The ICON CRIT meme

[powercorrupts]

Anonymous icon critique meme

Do you ever wonder if there's something that you could improve with your icons, or have you ever wanted to tell someone that there's one thing that they do phenomenally, but you're afraid to leave a comment logged in? Do you just want a no-risk place to get icon concrit from, without the stress

Comments

[buddha_loves_me]

buddha_loves_me @ wistful_icons

[snoozy]

I'll be gentle, ok......

dhfjkdshfksdhk

Srsly, i think you have improved SO much lately. Your older icons used a more simplistic coloring and the improvement is very obvious in your latest batches.
Needless to say that all the artbook icons look amazing with the adjustments you make.
Keep on rocking mate! &hearts

[chiixhideki]

I adore your icons. So much. ;o;
lol@useless comment

[buddha_loves_me]

Thank you! ;o;b
There is nothing wrong with useless comments :D

[raelynae]

Here I go, I'll try to be helpful. I've watched your icons for a long time, (residing as a stalker most of the time ^^;; sorry) and you've definitely improved. You've also moved from style to style. For your own personal enjoyment you could look back at icons and see which ones stand out to you.

Your coloring is unique. It has a dream-like quality, being smooth and typically pastel at the same time. This works great for the series I've so far seen you icon, which is mostly CLAMP (absolutely nothing wrong with that >,<). I guess I would just advise to try out different coloring styles for different moods/genres of series to give different impressions. This should help from keeping things too static for you the colorist, and the viewers.

I love your cropping. You're not afraid to have a character's eyes in a corner of the icon. I also love that you icon some of the less obvious characters, or frames in a manga. That sets your icons apart. Also your icons and eletriarnation's are different, but work well together (does that make sense

[buddha_loves_me]

You were very helpful, thank you so much for such a thoughtful comment! I really appreciate it.

I've tried different coloring styles from time to time, but I've never quite liked how it turned out and ended up not posting most of the ones I made that were a bit different from my typical coloring style. I'm a slave to conformity, I suppose.

But I'll be sure to keep that in mind. I find that when I try new styles they look too much like someone else's, so I'll try to avoid that but try new things. Thanks so much, again!

[kaychung]

I always love it when you icon the chibi moments. :DD Your cropping style is spectacular, and you know how to create focal points, even though icons usually don't give artists a lot of space to work with.

There is this one thing I just want you to try. Stay away from the faces a bit and use the surroundings around the focus/character. (Like the first Tsubasa icon you posted here.) Instead of creating a focal point using colours and crops, make use of the backgrounds and original textures from the manga. Give your icons more 'space'.

Good luck with your future icon making! I can't wait to see new batches. :D

[buddha_loves_me]

Hmmmm, that's a really good idea! I don't usually do it cause my scan qualities are not always the best and when I downside to 100x100 it's kind of hard to tell what the picture's of. That, and I get distracted coloring backgrounds and start half-assing it.

But I'll definitely give it a try, if I see some scenes that I'd really like to icon (there are a few in my next batch that I'm going to attempt, so we'll see.)

Thank you for your comment! :D

[buddha_loves_me]

I love your crops; they're very unique and draw the eyes. My only complaint would be that your colors sometimes counter that: sometimes they don't work well together, (and thus aren't easy on the eyes, countering your beautiful cropping), the shading is a bit off, and sometimes they're a bit over-saturated. Otherwise, very good work!

[buddha_loves_me]

I really need to work on my shading. Half the time I never know where the light source is coming from so I end up... shading randomly. Afterwards I get annoyed when I realize I've done so. So I'll keep an eye out in the future.

Lately my icons have gotten a bit more saturated just because I've started experimenting with the selective coloring and the saturation layers and whatnot. But I'll try to tone it down (since I've gotten two comments on it so far)

Thank you!

[starkissed]

I've always been a fan of your icons! ♥ Your cropping's always great, and I love the soft coloring you use.

I guess the only crit I have is that sometimes they look a little oversaturated? And that sometimes I wish you icons could be just a little sharper.

But other than that, I adore your stuff.

[buddha_loves_me]

Thank you very much! ♥

Yeah, I've gotten a comment other than yours on that, too, so I'll definitely keep an eye out for keeping my icons from getting too saturated. I've been experinmenting with the saturation and selective coloring options in my photoshop, but I'll try to tone it down from now on.

[herinia]

I'm not usually good at critiques, but I'll try to be helpful and give you some suggestions. When I do give critiques though I point out lots of things that could be done better, so please don't be offended if everything seems so negative here. I think you will have lots of potential once you work more on the following areas :D

[buddha_loves_me]

Late reply is late! :D;;;

First of all, holy crap, thank you for taking the time to write out this comment. I was shocked (and kinda intimidated) to see so much, but it's all really helpful information and I'm really grateful for the advice!

I'd give you a more in depth response back if I wasn't so braindead right now, but I'll definitely keep the things you said in mind. I know color coordination is a big issue of mine, so I'll work hard in the future to get better at that. Shading's a huge pain in the ass for me, too, so thanks for the tips!

And I've been saving my icons in .png files for a while now. The two above that are .jpegs are older icons, from before I started doing that. A few people pointed the degration in quality to me, so I've been extra careful since then.