the philosphy of iconage
I was never once able to field a full Space Marine army. Ever. I owned one certainly, I was just never able to play an actual game with the whole thing. The reason for that is very simple. I never finished painting the damn thing. The reason for that is simple too. I couldn't for the life of me stop myself from devoting as much time to each regular squad member that I wanted to lavish on the character models of the army. I couldn't do it. It's partly the perfectionist in me, coupled with the completionist. It is also however, something more fundamental.
I just enjoyed painting the models more than actually playing.
I could of course find the wherewithal to field individual squads or vehicles, or to field a full gang in a game of Necromunda or my beloved Wood Elf team - with the bad-ass Treeman - in a game of Blood Bowl. And to be honest, I probably enjoyed a good game of BB more than a full game of 40k or Warhammer. My Wood Elves played using Orc tactics and a passing game. Sure, they're relatively weak and they'd get creamed in the first couple of games of the season. Until I could buy my Treeman. Then the pain really started.
I vividly remember the looks of horror on the faces of Orc and Chaos players as my team of pansy Wood Elves would start maiming and killing their linebackers, all the while my receivers were skipping through their lines and catching fifty yard passes from a thrower who never missed. It was glorious. And lavishly painted.
I wasn't a great painter, my friend was miles better and he was much faster as well. I painted for fun though. I painted to immerse myself in the detail and the technique. To spend time just staring at the surface of a model and plan what colours to use, what mixes and to what degree to highlight. Finding where the shadows on the model were, where the edges which needed to be picked out were. Seeing it all in my head and trying to the best of my ability to make it a reality. I failed more often than not, but I certainly enjoyed the attempt.
The same holds true for me and the making of icons. I'm new to it, still learning a lot, and I'm not particularly good at it, but it reminds me of my days painting Space Marines and Tau and Wood Elves, of how I would spend a few hours listening to music and swirling a brush in a jar of muddy water and bringing it to my lips to bring it to a point once more. There are still songs that to this day make me think of holding up a model with a brush in hand when I hear them.
So I will bring the same philosophy to my icon making as I did to my model painting. I'll never produce a lot, and they may not be great, but I'm going to enjoy the process of making each and every one.
I will then bring my philosophy of fiction writing to it and talk incessantly about them. Because I'm an annoying bore that way.
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Here are some icons I made exclusively for userpic value with no other motive behind them. The first is very simple, just a crop of a wonderful wallpaper made by scifi_tv_addict which I use on my computer at work. The second is from a cap from Ark of Truth. I just thought her expression was very special. The third is a shot from 'Flesh and Blood'. It looks unprepossessing and that's the quality I was hoping for, but it took a bit of work =]. The next one I'm not so happy with, I wanted to try my hand at making something from scratch which would match the same icon as made by casett and I'm not ashamed to say I failed. =] Everything's a learning experience. sunkrux's hugglpouncing icon was the inspiration for the next one. Everyone needs a hug icon and I just loved that hug from 'The Road Not Taken'. It really showed how close Sam and Vala were becoming. The next two are not what they appear to be. You'll recognise them I'm sure. 'Ark of Truth' again and 'Talion', but the shots themselves are composites. Obviously since camera focus is an issue. Here are the full bases I made for them, click for the full size image.
As you might imagine I quite enjoyed making them. It's a technical exercise as well as an artistic one.
1234
I made these four for 'Confluence of Circumstance' though the last one I can quite happily use as a generic userpic too. The identifiable factor of their AU was how they came through the 'gate in slate grey BDUs, Cam because his mission was in a mountainous area, Sam because in her universe that was what they wore aboard ships instead of black. =P I thought of these things. Now, I don't mean for it to become their 'standard' BDU colour, in actuality it's probably green as in the canon!verse, but it is distinctive. The first icon is a composite from the season ten cast photos, which are pretty awesome if fiddly to lift from the background. Two and Three are from shots from 'Insiders' which is a great episode. Four is from 'Collateral Damage' and I made sure to make Ben's eye extra blue for the effect.
1234
I made these for stories too, the first is for 'With Years to Make Up', though I haven't used it on this site. It's meant to show the younger Cam and a civilian Sam. She's taken from the episode 'There But For the Grace of God' from season 1, Cam is, of course, from 'Avalon'. The second I made for 'The Patience of Kings'. Over the course of my stories Cam and Sam have met up several times in flashbacks, invariably while wearing their dress blues. Two such meetings are shown in 'TPoK', quite pivotal ones. I took Sam from the season five episode '2001' while Cam is again from 'Avalon', there aren't many times where he's actually wearing his dress blues on the show. =[
The next two were made for the fem!Cameron AU stories, 'Even the Girls...' and 'The Magnitude of Infinity', though the second one hasn't been used in that context... yet... The first is a composite of Sam from the season 10 cast photos and Amy Acker playing the role of Cameron. The next one I had to make after seeing this still of Blake Lively playing Carol Ferris in the upcoming Green Lantern film. Click for the larger pic.
It was immediate, I had to make use that image somehow, though I had to give her a hair cut to fit the character. =P Sam is from the season 4 episode 'Window of Opportunity' - I love hijacking Sam/Jack stuff for my own nefarious Sam/Cam purposes. The best thing about this icon - and several of the others I've made - is that it tells a little story all on its own. I love icons like that, as you can tell from the one to the right. Sometimes as a fic writer you can forget how powerful an image can be. And not only that, but how an image can be used to draw inspiration for prose. I made that one for mitchellstills challenge #24 which took 'The Quest' as its theme. As soon as I saw the cap, which was a wide shot of the whole team, my Sam/Cam goggles homed in on that crop and how it could be used to tell a tiny little vignette of Sam's awareness of Cam. And it also allowed me to do something interesting with what was after all meant to be a Cameron-centric endeavour by making him not be the focus of 'our' gaze, but of Sam's. Heh... I'm so full of myself sometimes.
