12. | Forty Icons

[theladymorgan]

[12] Avengers
[16] Merlin
[8] Outlander
[4] Hunger Games

Comments

[theladymorgan]

Hi! Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.

Thank you so much for commenting. I'm so glad you like my icons!

I should start by telling you that I use Photoshop Elements 7 for all of my icons and the other graphics I make. It is not as strong as a full version of Photoshop, like CS3 or whatever, but it does get the job done - it just doesn't have as many options and it's missing the tools you see in some tutorials, like curves and vibrance layers and masks. If you don't have PS and don't want to buy it, I recommend GIMP - it's free and a friend of mine (novindalf) uses that and she makes gorgeous icons.

It varies from icon to icon what I do and what I start with. Some of them I do cut out immediately and put on a texture or color fill layer, but some of them I leave the background there. Unless I'm cutting it out, the first thing I do is crop and resize the image to a 200x200 canvas, so I don't really work with the whole background, usually.

Most of my coloring is color fill layers and textures set on soft light and screen and messing with the saturation. I actually don't use PSDs at all since I prefer to do everything from scratch with every icon and I really try not to cut corners unless I'm really running short on time and I'm rushing things (and I don't recommend that). The main thing to get the focus on the subject - for me, at least - is to use an eraser on low opacity and erase the color from the character's face until it looks right.

I've got a few tutorials on this comm if you want to check them out - this might give you some idea about what my process is -
http://thewayofshadows.livejournal.com/7406.html
http://thewayofshadows.livejournal.com/7531.html

I can also recommend these guides/tutorials for coloring and texture use (I'm not sure what program you're using, so I'm just going to give you the links to some of the ones I know that I like):
http://reflexive-verb.livejournal.com/59379.html
http://mundodefieras.livejournal.com/23561.html
http://aubedelune.livejournal.com/16726.html

I also recommend you check out the Ask the Maker activity at icon-talk. There are a lot of great tutorials and guides for coloring, text, and all sorts of other things and some individual tutorials so you can learn some of the techniques to apply to your own icon.

I'm happy to answer questions as best I can if you feel like asking more. I'm not terribly secretive about my process or how I color things - and if you want to see something with any particular icon, feel free to ask. If I still have the PSD file and I can figure out what I did to get to that point, I can work on a tutorial when I find time.