manga_battle Challenge 1 Commentary
Apparently I loooove writing commentaries. Here are my thoughts on my manga_battle Challenge 1 chronicle! Warning: Very reading intensive! Also, Credit for icons is optional, but please don't claim as your own work! Commentary idea (c) whiteplums @ fruitycoma!
Rank: 4th (out of 58)
Weeks: 11 (out of 11)
Points: 38 (Rank 1 for points)
Icons made: 17 (+5 bonus)
The Submissions
1: Preliminaries
2: Preliminaries
3: Round 1
4: Round 2
5: Round 3
6: Round 3
7: Round 4
8: Round 4
9: Round 4
10: Round 5
11: Round 6
12: Round 7
13: Round 8
14: Round 9
15: Final Round
16: Final Round
17: Final Round
Bonus Round Submissions
1: Preliminaries
2: Round 2
3: Round 6
4: Round 6
5: Round 6
Alternatives and Extras
1: Prelims
2: Round 3
3: Round 7
4: Round 7
5: Round 9
6: Final Round
7: Final Round
Notepad file of doom crits: Download?
Preliminaries - Provided Image & Free-For-All
Rank 21
0 Negative points
8 Favourite points
neonclover's Moderator's Choice
When I saw the Provided Image, I must admit that I thought it would be easy to icon, since CLAMP is so popular and everyone and their cousins seemed to be able to icon it easily. Oh how wrong I was!
First off, I had lots of trouble cropping this. There were many possibilities, but none of them really worked for me for some reason. I sorta started panicking, then I calmed down and picked a random point on the picture and chose that. (This is a lie D:) Then came the hardest part. OH THE COLOURS. It seemed that no matter what textures I added or what gradients I used, it would be too strong for the image, and it made the colours overpower the image, making it look like multicolour barf. In the end, I had to duplicate the base 5 times, set them on different blending modes, and adjust the colours on each so they can work together to moderate the fugliness. It was a lot of work, but I got it in the end. The final version had a total of 29 layers, and from this icon I learned that I failed at iconing CLAMP.
After I finished it, I seriously thought that it was pretty horrible, and that I would get lots of crits complaining about the messy colours and HUEG text. Wow was I wrong, and for the better. I even got MC wtf! What a beautiful start to this icontest. My life was perfect! Well, until I saw stuff for my free-for-all icon.
6 Elimination points
1 Favourite point
Alright, I have to admit that I really really hate free-for-all themes, because there is NOTHING to base anything on, so making decisions became really difficult. I'm indecisive like that.
Anyways, I was obsessed with ARIA at the time, because I found scans of the newest volume, so I decided to take a random picture from that volume. I figured that I should try something different from my usual dark-ish icons, so I layered on a lot of light textures this time, AND I use a cursive-y font, which I usually don't use. I was happy with my change of style, and thought I was sooo clever. Unfortunately,this was not the case.
Honestly, I thought this icon seriously owned when I first finished it. I think I was on drugs or something when I thought that, because it's so clear now that this icon is FAAAAR from ownage. The crits I got told me that the icon lacked a clear focus, and that it was too busy. It was also the only icon I got a negative number for after adding the Elim/Fave points up.
Preliminaries: Bonus Round - What Are You Good At?
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Submitted under Inventiveness
Yes/Yes
Upon seeing the images, I knew right away that I was NOT going to icon the CLAMP image. 1) It's Tsubasa and 2) It's B&W.
Anyways, when I first started working on the icon, I had a hard time cropping it. There were a lot of contrasting colours and components in the image, so I wasn't really sure how to go about singling out one thing. Luckily, I somehow figured that I could direct attention to Okita's face by leaving lots of space at the top and covering that with random text, so that's how I solved my cropping problem. Then came the problem with colouring. Even though the scan was high-res, the colours were really varied, and could be made blindingly saturated or fugly if I wasn't careful. I had to moderate the colours a lot by duplicating layers and completely changing the colours on the textures I used, so this alone took a lot of work. After I finished colouring and putting text on, I ended up with the 2nd version, but realized that it wasn't really good enough to be submitted under any of the specialized categories, so I had to take the icon a totally different route so I can submit it under Inventiveness.
I think that this icon was the first in which I resized the coloured base, put it on another canvas, and expanded on it, so it is sorta special. It's also one of the first I've made that somewhat employs the use of a magazine-like layout. I was proud of this icon, but when I finished it, I was really nervous about whether or not I submitted it under the right category. I think this was because it takes a LOT for me to consider an icon truly creative, since I've seen so many icons that have been done already. Luckily, the judges don't think the way I do, and I got away with a YES from both judges. That made my day, plus the crit I got from neonclover was awesome as well. :D
- "I absolutely adored your icon. It was the first icon submitted to actually use that image, so it stood out from the start - it was also really creative, which fit the category just perfectly. I loved the text you used with it (the typography was also very nicely done), the japanese in the background, and the dark red coloring (greatly contrasting with the original image, but working - it'd also have gotten a "yes" for coloring from me, no doubt. :3)
I like how you managed to pull off generally opposing colors (blue and red) without the icon turning into an eyesore. It seems a bit too busy, but the icon itself is so well done that it's easy to overlook that."
Yay!
Round 01 - Battle Royale Style
Rank 10
When I first saw the theme, I was pretty excited, since there were so many choices set out. Too bad I was really indecisive, and couldn't really pick right from the start. I knew that I WOULD NOT pick the 3rd theme, though, because my icons are surely not better than icons of fearthechopstic AND neonclover. Therefore, the only choice I had left were 1+2. Then I found out that most of the images I had were not well suited for theme 1, so I was stuck with theme 2.
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Submitted to Theme #02: Band Together
0 Negative points
8 Favourite points
Best Subgroup Overall
It really wasn't hard to find an image that was about love/friendship, but it WAS hard to find a picture without a lot of red. Thankfully, I thought to look in my B-Wanted pictures folder for once, and found this image. I really digged the green, so I chose it without a second thought.
Colouring and cropping for this image was very easy, and I didn't have a hard time enhancing the image at all, but there was one thing bad about it: There was no room for anything else! In order to make the icon look complete, I had to expand on it somehow, so I decided to take inspiration from an icon I made earlier. I felt pretty guilty about "copying" myself, but I had no new ideas, and at least I wasn't copying anyone else..?! Oh, and I should note that this is probably the first icon I've made in about 5 months that was shoujo-y cute, so I was glad to see that people liked it. :D
My crits were generally about how cute the icon was, and how the green stood out from the other icons. I was also surprised when someone mentioned that it was clean, because making clean icons is a hard task for me, and I didn't notice this was a clean icon until I read that. XD
Round 02 - The Poketest
Rank 9
First of all, I would like to say that THIS THEME ROCKS because pokemon is seriously ownage. However, I really didn't like the theme I was given, but I had to suck it up because I signed up for this. D:
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Gym Leader; Thunder
4 Negative points
10 Favourite points
Rank in Gym Leader group: 4
I have never made a thunder-themed icon in all my 17 years of living, so I was a bit...bleh about it. Nevertheless, I made an icon anyways, although it came out as a lazy and uninspired icon. I was very disappointed with myself, and I still am when I look at this. I even forgot about the submission time, and I had to make it at the last minute.
So I just finished reading the whole Saikano series around this time, so the first series that popped up when I was choosing an image was.. Saikano. (HORRIBLE and GROSS final volume by the way. I advise you to skip to the last chapter if you want to finish it, unless you like pr0n.) I was a bit pressed for time, so I didn't really care about what the picture was as long as it was easy to work with, which it (luckily) was. For this icon, I copied myself yet again, because I had no time to get fresh with ideas. (I'm lazy, sorry!) However, I DID take some time and use changing fonts for my caption, which I rarely do because I fail at matching different fonts. Also, my caption wasn't totally pointless - I wanted it to reference Chise's superpowers (she can destroy the world with her powers silently lol) in the picture and also the theme.
As for my crits, I was VERY surprised that people liked it, and that I wasn't ranked last in the group. When I saw voting, I seriously thought I was a goner, but since I'm always wrong, that wasn't quite the case. Anyways, people mostly complimented the changing fonts, the composition, and the font. The crits also complained about the light texture, supposedly low image quality, the snowflakes and the suitability of the caption. I'll be staying away from snowflakes and light textures for sure now. D:
Round 02: Bonus Round - So I Herd Sum Things
3 Votes
Even though this bonus round was optional, I just HAD to submit because the theme was win PLUS I got 1 point just for submitted. Mudkips are awesome like that.
When I was choosing an image, I flew directly to my CLAMP folder. There is nothing I like more than mocking CLAMP works, because they are usually so serious omg. I planned to use an X image at first, but I couldn't really find and image I could edit mudkip in properly, so I settled with this Syaoran panel from CCS. It was hard work editing the mudkip out, and it took me quite a long time. I also had a lot of trouble colouring it, so I left it grey. :D; Otherwise, there's nothing really special about the icon, and I couldn't make it funny in a normal way due to lack of crack.
I'm glad that the favourite comments I got were complimenting about the irony of it looking serious but having a dumb caption. Most pointed out that the black didn't work too well, though...
