Concrit Meme #23

[absolutelybatty]

We haven't had a meme in awhile because the participation has been fairly low for the past few. But, hey, I'm feeling up to a new one; hopefully you are as well! Just regular, old fashioned style~

Comments

[vapor]

I haven't asked for concrit in a while and I would really love some feedback. As much as you can give me!

[lil_art]

Disclaimer: I really shouldn't attempt to give concrit here since my own icons are kind of... awful compared to yours :P, but I'll try anyway, I suppose :)

#1 - I really like this icon, and the coloring is so pretty! If I were nitpicking I'd move the crop a pixel or two down, though, to get rid of the 'cut-off' edge at the top of his hair/head. Also the outer hairline (where the black meets the white background) looks a bit oversharpened to me, so I would try to blur or smudge it a little to blend it in a little better.

#2 - This looks absolutely perfect to me!

#3 - The subject in this icon is a little obscured by the texture which seems to degrade the quality a bit, and also makes it look a little bit too sharp in some places (mostly the left side of her face, I think). If it were me, I would try to carefully mask some part of it away, from her face and maybe her hair and chest, or try gently smudging the texture in those parts so the subject looks a little bit cleaner and more defined.

#4 - I love this icon as it is, the crop and texture use are brilliant, imo. :)

#5 - Perfect icon is perfect. ♥ The white part of her nose bridge and chin look a tiny wee bit sharp to me, but that might just be my screen or my untrained eye. All in all I love the crop and background/texture use in this icon quite a lot - I think it's even my favourite out of these!

... Well, I'm not sure how helpful that was... o.O Hopefully someone who actually knows what they are talking about will still come after me :)

[vapor]

Thank you so much! For some reason I really struggle with my edges looking oversharpened. I try to soften them out and then it looks so bad. XP I need to figure something out, lol. Thank you! ^_^

[elleaf]

Hi :) I haven't seriously tried to give concrit in a long time so I hope this comes off right and all!

01. I'm really digging the colours on this one. All those soft colours and blues work beautiful together. What I think it lacks is maybe a more distinctive background. The guys' face now kind of blends with the white background because of the heavy contrast. I think the icon could really pop if you gave the whole background that soft pink/brownish tint that is going on at the right. There's also a bit of an over sharpened edge at the back of his head. Composition wise I think the icon would benefit from a more off centered crop (but that's probably personal preference!) Moving him a bit to the right, or more up or down would make it more visually interesting I think, and then you wouldn't really need the blue bar which is a little distracting.

02. I love the texture use in this one!! It's seriously great and works wonderfully with the subject. All the yellows and oranges are beautifully executed. What I might suggest is getting rid of the white bar, but that again comes down to personal preference. Technically, this is wonderfully executed.

03. It's really hard to make out who's the subject here because the colours are all a bit washed out. She kind of blends into the background. I'm not sure if this is the original background or an added texture, but you might want to give it a more distinct colours. It's also slightly over sharpened again, especially on the left side of her face.

04. Fantastic cropping here! The colours are great and the texture use really works with crop. If there's anything I would change, it would probably be the very small space between Snape's shoulder and his hair, and give it one colour. It's now kind of crowded. The collar is a bit over sharpened again, and because of the central and contrasting place in the icon it kind of draws the eye to it.

05. This is a great crop again! What I'm seeing here again (and might be the issue on the other icons as well?) is that you picked a really dark cap and brightened it up till the point of over sharpening again. I think this might be an issue with cap choosing, though I'm not familiar with the original caps of these. If the cap is that dark, lightening it this much might just not work anymore. An option for this icon might have been painting over the whole original background, or choosing a different cap. I love the colouring on her face and the shadows there, and picking a pale indigo from those shadows for the backgroud might lighten the whole icon up, without using extreme lightening as you're using now. I don't know what you usually use as a method of lightening, but you might want to try using curves? Here and here are some icons that are brightened up in a much better way I think :)

I hope this will be in anyway useful for you :)

[vapor]

Thank you very much! I must admit I have some trouble lightening dark caps, and I haven't exactly liked the technique I've been going with. I will play around with curves more. :)

[nyaza]

ok. here this goes.

01 & 02. Although I feel 2 is better solved than one, I'm going to join them because it'll make it easier to explain. I think both icons would benefit from lowering the icon and starting it on top of the line. Giving more space on top will make the negative space more effective and would solve the bit of hair cut in the first one. I think the background on the second one is great. The texture use is very good and interesting, and has a very gold-y feeling which I'm digging a lot. I feel #01 would improve a lot following the same route. wherever by a textured background os just a plain colour (like the blue on the strip). The original background neither a plain colour or has a lot of things going on, so it takes away from the icon instead of providing an extra something.

03. I really love what's going on here in terms of light, darkness, textures. I just feel like adding a bit more of contrast would just make this icon pop up a lot. Either by a b&w gradient map, or a merged copy on soft light (maybe desaturating it, as the muted violet is quite pretty as it is). Or by adding simply contrast. Something that will give it a little more depth. Also, as a personal taste, I think those grey strips are a bit distracting, so if those in particular were a bit more blurred and softened, the rest of the texture would be more effective.

04. I don't really have much to say about this. The texture work is great, the colouring is very interesting and gorgeous. If anything, maybe work on that little triangle on the bottom left. either by making it one colour, or by turning it as dark as the rest of the icon, so that is a little less distracting from his face. it's definetely my favourite from the batch.

05. Dark icons are imo, hard to balance. Because you want enough darkness as enough light without it being too contrasty or not enough contrasty. I think you have a few examples that do this perfectly, like this & this (both extremelly gorgeous btw). There are a few things that I would tackle on this one. First, I'm not sure if it is a texture or if it's part of the riginal image, but in the black background I'm seeing some random splashes of something. And at least on my monitor, it looks a bit messy. It doesn't look cohesive as if it was either a texture that goes all over the icon or is part of a background one can identify. I think removing that completely, or adding more textures so that it becomes a one thing only would help a lot. I think there's also a bit of oversharpening going on in the silhouette of her face, a very common thing imo in that kind of cap, so idk how you sharpened but masking that part could be useful. On other things, i would try to make it b&w, there's something about the almost nonexistent colours yet not b&w that isn't convicing me, and maybe try a bit more daring crop. This is working just fine. But this kind of caps work very well imo, when take to the maximum, and like... putting it as to the right as possible and making it mostly about negative space. like this icon from elleaf. just make her eyes, chin and nose visible and nothing more. it might give it a little something to the composition :D

I hope this is useful (and sorry for any typos, i'm a bit tired to check it all u-u and truth is i'm very lazy and my keyboard sucks).

[vapor]

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this out! ^_^ Truthfully these were all very experimental, and I really understand what you're saying about #5.