my icons are still just pretty pictures, while others make art with their icons.
But I guess my biggest strength is my colouring, and I'd say my biggest weakness is text, though I think it has improved a lot ever since I met Old Sans Black:) Maybe another weakness is that I usually don't know what I'm doing:d
What do you think is your most underrated icon? (doesn't have to just be one, can be several)
Damn, that's a hard question. My icon posts always get showered with love, and I get praised and rec'd so much that I sometimes feel my icons are overrated:d So the following "underrated" icons are just icons that I love very very much and that only seemed to have gotten medium love instead of big love:d So yeah...luxury problem.
and all my Deadwood icons, but that's just because Deadwood is so underrated as a fandom.
What is your biggest pet-peeve as far as icons go? What sort of effects will you never be caught dead doing?
Never say never, but I really don't like the overuse of text-as-a-texture. First of all, TEXT IS NOT A TEXTURE. A texture =/= anything that makes your icon prettier, it's something that has TEXTURE. But the prefab texts often fool me into thinking someone made pretty, original icons based on their teasers, only to see a post of 100 icons with the same 3 "text-tures" used over and over again. I can understand it if you use it for an icon, not everyone is good at placing text and the text thingies often look good, and if the meaning of the words are just PERFECT for that icon, why not? It'd be just as silly not to use it out of fear of iconranters:) But using the same text in the exact same way on 5 icons of completely different people or situations makes the text lose all meaning, and makes me lose all interest in the icon maker.
This took me 5 hours excluding a Merlin-sized break:d I feel like this is the most chaotic icon-talk ever! If you have some concrit on my tutorial-making abilities, I'd love to hear it.