Round 03 - (Neo)Romantic Matchmaker
Rank 6
I really liked this theme, because I was seriously into dating sims at the time, downloading demos, screencapping, and visiting a LOT of different sites to leech pictures off them. So when I saw this posted, I was omg surprised wtf. I liked it not only because I was liking it at the time, but also because dating sims are rarely brought into light in this LJ world. (I think D:)
This was an icon I made for this week, but I didn't end up actually submitting it. I'm glad that I chose not to, because it's really quite a horrid icon. The hair is too yellow, the red clashes, and the overall appearance is quite messy. Nevertheless, I had fun making it, and the caption was pretty special. ("Reconquista" is also the title of a dating sim, but I came up some other sort of meaning to make Eve relate to it.) I even sorta made a long explanation for it when I tried to submit it. I had lots of fun making this icon, and I actually thought it was pretty unique and out-there for an icon. (Though far too outstanding for a LIMS.)
Submitted under Yuu Kanda (Hush theme)
1 Negative point
2 Favourite points
I was going to stay away from the Hush theme at first (I can't really live without tiny text D:), but then I realized that there's no harm in trying this theme, and that there were no other themes I really wanted to submit to anyways. I had a hard time choosing an image, since there were so many, but I eventually settled on something I've always liked iconing - Gunslinger Girl. This particular image appealed to me because of Henrietta's innocent smile coupled with a lethal gun in her hands. This blatant irony was very good for a hush icon, since it expressed so much already that no words were needed.
Anyways, the composition of this picture was pretty great. I love how the gun was large enough to fill up the space of the icon, so I had no room to put text in even if I wanted to. I tried to go for an old, after-a-war sort of look, so I layered on a lot of grungy textures to suit that mood. I also coloured the gun red to make a reference to blood that could be shed with the use of the weapon. I also made it smooth-looking on purpose to contrast with the dirty look of the rest of the icon, to express something like the gun will be the only one left clean and standing.
As for my crits, the comments were pretty brief. The favourite comment stated that the gun filled up the space nicely, and that the colouring was nice. The elimination comment was about how unsuitably dark the icon was, and how the shine of the gun is weird. I wasn't too happy or angry with these crits, but I did think that my icon would do better than it did. (Though probably not, because the other icons for this theme were spectacular.)
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Submitted under Umehito Nekozawa (Darkness/Black Magic theme)
0 Negative points
14 Favourite points
Lucky Date winner
Dark icons are pretty much all I make, so I just HAD to submit to this theme. I had a hard time choosing an image, though, because I'm picky like that. Anyways, I eventually settled on this image because the colours were pretty, and because I had no other ideas for an image.
However, this image was not at all that easy to work with because of all the text. I had to doctor the base so that there was fading darkness to block out the text in the background, and had to erase a lot of Kureha's flowing hair, but still make her face easy to identify. I decided to use a gradient over selectively coloured white layer, but boy was it hard to blend that picture into one.
Once I got past that annoying stuff, though, it was a breeze colouring the picture. ..Then I got stuck again. I had no idea what to do with all the space, so I just kinda died a little. Luckily, an idea hit me soon after dying - I can just copy myself and put swirly brushes on the background!! So that's what I did, and made the corners a bit darker with some grungey textures. I also added a checkered background so it wouldn't look to empty, and voila! An icon.
I actually didn't like this as much as my Gunslinger Girl one, but after it got favourited, it began to grow on me, and now I like it. The comments I got told me that people liked the fading darkness, the suitable caption, and the typography. I was surprised that people actually liked the typography, because it is so plain.
Round 04 - The 98% Miss
Rank 5
When I first saw the theme, I thought THIS IS WIN, but after I got the battle results, I cried a little inside. I spent a loooooong time figuring out my stats, and thought I would have a good chance of winning since I knew how Fire Emblem worked. (I used to loove the games) Apparently that was NOT the case again, and I got owned in MY FIRST BATTLE. I didn't even get to win one battle. WOE.
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Submitted under Theme 1 (Provided Image)
2 Negative points
9 Favourite points
This icon was mainly the reason why I was procrasinating for the week that the theme was up for. Even though it was really easy to colour and crop, I didn't know wtf I should do to the image, making me not want to work on it at all. Therefore, the outcome came out kind of half-assed. D:
One of my crits asked me why I used BLACK as the background for the text, and all I can say is.. I HAVE NO IDEA. I think I was on drugs or something. :/ I hate this icon, so I don't really want to go in depth about it.
Submitted under Theme 2 (Battle)
0 Negative points
35 Favourite points
1st Peoples' Choice
A VERY lazy icon. I had like 2 hours before deadline, so I was rushing and rushing. Picking an image was freaking easy, because I already had an image in mind, and that is a picture of the awesome Rosette from Chrno Crusade. I looove that image, and since it was colourful and easy to crop, I have no trouble iconing it. I just slapped on some standard text/tiny text, made "ready" blue just for fun, and quickly started to work on my other icon.
When I saw voting, I knew/thought I was a goner. "SHIT THESE ICONS ARE NICE" is what I thought, so as you can expect, I was TOTALLY SURPRISED when I saw that people liked this more than the other icons, most of which probably took a lot of time and effort to make. I guess being wrong all the time may be a good thing sometmes. D: Anyways, my comments told me that people REALLY DIGGED the coloured text, the catchy quote, the colours of the image, and the cleanness. I'll keep this in mind the next time I'm pressed for time kekeke.
Submitted under Theme 3 (Black & White)
1 Elimination point
6 Favourite points
Another lazy icon. I don't like it at all. The cropping, text, and red all fail miserably. I have nothing good to say about this.
Round 05 - The Seven Deadly Sins
Rank 3
Yeah, I didn't like this theme too much, because I was forced to choose how to lose. D:
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Submitted under Lust for point gain/lost method
0 Elimination points
11 Favourite points
I have never liked themes related to the deadly sins/heavenly virtues, because I could never find the right images to go with them. This round was no exception, and it didn't help that I wasn't very inspired. D: Anyways, I picked an image where the person looked somewhat smug and where the image had nice colours to work with. I didn't have any trouble colouring it, but expanding on it was pretty hard. I couldn't find the right colour for a background, thus resulting in that piece of light-blue barf up there. Since it looked so horrible, I jsut HAD to change it, so I slapped on whatever grungy textures I could find, and there was my outcome.
Since grungy icons seem to fail at LIMS, I was really surprised that I got 0 negative points. Most of the comments pointed out that the composition, colours, and cropping were nicely done, but I actually thought that the colours were really very ugly. Apparently I'm somewhat blind. D:
Round 06 - Untrendy
Rank 1
I loooved this round, because the bonus stage was the ugly incarnation of Nike, the goddess of victorly.
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12 Negative points
14 Favourite points
This was a very easy icon to make, and even the image was easy to pick. I was reading Mushishi at the time, so I thought, "Oh yeah, the cover had ownsome colours!", so I used that for this icon. It was really really fun colouring the image, and I had such a great time I almost forgot to actually do more stuff to it. Since a grungy style was pretty untrendy in the animanga iconing world, I decided to layer on all (or most) papery textures I had, and even added in a notebook binding thing for the lulz. This was the icon I had the most fun making in a looooong time.
Anyways, the points I got were mostly either +3 (first priority loves) or -3 (first priority hates), so submitting such a grungey icon CAN result in Switzerland neutrality. It's not good to make an icon like this if you want to win, though, but whatever. D: So uh, people either HATED or LOVED the messiness and/or the unusual colours. What do you want me to do then?! I am at a loss. HOWEVER, I was pretty happy that people liked the strong composition overall, even if it was a bit too full. Also, I found this crit funny:
- "It feels horribly cluttered. The textures seem to fight with the image for the user's attention."
lol internal iconflicts?!?! *was shot*
Round 06: Bonus Round - How to Not Win an Icontest
Worst Colouring WINNER (2 points)
Worst Effects WINNER (3 points)
Worst Overall points: 10
Worst Text: 4 points
Worst Cropping: 1 point
When I first saw the Bonus Round theme, I thought I MUST BUTCHER TRC SAKURA, because I really dislike that useless girl. I'm sorry if this offends anyone who likes her, but I just can't stand her. ANYWAYS, when I first started working on this, I knew I had to use the texturizer and add in a fugly lens flare, so they were part of my grand plan right from the start. When I got into the heart of things, though, I was using everything photoshop had, and setting almost all the settings to maximum, resulting in ultimate fugly. Here were some of my terrific crits:
- "SHE IS GOING TO GREET ME, THEN EAT MY BRAINS. I lovingly call her Happy Zombie Sakura, mmyes."
- "You should be banned from using Photoshop/PSP ;__; What did your graphic program do to you? ;____;"
THIS COMMENT MADE ME CRY ;_;, but whatever. Nevertheless, this icon DOES NOT COMPARE to my next one, which was...
Worst Overall 1st Place (19 points)
Worst Cropping WINNER (9 points)
Worst Colouring WINNER (2 points)
Worst Effects WINNER (3 points)
I WON IN EVERY CATEGORY BUT 2 with this icon. I was sooooooo pround of it. :') But yeah, this icon is really bad. I didn't even save the .psd for it, and I save the .psd for EVERYTHING. D:
When I saw the theme, I just knew I had to butcher Kobato as well, because I didn't like the her either. :[ (I'm such a hater ;_;) I had no trouble finding the image, and when I did, I suddenly remembered that I can just bareeeely resize the thing, and thus this icon was born. I also wanted to try using those default pen tool frames for once, and wow, it turned out BEAUTIFULLY, didn't it! I love this icon so. Here were some of the lovely comments I got:
- "It's fugly ;_; I mean, what is the subject of the icon? Vomit? :o Vomit with pink text and a lens flare, omg. I can't find the right words to describe it ;_;"
- "I have no idea what's in there .-."
As they say... JUST AS PLANED.
