Icon Progression 2014
January
January was a good start to the year - I did a 20in20 secret santa exchange and the person I made icons for preferred soft colors and most people who know me know that I don't do soft colors very well - I tend to lean towards vibrant more than anything. So this led to me experimenting with pastels and trying new things. I really didn't have a direction in mind, but the one icon post I did put up was one I was really proud of. There are still a few icons I like in there, too.
February
February was another slow month for me - I didn't do a whole lot of iconing except for one post for ouat-stills. That felt like a mixed bag to me, but I did try to get myself back into text after making myself stop when every icon I made had text on it.
March
No icons in March! I took a step back from all of the fandom stuff I was involved in except for modding because I was finishing up my degree and I was incredibly stressed out and something had to give.
April
I only made six icons in April. Somehow I managed to make a couple of decent ones in the midst of insanity.
May
No icons in May either! Between finals and vacation and recovering from the burnout-worthy stress I had going on, it just didn't happen.
June
I finally started really iconing again in June - that was when novindalf and I finished our icon battle (finally) and I started getting back into some of the comms I dropped out of. I was also surprised that I didn't really feel rusty here. I just jumped back in and actually felt good about what I was doing for the first time in a very long time. I played with lighting and shadows a bit more about this point, too.
July
I didn't actually make a whole lot of icons in July, but I really liked what I did make. I discovered light textures and really got a handle on some close crops.
August
August was mostly spent with fake background icons and some light icons. Some ofthem worked really well and some of them didn't, but it certainly felt like there was a marked improvement in my fake background icons more than anything else. I also entered a 20in20 for the first time in ages and actually finished, which was really nice.
September
I really started to get into the vibrant colors again this month - it was partially a carry-over from August and the fake background icons but it was amplified more than anything by my addiction to light textures and my fascination with using them to color icons. Most of them turned out pretty decently - my cropping began to degrade, though, so it was almost exclusively center crops and the ones that weren't were a bit awkward.
October
The icons I made in October were a mixed bag - I thought some of them were really successful while others were not. I don't think there was a really marked improvement anywhere, though my lighting did improve marginally. I was still obsessed with light textures here, too.
November
The colors kind of skyrocketed this month. I started playing with color fill layers and erasing them - they actually worked a lot better than I expected. I was really uncomfortable with the extremely vibrant colors for a while, but I started to settle into it by the end of the month, I think.
December
In December I started to try to play with composition and the brushes I already had on my computer - plus I decided to play with a little text again and a little more complexity. I'm actually really happy with most of this month and I really felt like I was settling again - though whether I regressed a little or not is up for debate. But I was really happy with the colors and composition for most of what I did.
Goodbye, 2014
This year was a wild ride on many fronts, but definitely when it came to iconing. I tried some new things, I found out exactly how much I like vibrant colors and tried to get a little more complex with my icons. I also got a lot more comfortable with myself this year since my personal life wasn't a nightmare like it was in 2013. I'm hoping that despite graduate school I'll have time to icon this coming year - we'll see. If I have the time, I plan to work on text again and composition more than anything. I'm still debating applying for elite comms, but that's more a matter of confidence than anything. I definitely want to explore other fandoms (I've been restricted to mostly OUAT, Reign, and Merlin this year) again and get back into an old one or two - especially Marvel.
Code by rocketgirl2