How I Do Stuff: Cropping, Composition & Coloring Edition

[killmotion]

Via the Ask the Maker meme, bixits asked me how I approached my style of cropping and composition. I grasp at straws to describe my style but I guess for the most part it is vibrant and bold, but clean. I think bright colors are what I like best most of the time, and I've found my niche. I also do a lot of extreme cropping and negative space pretty much always. I'm still not very big at using textures or text. But, of course, as long as something has a good crop and color, I feel it is finished and doesn't need that most of the time.

I think the first thing you need for a good icon is the a quality source image. I'm a giant stickler for image quality. For the most part (99% of the time), I use my own caps. Even if it means downloading a bigass multigig file for a single scene, I must get the correct frame to work with. Everything HQ all the time always. And, yes, it's an compulsive thing. I'm certain I'm not the only one but these days I can't watch something without "seeing" a finished art come from some scene whether it is inspired by the angle it had, the lighting, blocking etc. My process is "have idea, then make it" never "open photoshop, wait for idea". (Sidenote, I use a lot of music as I work. Just anything and everything. Mostly if I hear the song and really envision the subject I want to make arts of. A song can quite often inspire me to make something, or I center it around a lyric or the atmosphere of it.)

Something I will do most of the time is start on a very big canvas. Since I pretty much only use iTunes and Bluray caps (or DVD if it's the only thing available) I always have nice image from the start, so if I want to fix anything I do it then. Before coloring or cropping or anything, I fix the base and/or prepare what I know I want to be negative space. Or I take out any other defects like a zit (come on, if I was in a show, I'd want my zits edited out in the arts made from the caps!) I think a lot of people resize and then fix later but I will literally spend hours using a pen tool on a 1280x720 base or clone stamping (never ever do I use the smudge tool on backgrounds and almost never on skin) the hell out of what I want negative'd all around the subject first, then color rather than crop down then do all that. If that's backwards, oh well, I like my process for me.

So, it's always in the very beginning I have a general idea of where I'm going from with color and crop before I even get past the color/crop phase. Sometimes the way I go about coloring leads me to a specific crop, sometimes the crop I want leads me to change the color, be it slight or substantial. Sometimes color just looks different depending on how you crop it. But it's never what I would call an accident with me. I'm pretty meticulous when it comes to background details a lot of the time. I'll sometimes crop an image dozens of times to find the "right one", and if it means continuing to recreate backgrounds or create negative space to give me that, then that is what I do. I'll keep the large canvas until I'm sure about the scale of the crop I want.

As for the cropping itself, for me it's usually always been "show only a portion of their head at once!!!!!!". I have a thing with cutting faces off. (Ha. Ha. Ha.) I do enjoy my center crops, too, but I am really big on pushing subjects off to the edges and either letting a pretty simple midground or background be featured as well orrrrr I just take it away. Negative it up! Or also there is the smaller case of me zooming in insanely close. Eyelashes and every wisp of hair are shown, indeed! This is when the HQ helps, because you can crop crazy close up and retain the shiny quality. So onwards to how I'd characterize crops I like vs crops I don't like. With caps included so you see where I come from.

Crops I like, Source cap + finished icon
[Click to enlarge the source cap.]

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I like this cap of Olivia but it's been iconned to death. So I thought a rotate and zoom would do well for it. I did a number of variations for this particular one in a challenge comm recently. Just an example of me cropping a bajillion times and never knowing what I like best. It's a good clean cap so there's a lot of ways to work with it. And I look for that.

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Shots like these may look a little unimpressive but when you blast it with one color it becomes much more interesting. I really made it a nice yellow-green and upped the contrast so you could focus more on Peter rather than the hallway he's standing in.

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Ben has such a lovely face and this was a mostly clean cap. The only change I did was manipulate the background in the very top section next to his head. I didn't want a sliver of not-wall so I clone stamped it for that section. And now the focus is solely on his wonderful face.

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For this shot of Olivia, it's really all to do with the haunted look in her eyes. So I didn't crop on anything but that. I focused on making sure tendrils of hair were at the precise edges of the icon and you were clearly looking into those gorgeous green eyes of hers.

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Scarlie is walking past a lovely backdrop that I thought would look better if the right was extended and he was in the center. So I added a little negative space on the right and some clone stamping for the top so he'd be center-bottom and badaboom.

Crops I don't like, Source cap + finished icon
[Click to enlarge the cap.]

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The thing about this is there's people in the background distracting you from Traci and Andy in the foreground. It's too busy for my taste. It's especially the way there's half a background face right beside the foreground face. Add those two things and you just get an icon where you can't focus on the subject.

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The way this shot is angled isn't right for the full neck/top of head cut off shot. Neal has a lovely face and neck but it's just the proportions and angle aren't right for the way this is cropped.

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This is an emotional scene but you don't feel it because the crop of Michael and Fiona is too far away. Their clutched hands and pained faces should be the focus, not their entire head and torso.

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The family of thieves is a nice OT5 but the pan is too wide to make a nice 100x100 crop. When you add black bars on the top or bottom of such a wide pan, it just doesn't look finished. And it's just too busy and you can't make much out. Cropping any closer would cut one of the team out and you don't really want that. It'd be great in large arts or picspams but this shot isn't iconnable to me.

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Chickie has a gorgeous braided bun and yet...Ben and Mr Random Dude in the background on the street are taking the focus away from the pretty hair. We just can't have that! Now one could always negative it out but I'd prefer a clean shot of the city with no people for a shot of the back of a head like this.

As for shadows and light I really have a simplistic approach with color (mostly I use pretty easy caps to work with) so there's usually some screening, color balance and some layers (likely masked) set to soft light and/or overlay. On the very top I will play with the selective coloring. I mess with the Whites/Neutral/Blacks and just fiddle until there's enough contrast. I just eyeball it. I flick the little eye on and off as I adjust the opacity until I see the difference my brain is aiming for. I copy/merge layers as I go, as well to see how the steps turned out and in case I want to change something or make variations. Adding light can usually be done with a gradient pulled in from a certain side I want lighter. I don't need every section to be brighter, so that way just the darker parts stay dark and anything not as light as I initially wanted are now at the level I like. I think it's a bit more even than adding a new layer with a brush most times.

Onto the next question, asked by v_allery

Darker coloring on close crops, Source cap + finished icon
[Click to enlarge the cap.]

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It's a little more tricky but I think the thing I look for is a side of shadow on the face, where the rest of the face isn't really all that dark. The key would definitely be to not merge your layers after cropping to 100x100. As I've mentioned before sometimes you alter you coloring based on how an image was cropped. And considering these two were closer ones with a darker coloring, I wanted to get the crop first and then adjust the color enough to where it wasn't extremely dark nor too bright and the balance between the light side and shadowed side looked right. The fact of the matter is it will not work on every cap, it has to be the right kind of image. And there's really not much more I can say about that. It's just more to do with where the image starts than the particular way it's colored.

I hope these answers help you and if you do have more questions, I'll try and do my best in my explanations.