Worst Overall 3rd Place (14 points)
Worst Cropping: 1 point
Worst Text: 1 point
Worst Effects: 1 point
This icon didn't do as well as the others, but it did make Hulk appear among the voters:
- "SYAORAN'S ANGRY? NOT AS ANGRY AS I AM. SMASH!!!!"
I thorougly enjoyed reading these crits. XD
Round 07 - The Power is Yours!
Rank 2
I didn't like this round as much, because the theme I was given was hard for me. Plus I always got owned for making dirty icons. ;_;
I was originally going to submit this icon, but it was too empty and I remembered afterwards that I wasn't allowed to put text on it. :[ Plus the colours weren't earthy enough anyways, so I gave up on it.
7 Negative points
7 Favourite points
I had absolutely no idea what kinda of image I should use for this theme, so I just settled on a cute Hibari picture and made it all sorts of earthy colours. I didn't colour in any part of the picture with a brush at all, so it saved me a lot of time, and was very fun. Umm, I don't have much else to say, so..on to my crits!!
Honestly, they surprised me a bit. I thought I would place last in the group, but I placed 3rd, much to my relief. However, I was a bit blah about one of the long crits I got complaining about everything. D: It's probably one of the harshest I've gotten, but I guess it's not actually that harsh, compared to other ones I've heard others getting. Here it is!
- "I like the concept, but I don't really care for the coloring job and can see visible pixellation in the image, which looks like a resizing issue. The spiral notebook binding at the top also appears to be a bit too photo-realistic to mesh with the rest of the icon. (If you colored that part as well, it looks really awesome! It just.. doesn't match, that's all.)
Aside from that, I don't quite see how the character fits the theme. I had to ask to figure out whether this icon was "earth" or "wind;" unless you're trying to portray Hibari as an earthquake, it doesn't quite make sense. And even if you were, Hibari is associated with "cloud," someone whose main character trait is being mercurial. While he is arguably a force of nature, I see portraying him as "earth," is anathema to his character. (But this is really about the coloring and resizing issues, when I first saw it, I went "...Hibari~!" at it. Then I went "Why does it look like Hibari's head is attatched to a sea turtle shell." It's not very tactful, but that's honestly what I thought. :|)"
Poor Hibari, being mentioned with sea turtles. ;_; Sorry! I thought the earth theme was pretty visible myself, because of all the brown. D: As for the other crits, everyone some really hated the notebook thing, and some didn't mind it too much. Also, there were a lot of contrasting opinions about the colouring, so I guess grunge is seriously a hit or miss. (But mostly miss. D:)
Round 08 - Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies
Rank 2
AHHHHHHHH Obligatory CLAMP icons will be the death of me. ;_; I didn't like this round at all, and I felt that the image I was given was WAY harder than that of my opponent's no matter how you looked at it. INJUSTICE. Oh well, I volunteered for this, so NO WHINING. Oh, and a warning to people with CRT monitors: REALLY FUGLY COLOURS AHEAD. (Or so one of my crits tell me)
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Opponent: Kureha Fujishima
Result: Tie
11 individual votes
5 favourite points
First things first: I think that this is the most exhausting icon I have ever made or ever will make IN MY LIFE. It totally beats that Angelic Layer icon by a LONG mile. I had 12 versions prior to the final for this, and from start to finish took about 10 hours LITERALLY. Also, the final version had freaking 47 layers in total. YES, FORTY SEVEN. I basically forgot that iconing was a hobby when I had to make this. D:
So uh, for my first try, I knew that I would have trouble, but I didn't think I would have THAT much trouble. D: The first difficulty I encountered was in CROPPING of all freaking things. Usually images are easy to crop, but god, a hanging man sure is hard. I'll be staying away from those pictures from now on. Anyways, my first idea on how to crop it would be to resize it to a small size where the whole figure of kakyou could be seen, but I soon scrapped that because it was waaay too small to make out. I didn't even save a version for that. Then my next idea was to focus on the face, because the human face is something easy to point out. However, the position of Kakyou was far too weird, and could be easily mistaken for something else. I thought making it all sorts of colours would help make that easier, but I seriously SUCK at colouring CLAMP images.
For colouring, I was going to use my usual routine, and that is a bit of screen and soft light with some sharpness applied to the base. However, that seems to be way too crazy for this image (which is so white that more brightness means blinding everyone who sees it). So I did the exact reverse (multiply) and wow, I can actually see stuff now!! Too bad multiply makes his hair look really gross, so I had to "fix" that with textures. That didn't go over too well though, and resulted in the first piece of junk up there. How sad.
For my second attempt, I decided to rotate Kakyou so his face will be easier to distinguish even without my multiply layers, and decided to stop adding colours on him. But as usual, I was wrong about not needing Multiply, and used it anyways, so now he looks sorta unclean again. :(
I soon scrapped that and tried a third time. This time I decided to try the same vertical crop but with less purple and more orange in terms of colouring. I thought this would work because the yellow-ish colour of his hair would detract from the dirtiness, but he ended up looking too saturated and crazy instead. :[
After and hour and a half of playing with ver.3, I gave up again and started on ver.4. This time, I tried a crop that I saw another iconist used (but rotated), though I didn't think it would go over too well because he was too small and hard to distinguish. Plus he looks a bit awkward just floating like that. I tried working with colours again, and though these colours aren't too bad, the lines of the artwork were not dark enough to be traced at first glance. Looking back at this icon, though, I think the colours of this were most favourable out of the others thanks to its generally clean colouring. I regret not expanding on this icon more at the time, since it does have a lot of potential.
As for ver.5, I made only slight changes in cropping and colouring. For cropping, I excluded his hand from the picture, and directed all attention to his face. It kinda lacks a good focus, though, because it can lead to a weird composition after I add text on it. (Which I would add to the left-hand side, making both vying for attention) As for colouring, I thought I would have more varied colours, but they look kinda ugly, so I scrapped this too.
Then came ver.6. This was the crop I ended up using for the final version, and I actually liked this, though it took me a long time to decide on it. Too bad the colours look like shit, otherwise I wouldn't have to give up and start over again.
Good god, ver.7. I almost submitted this, because it was the farthest I've come to a complete icon at that moment, and I was beginning to feel pressed for time. Anyways, another face-centered crop but this time with shiny-ish colours. I would have liked this icon if the hair didn't look so dirty, but I really couldn't figure out why the hair looked like it did. WOE.
Version 8, now with a new crop! I was most satisfied with this before the final version, but the text was so lacking that I couldn't submit it. Oh, and I tried making Kakyou's face easier to distinguish from his hair by blacking out the mass of hair at the bottom. I felt very clever about doing this, but it's too bad I didn't utilize it in the final. Also, the image quality looked really bad here, and since I couldn't do anything about it, I was forced to give up again.
On to version 9! I think that I'll be lazy and say this was just me fooling around with version 6 and adding text and tiny text on it. Note that the colours still look like barf, so it's time for...
Version 10! I actually liked this version, because it was more creative than the other ones. I combined ver.8 with ver.9, so there's less empty space. I couldn't fit text in properly, though, so I had to scrap it yet again.
Phew, we're almost at the final product! But right now, version 11! I finally got less-fugly colouring, but that was because I spent a long and hard time getting it right. There are still a bit barf-coloured parts (notably on the end part of his bangs and the cropping hair), but I couldn't figure out how to fix that for the life of me. Anyways, I also finally found a caption (from the title of an arc in the Tsukihime game lol) to add that was long enough to fill up the space, but the colour had to be adjusted with more textures, and the changing fonts didn't come together smoothly. Therefore, I had to rearrange this, resulting in...
THE FINAL PRODUCT! Yay, we're finally here! This time, I put emphasis on "end" rather than "eternity", and changed the roman-styled font to a sans-serif for massive damage. I laid low on the echoing of text in the background, and slapped on some tiny text, because otherwise it would seem incomplete. I also made the strings completely visible so that the viewer can tell that Kakyou is hanging on a string rather than just floating around. Oh, and I added in some subtle spiderweb textures to make the black seem less empty. Good god, what an annoying icon to make.
Finally, on to the crits I got. EVERYONE LIKED THE TYPOGRAPHY YAY. That was the part of the icon I liked best and worried about the 3rd most, so I'm glad people liked it. :D Someone even liked the cropping and the colouring! However, this crit made me cry a little bit ;_;
- "ON LCD MONITOR: I really like the colours and contrast used in this icon. The crop is good and supports this and at the same time gives you enough space for the text. Which doesn't look too bad either. Some parts of the icon do look a little "dirty", with greyish splotches (like on the neck) that seem out of place, as if the original image was dirty or something. His face is also a bit too yellow if you ask me.
ON CRT MONITOR: This icon has some of the UGLIEST colours EVER. I knew CRT monitors generally display colours more accurately than LCD ones, but I never imagined the difference could be so big. On this CRT monitor, there's purple and green ALL OVER the icon. The lower right part of his hair looks like it's puked on. You got my fav before, but after seeing how bad it looks like this, I just can't fav it.
