75 | Rename, progression, and hiatus
the_silverdoe >> nightbulbs
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The code here is thanks to rocketgirl2!
January
There was a bad storm and we lost our internet access for three whole weeks. No phone, no tv, no internet. No screencaps to save, so no icons in January.
February
February was the month of the massive Once Upon a Time icon battle, plus a few other icons, but not that many. The posting of the battle had to be postponed because of said internet access issues, and most of these I'd actually made in late December 2012. I'd recently fallen in love with Once Upon a Time, a still ongoing rocky relationship. The caps, however, gave me an awful lot of trouble, I tried and tried but nothing worked and I remember the icons looked oversaturated and ovesharpened in no time. I had to remake some of them several times. I tried what were, for me, very bold compositions back then, haha. Some of them turned out surprisingly okay, but for the most part they were over-Topazed and poorly executed.
March
March was when I got my new laptop! It was amazing to have a brand new, fully functioning laptop but when it came to Photoshop I was suddenly completely lost! The resolution of my new screen left me confused, the 100x100px squares looked minuscule to me so I took to working on 200x200px canvas but I was unused to it so resizing led to odd results, and my eyes took some time to stop feeling attacked by the new high-def screen. Overall everything looked really weird in PS and I didn't know what I was doing. I also had to get used to the laptop's pad and all that. Now I can see the improvement in terms of image quality, compared to my old laptop, and while this batch was made of simple icons with a lot of misses, some I still like. It actually feels like this is the 'real' first post of 2013.
April
April was a good month! I was working a lot more with negative space and some more complex compositions again. There were two icon posts that month. The first had Robin Hood and Spooks icons in it that were still very muted in terms of colouring. The second had me probably banging my head against something and going 'crazy vibrant!!!!' again all of a sudden, without warning. There were Being Human and Once Upon a Time icons. I tried to be more creative with my texture use, and this was the month I properly practised text for the first time ever, plus a return to bright, vibrant icons. The Masquerade theme at insp20 was inspiring as I had to find different ways to obscure my subjects. It was a terribly hit-and-miss month but the vibrancy lover in me made her comeback and I was happy about that. I stopped playing it safe for a little while and got nice surprises like that Nina icon, which is arguably too bright but of which I'm still proud of.
May
May was the month I went icon-crazy! I kept iconning and posting. There was a period drama battle, my first ever 20insp batch (ahem, aka "I'm an idiot and I claim OUAT even though the caps hate me so everything is fugly") and the awesome Genre round at insp20 for which I had a lot of fun going crazy and inventing lots of crazy Doctor Who AUs in my head. Yes. I did that. There was a lot of background removing, haha, and vibrant monochrome colourings.
June
June was a bit quieter. I did an icon battle with my friend novindalf, and it was all kinds of awesome! Then I discovered and fell in love with Orphan Black, so I had to make icons! It was when 20insp was on hiatus so I took the opportunity of doing the 'Far & Close' round, which was a good excuse to indulge in my negative space obsession. I think I wasn't really in the iconning mood though, and the biggest flaw of these icons is they look unfinished. I tend to get lazy and bored after a while and save an icon when it looks decent enough, even though I know that it needs more layers to look its best. It's probably my biggest flaw as a maker, and one I hope to get over soon!
June was also when I became a mod at inspired20in20, which was a big moment in my icon-making year. Insp20 is one of my favourite comms and many of its challenges pushed me to be creative and improve and I'm proud to be one of the mods now and do my share to help! The mod team are some of the loveliest people ♥ After my rocky start when it took me a week to figure out how the voting system worked, I think things are okay now.
July
I realise all of my July posts were in fact promotional ones, and there were no actual icons :/ But this was the month I reached 100 watchers, and I was over the moon about that! (A big thank you again to everyone who joined or became a watcher here in 2013, and to those of you who were already here last year, a massive thank you for sticking around. You all rock! ♥) The holidays happened, I went to the UK (!!) and didn't take my computer with me so there was no Photoshopping.
