#1 icons

[medesesperas]

Haven't opened photoshop in a couple years and this was my first time even attempting to do anything in a while. Hoping to try some more difficult things, once I get more time.

icons:
        [9] misc (twin peaks, hamilton musical, brooklyn nine nine)
        [9] lucifer
        [10] izombie
        [14] better call saul

gif

Comments

[medesesperas]

My name was lourdes228. I was definitely a member of sexy-mood-music but I don't know if I ever commented. I'm such a lurker that most of the time I start writing a comment and half way through delete it or don't bother posting it.

omg this is embarrassing, but for the longest time the way I would make icons was by creating a new document/page or whatever like file>>new with 100x100 pixels and then place the picture I wanted to make into an icon and stretch it to the canvas until I got what I wanted. And then a lot of the time the icon would come out with crappy aspect ratio and I just couldn't get it right. It wasn't until I stumbled onto a photoshop tutorial tumblr a couple months back that I learned you could set the crop tool to get the right aspect ratio, 1:1 square. It was like a whole new world opened up, but I also felt so dumb for not knowing that before lol.

I really enjoy the coloring aspect of making icons. I think I'm still trying to find what coloring types work for me, but I know I've come a long way from how I used to color. Like I looked back at some of my old posts and it was crazy amounts of brightness and saturation and blur tbh that just looked awful (I even deleted a bunch of my old posts out of sheer embarrassment). I really want to get better I using textures, but I feel like they look terrible when I try to use them. I suppose the only way to get better is to practice.

God, I'm sorry for all this text.

[library_of_sex]

Awww, is it an anxiety thing? Until a few years ago, I had no idea that so many people lurked and never commented cuz they were too anxious to talk to other people. I absolutely will chat with anyone around here, and I hope that people feel comfy talking to me, but if not, I'd rather know so I can just not bother specific people.

OMG. You were working harder than the rest of us just to crop your images down! Wow! I'm glad you finally stumbled upon the right tut to show you the light. It's great when you learn something new, especially if it makes something way more convenient for you! :D

Exactly. We can't magically get better at anything so we just need to practice hard to improve. I can't seem to do anything but monochromatic coloring cuz I've always been awful at coloring caps, so I envy pretty much all other makers cuz you guys make it look easy. (Also, I looked back at some of my very first icons last month and had such a good laugh cuz that stuff was horrific!)

Oh man, if there's one thing to know about me, it's that I love to ramble and to read lengthy text so please don't ever feel the need to apologize for writing a lot!

[medesesperas]

Sorta. In communities, I would always think that while I'm a part of it, I joined too late in the game. Like everyone already knew each other and had formed friendships so I would feel like I was barging in on a conversation. It just became easier for me to lurk in places, since I didn't really know how to introduce myself or start a conversation. And I would only really comment to say thanks because I was taking an icon or something that was uploaded.

lol right. I can't believe it too me so long to get that.

mte so now I try to open photoshop for a little bit everyday just to practice on things. haha yeah I guess everyone feels that way about the first things they created on photoshop. Which I guess shows we all grow and advance as time goes on.

lol okay. It was just that as I was writing I thought that the comment looked like the definition of tl;dr.

[library_of_sex]

Well, you can join icontalking if you'd like to get to know more iconmakers! The people there are super nice and friendly. There are weekly posts where you can talk about anything you want, icon-related or not. If you ant, feel free to add hushingupnow, which is my account I use to talk to a whole friendslist of fellow makers. I love talking about icons with people and commiserating about the struggles of this small hobby of ours! ;P

Oh, that's really smart. Grad school was super hectic this quarter, but I managed to squeeze out some icons cuz I wanted an escape from my homework and stress so badly. Anyway, have you been reading tutorials while you practice? I'm trying to get a handle on muted coloring and text, so I always read tuts on those things when I stumble across them. icon-talk has Ask the Maker posts that links to TONS of amazing tuts, so if you're looking for some, check over there!

I love tl;dr. Seriously.

[medesesperas]

Thanks for the recommendations, I'll go add this right now. I think it would be good to get to know more icon makers, since everyone comes up with their own tips and photoshop tricks to making graphics.

Oh, you're in grad school? That's cool. I can only imagine how busy and hectic it must be. I'm currently job hunting, which has been a real downer. So in between procrastinating writing cover letter and getting "we've decided to go in another direction" emails I'm trying to polish my photoshop skills lol. I've seen a couple tutorials mainly trying to find ones on using textures. They make it look really easy, it's in the execution that I fail, but maybe the caps I"m using aren't the best for it. Also, trying to find ones on color correcting because some of the shows I want to make icons for have such dark and/or terrible coloring (the walking dead and gotham, for example). So, I'll check out this community too.

haha, okay, good to know.

[library_of_sex]

Exactly! There's so much to learn from other people!

Good luck with job-hunting. I know how exhausting and discouraging that can be, so my fingers are crossed for you!

There are lots of people who adore The Walking Dead, so if you don't see any great color correction tuts yet, I say just ask a maker about any specific TWD icon of theirs and see if they'll be willing to write a tut for you! As for using textures, there's not really any specific way to use them, IMO. For me, it's just about experimenting and trying them out on all sorts of different modes (Exclusion mode can produce something really fun and funky!) or completely changing the texture around by clipping a Color Balance layer on and changing the tones or blurring or cutting off sections of the texture.

[medesesperas]

mte.

Thanks. Yeah, it really sucks. It's a lot of "we're going to go with someone with more experience." And it's that never ending cycle of I can't get experience if you don't give me a job, but you won't give me a job without more experience.

Okay, will definitely keep that in mind. Yeah, that's what I'm doing when I play around with the textures in regards to changing the modes. But I never really thought of playing around with the color balance, I'll try that out. lol sometimes I cut out so much of the texture that I pretty much end of erasing the whole thing, or I play around with the opacity and by the end of it, it's like at 2% and you can't even notice anything.

[library_of_sex]

YES! I get that people want someone with experience, but how can anyone get experience if nobody ever gives them a shot? It's infuriating!

Dude, same here. I can put a texture on 20% opacity and be like...where did the texture go? But for some reason, just that tiny bit of lighting or shading that I needed can be provided by a texture on a low setting, so I can't help it but leave it in! :P