I have no idea how to fix this problem, because it looks fine on the CRT monitor I have. D:
Round 09 - The Mirror
Rank 1
I thought this round would be a breeze, but I wasn't. Why am I always wrong..? :(
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1st; Most Original (12 points)
3rd; Best Overall (11 points)
4th; Best Colouring (3 points)
5th; Best Cropping (2 points)
3rd; Best Typography (3 points)
Although I loooved the image and have worked with it before, it was weirdly hard to colour and crop. The first three to four of the versions displayed up there was my playing around with cropping and colouring, and the fourth was me trying to expand a picture and failing again. D:
Then I got bored with playing about and started to actually work on the freaking icon!! :D
Anyways, the inspiration for the camera frame came from suddenly noticing one of the stock icons I had made by eternalphoenix_, so I went looking for camera pictures on google/stock exchange. Good god I had fun with this. Even though it was annoying having to extract the frame myself with the elliptical marquee tool, it was a very smooth process overall. ...Until I got to the text, that is. D: I used a caption I saw on another ARIA icon I've seen before (Don't kill me ahh!!), but it was really hard to fit in smoothly, even if I my favourite font ever (Libel Suit). After trying like a bazillion ways with the text (I even tried warping the text around the left end of the frame), I soon gave up, and went for a different frame I extracted for fun.
This frame was like, magical. I'm not kidding. Once I put the picture in, I just KNEW what I had to do to finish it. I put on some sky textures like I usually do, and WOW, it turned out like reflection on water instead. I was really surprised, but it was exactly what I was looking for. I also tried to make the icon look a bit like a stock icon as well, giving it some natural lighting (to look like there's shade above the setting), and some shine to the frame and make the picture's colours be subjected to similar colouring as the background. To finish off the image, I tried to give the picture some dimension by brushing in a light circle on the inner side of the frame, so it looks more like it's bevelled. Too bad nobody noticed this, but I think it really does make a difference in the end. As for the text...GOOD GOD I LOVE MY TEXT. I just knew I had to arrange it like so, because I wanted to let parts of the background show, and to make the text look more dynamic. I also like that I used a cursive font for "see", because it makes such a nice statement, and it just seriously goes with the whole icon's relaxing type of atmosphere. I do admit that I was a bit heavy on the tiny text (I can't help it! I love it ;_;), but I really don't think it matters that much. It's just a component to flush out the text and make it more full. All in all, I am COMPLETELY satisfied with this icon (and I really really rarely am), and I SERIOUSLY LOVE IT, though I really didn't think it was creative AT ALL.
Anyways, I'm surprised how well this icon did, because the icons I like usually fail. I have no taste, apparently. The icon got points in every category, and there were generally no outstanding complaints. However, there were a few, and one of them was about the colours being fugly on a CRT monitor. It looks fine on my CRT monitor, though, so I don't know how to change that. D: Other crits told me that the text was too large, and that there was too much tiny text.
Most people complimented the colours, the use of the frame, the composition, the creativity, and the typography. I found it funny that the people who voted this icon for Most Original thought I put it in a mirror, because that wasn't intentional at all. I thought it would be obvious it was a camera lens, but..I guess not! I'm really glad it turned out like that, though, because I loove seeing different interpretations of the same thing, positive or otherwise. I'm also glad that people found the caption fitting, as I did. Hurrah!
FINAL ROUND - Portfolio
Rank 4
Tied with almateria (Luke Fone Fabre)
Total: 341 points
Trinities: 118 points
Three Best: 82 points
Three Worst: 141 points
I love portfolios, so I loved this theme. ...Well, maybe not the Free Choice part. I HATE FREE CHOICE WITH A PASSION YES I DO. I also really hated the "Points are discarded now" part, because I worked hard for those points, and I had a lot of them. ;_;!
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Submitted under Provided Image
When I saw the image, I KNEW I wasn't going to touch the ASN one, and I KNEW I would icon Naoto, because she is one of the most ownsome characters in DOGS. Plus she's pretty.
Anyways, I had this lame idea to try and combine my two favourites (Naoto and Badou), and as you can see in the first version, it kinda failed, since it made Badou look somewhat like an old lady with shawl. I gave up on this quickly, because I don't like to waste time. (Lies)
Then I got into the heart of the cards iconing by focusing on and colouring Naoto. Wow did she turn out awesome. I used my usual methods, but she turned out SO CLEAN. I was really proud of these colours, and I liked the sky texture I used for the background. Except...I didn't know wtf to do after I coloured it. D: Then randomly I had this idea of duplicating the image and using her outline to make some sort of creepy human frame. D: I thought it was clever, but I also thought it was way too weird for the audience, so I didn't submit it. I personally liked it, though, so I was sad it wouldn't appeal to the masses.
Since weirdness does not go over well in LIMS, I tried a more conservative approach. My motto for first and last rounds is, after all, "Keep it conservative, guys!". I used a texture on the bottom (because it was empty), and tried to put text on it, but failed. I don't know why, but putting text on a horizontal line is very..hard. I got really frustrated with the text, so I went on to make a new version with different cropping.
I basically just copied the other version in terms of colouring method for this, but it turned out a lot better than the other one, and I was pretty shocked at the fact. I was also surprised that I was at a loss when I tried to think of a caption for this, and so I was a bit scared. There's really nothing special about this version, because it was an attempt at creating a boring icon much like my Chrno Crusade one. (Round 4)
My final version was the same as the previous one but with a new caption (from a Nelly Furtado song yay!), a different font, some more highlights and colour changes in the image, and MORE MORE MORE tiny text. I love tiny text, but you already knew that.
The crits I got for this icon was that many liked the colouring and the typography in general, but most questioned the need for tiny text, and didn't really like the larger text because of how it doesn't blend in with the rest of the icon, and because of how large and how much of it there was.
Submitted under Provided Resources
At first, I was really happy about getting such beautiful resources to work with, but that happiness soon faded when I couldn't think of an image to use. I had to browse through my pictures for about half an hour or so before I settled on good old Basil from Katekyo Hitman Reborn!.
Luckily, the hardest part was soon over, and the making of this was a breeze. Even I was surprised at how smooth it went. Since the image was high-res and beautiful, colouring it was absolutely no problem at all. After doing that, I just slapped on some text and textures, and called it a day. There is something special about this icon, though, and that is the lack of in-your-face text. It has been a long time since I've slapped on text like this, and I thought it fit perfectly for once, given the evasive feel of the caption and image.
As for the crits, many either loved or hated this icon. Most thought the lack of special typography made it a bit lacking, the use of tiny text was unnecessary, and didn't think the use of green was good. However, some were really drawn to the second icon, so..I don't know what to make of this!
An icon I was debating on whether to include into the set or not for the Free Choice theme. I actually worked really hard on this, and I was quite pleased with the result, considering the hard time I had trying to make this. However, I felt that it was far too grungy, and from my past experiences, I knew that the voters did NOT dig the grunge. Therefore, I opted for the other icon I made instead. (Shown below)
Submitted under Free Choice
Ahh, back to my Kozue Amano roots (sorta). I actually started on this icon before the one above, but I wasn't liking the colouring I had at the time, so I gave up on it to start on the other one. However, since the other turned out to be grungey, I had to finish this one instead. (I had no other ideas for images to icon anyways)
So uh, this icon wasn't too hard to make, but bringing out the blue of the icon was a bit hard. I had to use a few different textures, and I had to moderate it so it doesn't overshadow the focus of the whole thing. It came out pretty nicely, though, so I'm happy about that. There's, again, nothing really special about this icon, except that the caption was supposed to be "marina" (but it was too short), I coloured her jacket blue to fit the "brilliant blue" caption, and actually used borders for the first time in...god knows how many months. Oh, and I used my favourite font for my grand finale - Libel Suit. I love that font almost as much as tiny text. :']
On to the crits! Many people complimented this icon, and said it really caught their eye with the nice blue colours. Some also said the spacing for the text was weird, but I think it looks alright.
For the whole set, some felt that text on the icons were not needed at all, others just thought that the text for 1+3 were far too large. Also, some thought the crops were boring and uninspired. Overall, thought, people were impressed with typography, colouring, and composition.
Things I Learned
- Lay low on light textures (Prelims)
- Nice colours does not make up for clutter (Prelims)
- Clean icons are well received (Round 1)
- Blatantly relevant captions are best (Round 2)
- Stay away from grunge (Round 3)
- Coloured text and bold colours can draw good attention (Round 4)
- Busy, grungy icons can be hits or misses (Round 6)
- Addition of a notebook spiral can be a hit or a miss (Round 7)
- Notebook spirals can take attention away from an image. (Round 7)
- Notebook spirals should not be used with manga because it is too photo-realistic (Round 7)
- Dark icons are generally not well received (Round 7)
- Great typography may or may not make up for lack of vibrant colours (Round 8)
- Huge layering of textures may result in barf on CRT monitors. (Round 7)
- Camera lenses may be used as a frame to expand on. (Round 9)
- Large, unaligned text is generally not well received. (Round 9)
- Conservativeness works in final rounds as well. (Final round)
- Clean, pure colours may or may not make up for a boring crop. (Final round)
- White text should not be too white if used on an icon with a generally dark colour scheme. (Final round)
- Use tiny text in moderation. (Final round)
Final Thoughts
Well, it's finally over! The 11-week craze that is manga_battle Challenge 1 has come to an end. I felt that I learned a LOT through this experience and have come up with new things to work with and expand on. The style of my icons has gone from absolutely no distinctive style, to something that may be recognized as "kanrinin's icons". I had a great and truly unique experience overall, despite feeling some stress at times, and will surely be back for future Challenges.
A huge thanks to my fellow contestants, who provided such tough competition that I had to give my all every round, and an EVEN LARGER thanks for the moderators, neonclover & fearthechopstic, and their unwavering dedication. It's amazing that you guys were able to mod this huge contest starting from scratch and finish the challenge off on such a high note.
