Ask the maker 3.0!

[aida_rose]

It's time for our third round of Ask the Maker!

Here you'll get the chance to ask icon makers who sign up, questions about their icons and other graphics. You can ask for tutorials, guides/"How to", or ask any other questions regarding their work so the makers can compile a Q&A post with the answers to all the questions they get. As always, .PSD

Comments

[angelamaria]

Username and where I post my work: angelamaria at eveningsky
What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc. .PSDs are not allowed: Anything really! However since I'm just getting back to iconning, anything earlier than this year I probably won't be able to recreate for a tutorial etc (although they're rather dated, some are downright fail, so I doubt anyone would want to know!)
Can we hotlink your icons?: Sure :)

[applepips16]

[angelamaria]

Hi! Thanks for asking :D That icon was actually super simple to make, it feels a bit silly going through it XD as there is very little wizardry involved!

I use Lighten a lot when I do silhouettes, whether it is to have the underlying image show through or to knock out colors in the topmost image, like in the icon below (the lower portion):

[applepips16]

No no, it's perfect! I kind of have a love hate relationship with silhouettes and blending. Sometimes it works out fine, sometimes, not at all. Sigh. But thanks for explaining this to me so neatly. I never thought of colouring one cap under another. What I usually do is colour them both separately and then somehow try to fix them together. It's usually hit and miss then. I shall go try this out now. :D

[angelamaria]

I'm glad it's helpful! :D

Yeah, for me I always work within that canvas. A lot of times, after putting down a couple of textures or light blobs and other nice things, the image just looks "off", colour or saturation or whatever, so I usually end up adding layers in between the top and the base image to correct things--or altogether change color balance, that sort of thing. It's not unusual for me to have layers numbered out of order XD (like that particular icon)

[jsfunction]

[angelamaria]

Hi! Thanks for asking ♥ I'll write up a brief tutorial on both, although for the Aileen icon, I do have the PSD but I was lazy then and went straight to curves/color balance without an adjustment layer XD so I'll just make do with recreating that particular layer, if that's okay.

[jsfunction]

Oh, yes, that's completely fine :D

[angelamaria]

Great! :D I will get on it and post again :)

[angelamaria]

I posted the duplicated silhouettes one just now as it was simpler to do! :) http://eveningsky.livejournal.com/19409.html#cutid2

I shall update soon with the Aileen icon ♥

[jsfunction]

Yay, awesome! :)

[angelamaria]

Gah, I had this written up earlier but completely forgot to post it! Aileen icon, short and sweet.