August
August was probably my best month this year. I participated in several 20in20s and kept pushing myself towards more creative, less simplistic icons. My Luther batch is quite possibly my favourite of the year, in terms of the love I put in making those icons. It's technically very improvable but I stand by the iconning choices I made then. It was a non-lazy batch and I should have more of those! Also Once Upon a Time icons, because who and where would I be without my Once love :D Bolder, even more vibrant colourings in that batch, but I was starting to understand how Once caps wanted to be iconned, and, let's admit it, trying trippy colourings on Rumple caps is in fact a fun thing to do!
September
I got really ill at the end of August and the first half of September was shitty as well, especially with uni resuming at well, so I didn't get much done. When I did make icons they were for the double Elements theme at 20insp and insp20 (which made me facepalm like crazy because I was the one who suggested the theme, nice move, self) and technique20in20, and they were only Once Upon a Time, because why not? This silly little show had become my main fandom, HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?!? Anyway, I was starting to get more satisfying results with the caps. These were a step back in terms of originality, and I think my lighting fell really flat there, even though I was really happy with the results at the time, haha, but they were lovely to make. I even tried bolder crops, like in that first Rumple icon.
October
A.K.A Icon Dump Month and Battle Month. Well, technically the first part of the big Icon Dump was posted in September, but they were old icons anyway. The rest was battle icons, because I did three in a short span of time. There was a period drama battle, marcasite's super inspiring colour palette challenge, and raiindust's hair!porn battle of awesome. For these last two challenges I did try my best with the icons, but everything else represents my state of mind at the time: make icons for funsies and don't pay too much attention to the results. So, some are surprisingly okay because the boldness paid off, and some are really ugly. I'll be forever ashamed of the Doctor Who and LOST icons I made for watchnicon, because even though the caps were in fact awful I think I could have tried harder. I had this notion that my style needed to be brighter and less contrasted, but in retrospect the best icons were those that used my usual lighting. All in all it was not a consistent month at all. I really like the three icons I picked though, and a few others for those posts.
November
A small icon dump of only 20 icons. I had made a lot more but they were too bad to be posted. I had lost all inspiration and made a few attempts at entering challenges that I did not complete. The turbo_rumble icons were probably made in October, I don't remember. I got some interesting concrit there but mostly didn't understand what was happening since the icons I thought were going to get more concrit votes people seemed to like, and those I was personally proud of got a lot of concrit votes, haha. And I finally got a 1st place with my red Begbie icon. Yes, the third one here. Somebody Please Explain. IDK what this icon is. How did it even place?! The concrit was helpful, and I realised this super bright style wasn't for me. I think this first Sawyer icon was the highlight of November.
December
I went on hiatus from PS for a few weeks, and around that time I considered leaving LJ and my online life behind me, so making icons felt completely pointless. I realised I'm slowly losing interest in all things fandom, and icons are the only things that keep me linked to it, to be honest. I'm torn between loving icons to bits and feeling like they're a waste of my time. Finals-related stress made me come back to PS eventually, only I didn't do how to do this iconning thing anymore. It took me a lot of attempts to remember how it all worked, but when it did I went back naturally to what I think I like the best, that is vibrant colours, strong lighting and contrast. The remake activity was So Much Fun, and allowed me to go back to my roots while appreciating the fact that my approach is now different and that there are more things I can do. I only posted one batch in December, and it's a bit of a mess, but I like most of it.
Goodbye, 2013
So that's it for my second year of icon-making! Well... I'm not actually sure there is a progression at all? I really don't know. I haven't improved half as much as I wanted to or half as much as I should have done, and I keep going back and forth, progressing a little and regressing a lot. Sure, my grasp of pretty much everything is probably better now than it was last year but my compositions and originality haven't progressed much between the end of last year and now, in my opinion.
As for my 2014 resolutions, well, it all depends on whether or not I want to keep making icons. I haven't made a decision yet, so wild_feelings is going on an indefinite hiatus. All my love and thanks to all of you! :)