Until next challenge,
kanrinin
P.S. This took me about 6 hours to write, so if you read all that, you deserve a prize! Comment here with a manga image and I'll make you an icon! :D If you were a contestant or a mod from Challenge 1, you are eligible for 2 icons! Let the iconmaking begin once again!
Rank: 4th (out of 58)
Weeks: 11 (out of 11)
Points: 38 (Rank 1 for points)
Icons made: 17 (+5 bonus)
The Submissions
1: Preliminaries
2: Preliminaries
3: Round 1
4: Round 2
5: Round 3
6: Round 3
7: Round 4
8: Round 4
9: Round 4
10: Round 5
11: Round 6
12: Round 7
13: Round 8
14: Round 9
15: Final Round
16: Final Round
17: Final Round
Bonus Round Submissions
1: Preliminaries
2: Round 2
3: Round 6
4: Round 6
5: Round 6
Alternatives and Extras
1: Prelims
2: Round 3
3: Round 7
4: Round 7
5: Round 9
6: Final Round
7: Final Round
Notepad file of doom crits: Download?
Preliminaries - Provided Image & Free-For-All
Rank 21
0 Negative points
8 Favourite points
neonclover's Moderator's Choice
When I saw the Provided Image, I must admit that I thought it would be easy to icon, since CLAMP is so popular and everyone and their cousins seemed to be able to icon it easily. Oh how wrong I was!
First off, I had lots of trouble cropping this. There were many possibilities, but none of them really worked for me for some reason. I sorta started panicking, then I calmed down and picked a random point on the picture and chose that. (This is a lie D:) Then came the hardest part. OH THE COLOURS. It seemed that no matter what textures I added or what gradients I used, it would be too strong for the image, and it made the colours overpower the image, making it look like multicolour barf. In the end, I had to duplicate the base 5 times, set them on different blending modes, and adjust the colours on each so they can work together to moderate the fugliness. It was a lot of work, but I got it in the end. The final version had a total of 29 layers, and from this icon I learned that I failed at iconing CLAMP.
After I finished it, I seriously thought that it was pretty horrible, and that I would get lots of crits complaining about the messy colours and HUEG text. Wow was I wrong, and for the better. I even got MC wtf! What a beautiful start to this icontest. My life was perfect! Well, until I saw stuff for my free-for-all icon.
6 Elimination points
1 Favourite point
Alright, I have to admit that I really really hate free-for-all themes, because there is NOTHING to base anything on, so making decisions became really difficult. I'm indecisive like that.
Anyways, I was obsessed with ARIA at the time, because I found scans of the newest volume, so I decided to take a random picture from that volume. I figured that I should try something different from my usual dark-ish icons, so I layered on a lot of light textures this time, AND I use a cursive-y font, which I usually don't use. I was happy with my change of style, and thought I was sooo clever. Unfortunately,this was not the case.
Honestly, I thought this icon seriously owned when I first finished it. I think I was on drugs or something when I thought that, because it's so clear now that this icon is FAAAAR from ownage. The crits I got told me that the icon lacked a clear focus, and that it was too busy. It was also the only icon I got a negative number for after adding the Elim/Fave points up.
Preliminaries: Bonus Round - What Are You Good At?
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Submitted under Inventiveness
Yes/Yes
Upon seeing the images, I knew right away that I was NOT going to icon the CLAMP image. 1) It's Tsubasa and 2) It's B&W.
Anyways, when I first started working on the icon, I had a hard time cropping it. There were a lot of contrasting colours and components in the image, so I wasn't really sure how to go about singling out one thing. Luckily, I somehow figured that I could direct attention to Okita's face by leaving lots of space at the top and covering that with random text, so that's how I solved my cropping problem. Then came the problem with colouring. Even though the scan was high-res, the colours were really varied, and could be made blindingly saturated or fugly if I wasn't careful. I had to moderate the colours a lot by duplicating layers and completely changing the colours on the textures I used, so this alone took a lot of work. After I finished colouring and putting text on, I ended up with the 2nd version, but realized that it wasn't really good enough to be submitted under any of the specialized categories, so I had to take the icon a totally different route so I can submit it under Inventiveness.
I think that this icon was the first in which I resized the coloured base, put it on another canvas, and expanded on it, so it is sorta special. It's also one of the first I've made that somewhat employs the use of a magazine-like layout. I was proud of this icon, but when I finished it, I was really nervous about whether or not I submitted it under the right category. I think this was because it takes a LOT for me to consider an icon truly creative, since I've seen so many icons that have been done already. Luckily, the judges don't think the way I do, and I got away with a YES from both judges. That made my day, plus the crit I got from neonclover was awesome as well. :D
- "I absolutely adored your icon. It was the first icon submitted to actually use that image, so it stood out from the start - it was also really creative, which fit the category just perfectly. I loved the text you used with it (the typography was also very nicely done), the japanese in the background, and the dark red coloring (greatly contrasting with the original image, but working - it'd also have gotten a "yes" for coloring from me, no doubt. :3)
I like how you managed to pull off generally opposing colors (blue and red) without the icon turning into an eyesore. It seems a bit too busy, but the icon itself is so well done that it's easy to overlook that."
Yay!
Round 01 - Battle Royale Style
Rank 10
When I first saw the theme, I was pretty excited, since there were so many choices set out. Too bad I was really indecisive, and couldn't really pick right from the start. I knew that I WOULD NOT pick the 3rd theme, though, because my icons are surely not better than icons of fearthechopstic AND neonclover. Therefore, the only choice I had left were 1+2. Then I found out that most of the images I had were not well suited for theme 1, so I was stuck with theme 2.
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Submitted to Theme #02: Band Together
0 Negative points
8 Favourite points
Best Subgroup Overall
It really wasn't hard to find an image that was about love/friendship, but it WAS hard to find a picture without a lot of red. Thankfully, I thought to look in my B-Wanted pictures folder for once, and found this image. I really digged the green, so I chose it without a second thought.
Colouring and cropping for this image was very easy, and I didn't have a hard time enhancing the image at all, but there was one thing bad about it: There was no room for anything else! In order to make the icon look complete, I had to expand on it somehow, so I decided to take inspiration from an icon I made earlier. I felt pretty guilty about "copying" myself, but I had no new ideas, and at least I wasn't copying anyone else..?! Oh, and I should note that this is probably the first icon I've made in about 5 months that was shoujo-y cute, so I was glad to see that people liked it. :D
My crits were generally about how cute the icon was, and how the green stood out from the other icons. I was also surprised when someone mentioned that it was clean, because making clean icons is a hard task for me, and I didn't notice this was a clean icon until I read that. XD
Round 02 - The Poketest
Rank 9
First of all, I would like to say that THIS THEME ROCKS because pokemon is seriously ownage. However, I really didn't like the theme I was given, but I had to suck it up because I signed up for this. D:
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Gym Leader; Thunder
4 Negative points
10 Favourite points
Rank in Gym Leader group: 4
I have never made a thunder-themed icon in all my 17 years of living, so I was a bit...bleh about it. Nevertheless, I made an icon anyways, although it came out as a lazy and uninspired icon. I was very disappointed with myself, and I still am when I look at this. I even forgot about the submission time, and I had to make it at the last minute.
So I just finished reading the whole Saikano series around this time, so the first series that popped up when I was choosing an image was.. Saikano. (HORRIBLE and GROSS final volume by the way. I advise you to skip to the last chapter if you want to finish it, unless you like pr0n.) I was a bit pressed for time, so I didn't really care about what the picture was as long as it was easy to work with, which it (luckily) was. For this icon, I copied myself yet again, because I had no time to get fresh with ideas. (I'm lazy, sorry!) However, I DID take some time and use changing fonts for my caption, which I rarely do because I fail at matching different fonts. Also, my caption wasn't totally pointless - I wanted it to reference Chise's superpowers (she can destroy the world with her powers silently lol) in the picture and also the theme.
As for my crits, I was VERY surprised that people liked it, and that I wasn't ranked last in the group. When I saw voting, I seriously thought I was a goner, but since I'm always wrong, that wasn't quite the case. Anyways, people mostly complimented the changing fonts, the composition, and the font. The crits also complained about the light texture, supposedly low image quality, the snowflakes and the suitability of the caption. I'll be staying away from snowflakes and light textures for sure now. D:
Round 02: Bonus Round - So I Herd Sum Things
3 Votes
Even though this bonus round was optional, I just HAD to submit because the theme was win PLUS I got 1 point just for submitted. Mudkips are awesome like that.
When I was choosing an image, I flew directly to my CLAMP folder. There is nothing I like more than mocking CLAMP works, because they are usually so serious omg. I planned to use an X image at first, but I couldn't really find and image I could edit mudkip in properly, so I settled with this Syaoran panel from CCS. It was hard work editing the mudkip out, and it took me quite a long time. I also had a lot of trouble colouring it, so I left it grey. :D; Otherwise, there's nothing really special about the icon, and I couldn't make it funny in a normal way due to lack of crack.
I'm glad that the favourite comments I got were complimenting about the irony of it looking serious but having a dumb caption. Most pointed out that the black didn't work too well, though...
Round 03 - (Neo)Romantic Matchmaker
Rank 6
I really liked this theme, because I was seriously into dating sims at the time, downloading demos, screencapping, and visiting a LOT of different sites to leech pictures off them. So when I saw this posted, I was omg surprised wtf. I liked it not only because I was liking it at the time, but also because dating sims are rarely brought into light in this LJ world. (I think D:)
This was an icon I made for this week, but I didn't end up actually submitting it. I'm glad that I chose not to, because it's really quite a horrid icon. The hair is too yellow, the red clashes, and the overall appearance is quite messy. Nevertheless, I had fun making it, and the caption was pretty special. ("Reconquista" is also the title of a dating sim, but I came up some other sort of meaning to make Eve relate to it.) I even sorta made a long explanation for it when I tried to submit it. I had lots of fun making this icon, and I actually thought it was pretty unique and out-there for an icon. (Though far too outstanding for a LIMS.)