I just enjoyed painting the models more than actually playing.
I could of course find the wherewithal to field individual squads or vehicles, or to field a full gang in a game of Necromunda or my beloved Wood Elf team - with the bad-ass Treeman - in a game of Blood Bowl. And to be honest, I probably enjoyed a good game of BB more than a full game of 40k or Warhammer. My Wood Elves played using Orc tactics and a passing game. Sure, they're relatively weak and they'd get creamed in the first couple of games of the season. Until I could buy my Treeman. Then the pain really started.
I vividly remember the looks of horror on the faces of Orc and Chaos players as my team of pansy Wood Elves would start maiming and killing their linebackers, all the while my receivers were skipping through their lines and catching fifty yard passes from a thrower who never missed. It was glorious. And lavishly painted.
I wasn't a great painter, my friend was miles better and he was much faster as well. I painted for fun though. I painted to immerse myself in the detail and the technique. To spend time just staring at the surface of a model and plan what colours to use, what mixes and to what degree to highlight. Finding where the shadows on the model were, where the edges which needed to be picked out were. Seeing it all in my head and trying to the best of my ability to make it a reality. I failed more often than not, but I certainly enjoyed the attempt.
The same holds true for me and the making of icons. I'm new to it, still learning a lot, and I'm not particularly good at it, but it reminds me of my days painting Space Marines and Tau and Wood Elves, of how I would spend a few hours listening to music and swirling a brush in a jar of muddy water and bringing it to my lips to bring it to a point once more. There are still songs that to this day make me think of holding up a model with a brush in hand when I hear them.
So I will bring the same philosophy to my icon making as I did to my model painting. I'll never produce a lot, and they may not be great, but I'm going to enjoy the process of making each and every one.
I will then bring my philosophy of fiction writing to it and talk incessantly about them. Because I'm an annoying bore that way.
1234
567
Here are some icons I made exclusively for userpic value with no other motive behind them. The first is very simple, just a crop of a wonderful wallpaper made by scifi_tv_addict which I use on my computer at work. The second is from a cap from Ark of Truth. I just thought her expression was very special. The third is a shot from 'Flesh and Blood'. It looks unprepossessing and that's the quality I was hoping for, but it took a bit of work =]. The next one I'm not so happy with, I wanted to try my hand at making something from scratch which would match the same icon as made by casett and I'm not ashamed to say I failed. =] Everything's a learning experience. sunkrux's hugglpouncing icon was the inspiration for the next one. Everyone needs a hug icon and I just loved that hug from 'The Road Not Taken'. It really showed how close Sam and Vala were becoming. The next two are not what they appear to be. You'll recognise them I'm sure. 'Ark of Truth' again and 'Talion', but the shots themselves are composites. Obviously since camera focus is an issue. Here are the full bases I made for them, click for the full size image.
As you might imagine I quite enjoyed making them. It's a technical exercise as well as an artistic one.
1234
I made these four for 'Confluence of Circumstance' though the last one I can quite happily use as a generic userpic too. The identifiable factor of their AU was how they came through the 'gate in slate grey BDUs, Cam because his mission was in a mountainous area, Sam because in her universe that was what they wore aboard ships instead of black. =P I thought of these things. Now, I don't mean for it to become their 'standard' BDU colour, in actuality it's probably green as in the canon!verse, but it is distinctive. The first icon is a composite from the season ten cast photos, which are pretty awesome if fiddly to lift from the background. Two and Three are from shots from 'Insiders' which is a great episode. Four is from 'Collateral Damage' and I made sure to make Ben's eye extra blue for the effect.
1234
I made these for stories too, the first is for 'With Years to Make Up', though I haven't used it on this site. It's meant to show the younger Cam and a civilian Sam. She's taken from the episode 'There But For the Grace of God' from season 1, Cam is, of course, from 'Avalon'. The second I made for 'The Patience of Kings'. Over the course of my stories Cam and Sam have met up several times in flashbacks, invariably while wearing their dress blues. Two such meetings are shown in 'TPoK', quite pivotal ones. I took Sam from the season five episode '2001' while Cam is again from 'Avalon', there aren't many times where he's actually wearing his dress blues on the show. =[
The next two were made for the fem!Cameron AU stories, 'Even the Girls...' and 'The Magnitude of Infinity', though the second one hasn't been used in that context... yet... The first is a composite of Sam from the season 10 cast photos and Amy Acker playing the role of Cameron. The next one I had to make after seeing this still of Blake Lively playing Carol Ferris in the upcoming Green Lantern film. Click for the larger pic.
It was immediate, I had to make use that image somehow, though I had to give her a hair cut to fit the character. =P Sam is from the season 4 episode 'Window of Opportunity' - I love hijacking Sam/Jack stuff for my own nefarious Sam/Cam purposes. The best thing about this icon - and several of the others I've made - is that it tells a little story all on its own. I love icons like that, as you can tell from the one to the right. Sometimes as a fic writer you can forget how powerful an image can be. And not only that, but how an image can be used to draw inspiration for prose. I made that one for mitchellstills challenge #24 which took 'The Quest' as its theme. As soon as I saw the cap, which was a wide shot of the whole team, my Sam/Cam goggles homed in on that crop and how it could be used to tell a tiny little vignette of Sam's awareness of Cam. And it also allowed me to do something interesting with what was after all meant to be a Cameron-centric endeavour by making him not be the focus of 'our' gaze, but of Sam's. Heh... I'm so full of myself sometimes.