Submitted under Yuu Kanda (Hush theme)
1 Negative point
2 Favourite points
I was going to stay away from the Hush theme at first (I can't really live without tiny text D:), but then I realized that there's no harm in trying this theme, and that there were no other themes I really wanted to submit to anyways. I had a hard time choosing an image, since there were so many, but I eventually settled on something I've always liked iconing - Gunslinger Girl. This particular image appealed to me because of Henrietta's innocent smile coupled with a lethal gun in her hands. This blatant irony was very good for a hush icon, since it expressed so much already that no words were needed.
Anyways, the composition of this picture was pretty great. I love how the gun was large enough to fill up the space of the icon, so I had no room to put text in even if I wanted to. I tried to go for an old, after-a-war sort of look, so I layered on a lot of grungy textures to suit that mood. I also coloured the gun red to make a reference to blood that could be shed with the use of the weapon. I also made it smooth-looking on purpose to contrast with the dirty look of the rest of the icon, to express something like the gun will be the only one left clean and standing.
As for my crits, the comments were pretty brief. The favourite comment stated that the gun filled up the space nicely, and that the colouring was nice. The elimination comment was about how unsuitably dark the icon was, and how the shine of the gun is weird. I wasn't too happy or angry with these crits, but I did think that my icon would do better than it did. (Though probably not, because the other icons for this theme were spectacular.)
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Submitted under Umehito Nekozawa (Darkness/Black Magic theme)
0 Negative points
14 Favourite points
Lucky Date winner
Dark icons are pretty much all I make, so I just HAD to submit to this theme. I had a hard time choosing an image, though, because I'm picky like that. Anyways, I eventually settled on this image because the colours were pretty, and because I had no other ideas for an image.
However, this image was not at all that easy to work with because of all the text. I had to doctor the base so that there was fading darkness to block out the text in the background, and had to erase a lot of Kureha's flowing hair, but still make her face easy to identify. I decided to use a gradient over selectively coloured white layer, but boy was it hard to blend that picture into one.
Once I got past that annoying stuff, though, it was a breeze colouring the picture. ..Then I got stuck again. I had no idea what to do with all the space, so I just kinda died a little. Luckily, an idea hit me soon after dying - I can just copy myself and put swirly brushes on the background!! So that's what I did, and made the corners a bit darker with some grungey textures. I also added a checkered background so it wouldn't look to empty, and voila! An icon.
I actually didn't like this as much as my Gunslinger Girl one, but after it got favourited, it began to grow on me, and now I like it. The comments I got told me that people liked the fading darkness, the suitable caption, and the typography. I was surprised that people actually liked the typography, because it is so plain.
Round 04 - The 98% Miss
Rank 5
When I first saw the theme, I thought THIS IS WIN, but after I got the battle results, I cried a little inside. I spent a loooooong time figuring out my stats, and thought I would have a good chance of winning since I knew how Fire Emblem worked. (I used to loove the games) Apparently that was NOT the case again, and I got owned in MY FIRST BATTLE. I didn't even get to win one battle. WOE.
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Submitted under Theme 1 (Provided Image)
2 Negative points
9 Favourite points
This icon was mainly the reason why I was procrasinating for the week that the theme was up for. Even though it was really easy to colour and crop, I didn't know wtf I should do to the image, making me not want to work on it at all. Therefore, the outcome came out kind of half-assed. D:
One of my crits asked me why I used BLACK as the background for the text, and all I can say is.. I HAVE NO IDEA. I think I was on drugs or something. :/ I hate this icon, so I don't really want to go in depth about it.
Submitted under Theme 2 (Battle)
0 Negative points
35 Favourite points
1st Peoples' Choice
A VERY lazy icon. I had like 2 hours before deadline, so I was rushing and rushing. Picking an image was freaking easy, because I already had an image in mind, and that is a picture of the awesome Rosette from Chrno Crusade. I looove that image, and since it was colourful and easy to crop, I have no trouble iconing it. I just slapped on some standard text/tiny text, made "ready" blue just for fun, and quickly started to work on my other icon.
When I saw voting, I knew/thought I was a goner. "SHIT THESE ICONS ARE NICE" is what I thought, so as you can expect, I was TOTALLY SURPRISED when I saw that people liked this more than the other icons, most of which probably took a lot of time and effort to make. I guess being wrong all the time may be a good thing sometmes. D: Anyways, my comments told me that people REALLY DIGGED the coloured text, the catchy quote, the colours of the image, and the cleanness. I'll keep this in mind the next time I'm pressed for time kekeke.
Submitted under Theme 3 (Black & White)
1 Elimination point
6 Favourite points
Another lazy icon. I don't like it at all. The cropping, text, and red all fail miserably. I have nothing good to say about this.
Round 05 - The Seven Deadly Sins
Rank 3
Yeah, I didn't like this theme too much, because I was forced to choose how to lose. D:
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Submitted under Lust for point gain/lost method
0 Elimination points
11 Favourite points
I have never liked themes related to the deadly sins/heavenly virtues, because I could never find the right images to go with them. This round was no exception, and it didn't help that I wasn't very inspired. D: Anyways, I picked an image where the person looked somewhat smug and where the image had nice colours to work with. I didn't have any trouble colouring it, but expanding on it was pretty hard. I couldn't find the right colour for a background, thus resulting in that piece of light-blue barf up there. Since it looked so horrible, I jsut HAD to change it, so I slapped on whatever grungy textures I could find, and there was my outcome.
Since grungy icons seem to fail at LIMS, I was really surprised that I got 0 negative points. Most of the comments pointed out that the composition, colours, and cropping were nicely done, but I actually thought that the colours were really very ugly. Apparently I'm somewhat blind. D:
Round 06 - Untrendy
Rank 1
I loooved this round, because the bonus stage was the ugly incarnation of Nike, the goddess of victorly.
->
12 Negative points
14 Favourite points
This was a very easy icon to make, and even the image was easy to pick. I was reading Mushishi at the time, so I thought, "Oh yeah, the cover had ownsome colours!", so I used that for this icon. It was really really fun colouring the image, and I had such a great time I almost forgot to actually do more stuff to it. Since a grungy style was pretty untrendy in the animanga iconing world, I decided to layer on all (or most) papery textures I had, and even added in a notebook binding thing for the lulz. This was the icon I had the most fun making in a looooong time.
Anyways, the points I got were mostly either +3 (first priority loves) or -3 (first priority hates), so submitting such a grungey icon CAN result in Switzerland neutrality. It's not good to make an icon like this if you want to win, though, but whatever. D: So uh, people either HATED or LOVED the messiness and/or the unusual colours. What do you want me to do then?! I am at a loss. HOWEVER, I was pretty happy that people liked the strong composition overall, even if it was a bit too full. Also, I found this crit funny:
- "It feels horribly cluttered. The textures seem to fight with the image for the user's attention."
lol internal iconflicts?!?! *was shot*
Round 06: Bonus Round - How to Not Win an Icontest
Worst Colouring WINNER (2 points)
Worst Effects WINNER (3 points)
Worst Overall points: 10
Worst Text: 4 points
Worst Cropping: 1 point
When I first saw the Bonus Round theme, I thought I MUST BUTCHER TRC SAKURA, because I really dislike that useless girl. I'm sorry if this offends anyone who likes her, but I just can't stand her. ANYWAYS, when I first started working on this, I knew I had to use the texturizer and add in a fugly lens flare, so they were part of my grand plan right from the start. When I got into the heart of things, though, I was using everything photoshop had, and setting almost all the settings to maximum, resulting in ultimate fugly. Here were some of my terrific crits:
- "SHE IS GOING TO GREET ME, THEN EAT MY BRAINS. I lovingly call her Happy Zombie Sakura, mmyes."
- "You should be banned from using Photoshop/PSP ;__; What did your graphic program do to you? ;____;"
THIS COMMENT MADE ME CRY ;_;, but whatever. Nevertheless, this icon DOES NOT COMPARE to my next one, which was...
Worst Overall 1st Place (19 points)
Worst Cropping WINNER (9 points)
Worst Colouring WINNER (2 points)
Worst Effects WINNER (3 points)
I WON IN EVERY CATEGORY BUT 2 with this icon. I was sooooooo pround of it. :') But yeah, this icon is really bad. I didn't even save the .psd for it, and I save the .psd for EVERYTHING. D:
When I saw the theme, I just knew I had to butcher Kobato as well, because I didn't like the her either. :[ (I'm such a hater ;_;) I had no trouble finding the image, and when I did, I suddenly remembered that I can just bareeeely resize the thing, and thus this icon was born. I also wanted to try using those default pen tool frames for once, and wow, it turned out BEAUTIFULLY, didn't it! I love this icon so. Here were some of the lovely comments I got:
- "It's fugly ;_; I mean, what is the subject of the icon? Vomit? :o Vomit with pink text and a lens flare, omg. I can't find the right words to describe it ;_;"
- "I have no idea what's in there .-."
As they say... JUST AS PLANED.
Worst Overall 3rd Place (14 points)
Worst Cropping: 1 point
Worst Text: 1 point
Worst Effects: 1 point
This icon didn't do as well as the others, but it did make Hulk appear among the voters:
- "SYAORAN'S ANGRY? NOT AS ANGRY AS I AM. SMASH!!!!"
I thorougly enjoyed reading these crits. XD
Round 07 - The Power is Yours!
Rank 2
I didn't like this round as much, because the theme I was given was hard for me. Plus I always got owned for making dirty icons. ;_;
I was originally going to submit this icon, but it was too empty and I remembered afterwards that I wasn't allowed to put text on it. :[ Plus the colours weren't earthy enough anyways, so I gave up on it.
7 Negative points
7 Favourite points
I had absolutely no idea what kinda of image I should use for this theme, so I just settled on a cute Hibari picture and made it all sorts of earthy colours. I didn't colour in any part of the picture with a brush at all, so it saved me a lot of time, and was very fun. Umm, I don't have much else to say, so..on to my crits!!
Honestly, they surprised me a bit. I thought I would place last in the group, but I placed 3rd, much to my relief. However, I was a bit blah about one of the long crits I got complaining about everything. D: It's probably one of the harshest I've gotten, but I guess it's not actually that harsh, compared to other ones I've heard others getting. Here it is!
- "I like the concept, but I don't really care for the coloring job and can see visible pixellation in the image, which looks like a resizing issue. The spiral notebook binding at the top also appears to be a bit too photo-realistic to mesh with the rest of the icon. (If you colored that part as well, it looks really awesome! It just.. doesn't match, that's all.)
Aside from that, I don't quite see how the character fits the theme. I had to ask to figure out whether this icon was "earth" or "wind;" unless you're trying to portray Hibari as an earthquake, it doesn't quite make sense. And even if you were, Hibari is associated with "cloud," someone whose main character trait is being mercurial. While he is arguably a force of nature, I see portraying him as "earth," is anathema to his character. (But this is really about the coloring and resizing issues, when I first saw it, I went "...Hibari~!" at it. Then I went "Why does it look like Hibari's head is attatched to a sea turtle shell." It's not very tactful, but that's honestly what I thought. :|)"
Poor Hibari, being mentioned with sea turtles. ;_; Sorry! I thought the earth theme was pretty visible myself, because of all the brown. D: As for the other crits, everyone some really hated the notebook thing, and some didn't mind it too much. Also, there were a lot of contrasting opinions about the colouring, so I guess grunge is seriously a hit or miss. (But mostly miss. D:)
Round 08 - Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies
Rank 2
AHHHHHHHH Obligatory CLAMP icons will be the death of me. ;_; I didn't like this round at all, and I felt that the image I was given was WAY harder than that of my opponent's no matter how you looked at it. INJUSTICE. Oh well, I volunteered for this, so NO WHINING. Oh, and a warning to people with CRT monitors: REALLY FUGLY COLOURS AHEAD. (Or so one of my crits tell me)
->
Opponent: Kureha Fujishima
Result: Tie
11 individual votes
5 favourite points
First things first: I think that this is the most exhausting icon I have ever made or ever will make IN MY LIFE. It totally beats that Angelic Layer icon by a LONG mile. I had 12 versions prior to the final for this, and from start to finish took about 10 hours LITERALLY. Also, the final version had freaking 47 layers in total. YES, FORTY SEVEN. I basically forgot that iconing was a hobby when I had to make this. D:
So uh, for my first try, I knew that I would have trouble, but I didn't think I would have THAT much trouble. D: The first difficulty I encountered was in CROPPING of all freaking things. Usually images are easy to crop, but god, a hanging man sure is hard. I'll be staying away from those pictures from now on. Anyways, my first idea on how to crop it would be to resize it to a small size where the whole figure of kakyou could be seen, but I soon scrapped that because it was waaay too small to make out. I didn't even save a version for that. Then my next idea was to focus on the face, because the human face is something easy to point out. However, the position of Kakyou was far too weird, and could be easily mistaken for something else. I thought making it all sorts of colours would help make that easier, but I seriously SUCK at colouring CLAMP images.
For colouring, I was going to use my usual routine, and that is a bit of screen and soft light with some sharpness applied to the base. However, that seems to be way too crazy for this image (which is so white that more brightness means blinding everyone who sees it). So I did the exact reverse (multiply) and wow, I can actually see stuff now!! Too bad multiply makes his hair look really gross, so I had to "fix" that with textures. That didn't go over too well though, and resulted in the first piece of junk up there. How sad.
For my second attempt, I decided to rotate Kakyou so his face will be easier to distinguish even without my multiply layers, and decided to stop adding colours on him. But as usual, I was wrong about not needing Multiply, and used it anyways, so now he looks sorta unclean again. :(
I soon scrapped that and tried a third time. This time I decided to try the same vertical crop but with less purple and more orange in terms of colouring. I thought this would work because the yellow-ish colour of his hair would detract from the dirtiness, but he ended up looking too saturated and crazy instead. :[
After and hour and a half of playing with ver.3, I gave up again and started on ver.4. This time, I tried a crop that I saw another iconist used (but rotated), though I didn't think it would go over too well because he was too small and hard to distinguish. Plus he looks a bit awkward just floating like that. I tried working with colours again, and though these colours aren't too bad, the lines of the artwork were not dark enough to be traced at first glance. Looking back at this icon, though, I think the colours of this were most favourable out of the others thanks to its generally clean colouring. I regret not expanding on this icon more at the time, since it does have a lot of potential.
As for ver.5, I made only slight changes in cropping and colouring. For cropping, I excluded his hand from the picture, and directed all attention to his face. It kinda lacks a good focus, though, because it can lead to a weird composition after I add text on it. (Which I would add to the left-hand side, making both vying for attention) As for colouring, I thought I would have more varied colours, but they look kinda ugly, so I scrapped this too.
Then came ver.6. This was the crop I ended up using for the final version, and I actually liked this, though it took me a long time to decide on it. Too bad the colours look like shit, otherwise I wouldn't have to give up and start over again.
Good god, ver.7. I almost submitted this, because it was the farthest I've come to a complete icon at that moment, and I was beginning to feel pressed for time. Anyways, another face-centered crop but this time with shiny-ish colours. I would have liked this icon if the hair didn't look so dirty, but I really couldn't figure out why the hair looked like it did. WOE.
Version 8, now with a new crop! I was most satisfied with this before the final version, but the text was so lacking that I couldn't submit it. Oh, and I tried making Kakyou's face easier to distinguish from his hair by blacking out the mass of hair at the bottom. I felt very clever about doing this, but it's too bad I didn't utilize it in the final. Also, the image quality looked really bad here, and since I couldn't do anything about it, I was forced to give up again.
On to version 9! I think that I'll be lazy and say this was just me fooling around with version 6 and adding text and tiny text on it. Note that the colours still look like barf, so it's time for...
Version 10! I actually liked this version, because it was more creative than the other ones. I combined ver.8 with ver.9, so there's less empty space. I couldn't fit text in properly, though, so I had to scrap it yet again.
Phew, we're almost at the final product! But right now, version 11! I finally got less-fugly colouring, but that was because I spent a long and hard time getting it right. There are still a bit barf-coloured parts (notably on the end part of his bangs and the cropping hair), but I couldn't figure out how to fix that for the life of me. Anyways, I also finally found a caption (from the title of an arc in the Tsukihime game lol) to add that was long enough to fill up the space, but the colour had to be adjusted with more textures, and the changing fonts didn't come together smoothly. Therefore, I had to rearrange this, resulting in...
THE FINAL PRODUCT! Yay, we're finally here! This time, I put emphasis on "end" rather than "eternity", and changed the roman-styled font to a sans-serif for massive damage. I laid low on the echoing of text in the background, and slapped on some tiny text, because otherwise it would seem incomplete. I also made the strings completely visible so that the viewer can tell that Kakyou is hanging on a string rather than just floating around. Oh, and I added in some subtle spiderweb textures to make the black seem less empty. Good god, what an annoying icon to make.
Finally, on to the crits I got. EVERYONE LIKED THE TYPOGRAPHY YAY. That was the part of the icon I liked best and worried about the 3rd most, so I'm glad people liked it. :D Someone even liked the cropping and the colouring! However, this crit made me cry a little bit ;_;
- "ON LCD MONITOR: I really like the colours and contrast used in this icon. The crop is good and supports this and at the same time gives you enough space for the text. Which doesn't look too bad either. Some parts of the icon do look a little "dirty", with greyish splotches (like on the neck) that seem out of place, as if the original image was dirty or something. His face is also a bit too yellow if you ask me.
ON CRT MONITOR: This icon has some of the UGLIEST colours EVER. I knew CRT monitors generally display colours more accurately than LCD ones, but I never imagined the difference could be so big. On this CRT monitor, there's purple and green ALL OVER the icon. The lower right part of his hair looks like it's puked on. You got my fav before, but after seeing how bad it looks like this, I just can't fav it.
I have no idea how to fix this problem, because it looks fine on the CRT monitor I have. D:
Round 09 - The Mirror
Rank 1
I thought this round would be a breeze, but I wasn't. Why am I always wrong..? :(
->
1st; Most Original (12 points)
3rd; Best Overall (11 points)
4th; Best Colouring (3 points)
5th; Best Cropping (2 points)
3rd; Best Typography (3 points)
Although I loooved the image and have worked with it before, it was weirdly hard to colour and crop. The first three to four of the versions displayed up there was my playing around with cropping and colouring, and the fourth was me trying to expand a picture and failing again. D:
Then I got bored with playing about and started to actually work on the freaking icon!! :D
Anyways, the inspiration for the camera frame came from suddenly noticing one of the stock icons I had made by eternalphoenix_, so I went looking for camera pictures on google/stock exchange. Good god I had fun with this. Even though it was annoying having to extract the frame myself with the elliptical marquee tool, it was a very smooth process overall. ...Until I got to the text, that is. D: I used a caption I saw on another ARIA icon I've seen before (Don't kill me ahh!!), but it was really hard to fit in smoothly, even if I my favourite font ever (Libel Suit). After trying like a bazillion ways with the text (I even tried warping the text around the left end of the frame), I soon gave up, and went for a different frame I extracted for fun.
This frame was like, magical. I'm not kidding. Once I put the picture in, I just KNEW what I had to do to finish it. I put on some sky textures like I usually do, and WOW, it turned out like reflection on water instead. I was really surprised, but it was exactly what I was looking for. I also tried to make the icon look a bit like a stock icon as well, giving it some natural lighting (to look like there's shade above the setting), and some shine to the frame and make the picture's colours be subjected to similar colouring as the background. To finish off the image, I tried to give the picture some dimension by brushing in a light circle on the inner side of the frame, so it looks more like it's bevelled. Too bad nobody noticed this, but I think it really does make a difference in the end. As for the text...GOOD GOD I LOVE MY TEXT. I just knew I had to arrange it like so, because I wanted to let parts of the background show, and to make the text look more dynamic. I also like that I used a cursive font for "see", because it makes such a nice statement, and it just seriously goes with the whole icon's relaxing type of atmosphere. I do admit that I was a bit heavy on the tiny text (I can't help it! I love it ;_;), but I really don't think it matters that much. It's just a component to flush out the text and make it more full. All in all, I am COMPLETELY satisfied with this icon (and I really really rarely am), and I SERIOUSLY LOVE IT, though I really didn't think it was creative AT ALL.
Anyways, I'm surprised how well this icon did, because the icons I like usually fail. I have no taste, apparently. The icon got points in every category, and there were generally no outstanding complaints. However, there were a few, and one of them was about the colours being fugly on a CRT monitor. It looks fine on my CRT monitor, though, so I don't know how to change that. D: Other crits told me that the text was too large, and that there was too much tiny text.
Most people complimented the colours, the use of the frame, the composition, the creativity, and the typography. I found it funny that the people who voted this icon for Most Original thought I put it in a mirror, because that wasn't intentional at all. I thought it would be obvious it was a camera lens, but..I guess not! I'm really glad it turned out like that, though, because I loove seeing different interpretations of the same thing, positive or otherwise. I'm also glad that people found the caption fitting, as I did. Hurrah!
FINAL ROUND - Portfolio
Rank 4
Tied with almateria (Luke Fone Fabre)
Total: 341 points
Trinities: 118 points
Three Best: 82 points
Three Worst: 141 points
I love portfolios, so I loved this theme. ...Well, maybe not the Free Choice part. I HATE FREE CHOICE WITH A PASSION YES I DO. I also really hated the "Points are discarded now" part, because I worked hard for those points, and I had a lot of them. ;_;!
->
Submitted under Provided Image
When I saw the image, I KNEW I wasn't going to touch the ASN one, and I KNEW I would icon Naoto, because she is one of the most ownsome characters in DOGS. Plus she's pretty.
Anyways, I had this lame idea to try and combine my two favourites (Naoto and Badou), and as you can see in the first version, it kinda failed, since it made Badou look somewhat like an old lady with shawl. I gave up on this quickly, because I don't like to waste time. (Lies)
Then I got into the heart of the cards iconing by focusing on and colouring Naoto. Wow did she turn out awesome. I used my usual methods, but she turned out SO CLEAN. I was really proud of these colours, and I liked the sky texture I used for the background. Except...I didn't know wtf to do after I coloured it. D: Then randomly I had this idea of duplicating the image and using her outline to make some sort of creepy human frame. D: I thought it was clever, but I also thought it was way too weird for the audience, so I didn't submit it. I personally liked it, though, so I was sad it wouldn't appeal to the masses.
Since weirdness does not go over well in LIMS, I tried a more conservative approach. My motto for first and last rounds is, after all, "Keep it conservative, guys!". I used a texture on the bottom (because it was empty), and tried to put text on it, but failed. I don't know why, but putting text on a horizontal line is very..hard. I got really frustrated with the text, so I went on to make a new version with different cropping.
I basically just copied the other version in terms of colouring method for this, but it turned out a lot better than the other one, and I was pretty shocked at the fact. I was also surprised that I was at a loss when I tried to think of a caption for this, and so I was a bit scared. There's really nothing special about this version, because it was an attempt at creating a boring icon much like my Chrno Crusade one. (Round 4)
My final version was the same as the previous one but with a new caption (from a Nelly Furtado song yay!), a different font, some more highlights and colour changes in the image, and MORE MORE MORE tiny text. I love tiny text, but you already knew that.
The crits I got for this icon was that many liked the colouring and the typography in general, but most questioned the need for tiny text, and didn't really like the larger text because of how it doesn't blend in with the rest of the icon, and because of how large and how much of it there was.
Submitted under Provided Resources
At first, I was really happy about getting such beautiful resources to work with, but that happiness soon faded when I couldn't think of an image to use. I had to browse through my pictures for about half an hour or so before I settled on good old Basil from Katekyo Hitman Reborn!.
Luckily, the hardest part was soon over, and the making of this was a breeze. Even I was surprised at how smooth it went. Since the image was high-res and beautiful, colouring it was absolutely no problem at all. After doing that, I just slapped on some text and textures, and called it a day. There is something special about this icon, though, and that is the lack of in-your-face text. It has been a long time since I've slapped on text like this, and I thought it fit perfectly for once, given the evasive feel of the caption and image.
As for the crits, many either loved or hated this icon. Most thought the lack of special typography made it a bit lacking, the use of tiny text was unnecessary, and didn't think the use of green was good. However, some were really drawn to the second icon, so..I don't know what to make of this!
An icon I was debating on whether to include into the set or not for the Free Choice theme. I actually worked really hard on this, and I was quite pleased with the result, considering the hard time I had trying to make this. However, I felt that it was far too grungy, and from my past experiences, I knew that the voters did NOT dig the grunge. Therefore, I opted for the other icon I made instead. (Shown below)
Submitted under Free Choice
Ahh, back to my Kozue Amano roots (sorta). I actually started on this icon before the one above, but I wasn't liking the colouring I had at the time, so I gave up on it to start on the other one. However, since the other turned out to be grungey, I had to finish this one instead. (I had no other ideas for images to icon anyways)
So uh, this icon wasn't too hard to make, but bringing out the blue of the icon was a bit hard. I had to use a few different textures, and I had to moderate it so it doesn't overshadow the focus of the whole thing. It came out pretty nicely, though, so I'm happy about that. There's, again, nothing really special about this icon, except that the caption was supposed to be "marina" (but it was too short), I coloured her jacket blue to fit the "brilliant blue" caption, and actually used borders for the first time in...god knows how many months. Oh, and I used my favourite font for my grand finale - Libel Suit. I love that font almost as much as tiny text. :']
On to the crits! Many people complimented this icon, and said it really caught their eye with the nice blue colours. Some also said the spacing for the text was weird, but I think it looks alright.
For the whole set, some felt that text on the icons were not needed at all, others just thought that the text for 1+3 were far too large. Also, some thought the crops were boring and uninspired. Overall, thought, people were impressed with typography, colouring, and composition.
Things I Learned
- Lay low on light textures (Prelims)
- Nice colours does not make up for clutter (Prelims)
- Clean icons are well received (Round 1)
- Blatantly relevant captions are best (Round 2)
- Stay away from grunge (Round 3)
- Coloured text and bold colours can draw good attention (Round 4)
- Busy, grungy icons can be hits or misses (Round 6)
- Addition of a notebook spiral can be a hit or a miss (Round 7)
- Notebook spirals can take attention away from an image. (Round 7)
- Notebook spirals should not be used with manga because it is too photo-realistic (Round 7)
- Dark icons are generally not well received (Round 7)
- Great typography may or may not make up for lack of vibrant colours (Round 8)
- Huge layering of textures may result in barf on CRT monitors. (Round 7)
- Camera lenses may be used as a frame to expand on. (Round 9)
- Large, unaligned text is generally not well received. (Round 9)
- Conservativeness works in final rounds as well. (Final round)
- Clean, pure colours may or may not make up for a boring crop. (Final round)
- White text should not be too white if used on an icon with a generally dark colour scheme. (Final round)
- Use tiny text in moderation. (Final round)
Final Thoughts
Well, it's finally over! The 11-week craze that is manga_battle Challenge 1 has come to an end. I felt that I learned a LOT through this experience and have come up with new things to work with and expand on. The style of my icons has gone from absolutely no distinctive style, to something that may be recognized as "kanrinin's icons". I had a great and truly unique experience overall, despite feeling some stress at times, and will surely be back for future Challenges.
A huge thanks to my fellow contestants, who provided such tough competition that I had to give my all every round, and an EVEN LARGER thanks for the moderators, neonclover & fearthechopstic, and their unwavering dedication. It's amazing that you guys were able to mod this huge contest starting from scratch and finish the challenge off on such a high note.
Until next challenge,
kanrinin
P.S. This took me about 6 hours to write, so if you read all that, you deserve a prize! Comment here with a manga image and I'll make you an icon! :D If you were a contestant or a mod from Challenge 1, you are eligible for 2 icons! Let the iconmaking begin once again!