Icon Progression 2025

[sheliak]

Better late than never, right?

★ J a n u a r y ★

A minimalist month—just four icons. I think the most interesting thing I did with these was copypasting and moving around the fabric-tag words from the House of Hollow title and resizing them at a different ratio, so they'd still be legible in the icon. 4 misc icons

★ F e b r u a r y ★

I really love the art of Six Ages. Sometimes it feels like I've iconned every illustration from it—not actually true—but I had done most of these before. But I was working on a guide and realized I'd mucked up some of the images, and then some of the replacements worked well as icons... Anyway, it was fun to return to a favorite. (And icon #1 here, which is the most blatant remake of the lot, is an improvement over the original.) 25 Six Ages icons

★ M a r c h ★

In March I made (belated, months late) remake icons for bestof_icons, plus a few extra icons from an image I realized I'd forgotten to do when I went back to remake something else from that set. I've challenged myself to mostly do without textures for Monstress icons, but for the remakes I ignored that, and I'm very happy with the texture work I did in #2. #3 was an experiment in preserving panels—a comic icon that still looks like a comic book. I'm not sure how well this specific take on the idea worked, but it's an idea I like. 6 icons (remakes; Monstress, Earthsea) The above icons reposted, + 2 more Earthea

★ A p r i l ★

rachelmanija asked for an icon of one of Claude Cahun's self-portraits, the one where they're "holding a Nazi eagle badge between their teeth like a cat with a dead bird" (description by rydra_wong). Also did a random catchall post—not much to say about those. Claude Cahun icon for Rachel 10 misc icons

★ M a y ★

In May I got very excited about the then-in-Kickstarter video game Galaxy Princess Zorana—a very sparkly cute gonzo space opera full of ways for a hapless space princess to die—and made a lot of icons from promotional screenshots. (It has since come out; I do in fact like it.) 40 Galaxy Princess Zorana icons

★ J u n e ★

In June I made exactly one icon, at the last minute. Then, one day later, I remade it, because the text was kinda hard to see. (I must have been busy in June. Off the top of my head I can't remember what with—Battleship fic exchange, maybe?) 1 Runaway to the Stars icon

★ J u l y ★

I did say I remade that icon immediately. :P I think it's better with the text fix. I was a little more productive in July, but not by much—I remember being annoyed that I didn't have a really good font for the laser cows from Gunnerkrigg Court. And I made some icons of my own very simple Battleship art, like this guitar with too many tuning pegs for its strings. (I originally meant it to be a Discord emoji, not a Dreamwidth icon.) 10 misc icons

★ A u g u s t ★

I made exactly one icon in August 2025. My sole note about it in my retrospective draft/icon save file: "So... tired..." One 12 Kingdoms icon

★ S e p t e m b e r ★

Random last minute icons, Transformers edition! (Alternate title: my adventures in taking my own screenshots. Not good at that.) 5 Transformers G1 icons

★ O c t o b e r ★

More of the same. (The animation in the G1 Transformers show is, ah, variable, but the alien cityscapes in the pilot are really pretty.) 15 Transformers G1 icons

★ N o v e m b e r ★

Galaxy Princess Zorana had come out by this point! And I had managed to go rooting into the files for images. So I made some icons of the planets from the game, using the game's map background for a background texture. 25 Galaxy Princess Zorana icons

★ D e c e m b e r ★

In December I actually managed to do two posts—well, if you count the one I actually finished in January as a December post. I'm going to look on the bright side and do so. I made a small number of Six Ages icons—I was doing guides again—as well as some Galaxy Princess Zorana ones, based on CGs and ending slides. The Six Ages icons are, once again, revisiting images I'd tried before with new crops (and sometimes moving elements around, as with the lamp in #1 here). 5 Six Ages icons 17 Galaxy Princess Zorana icons (from this year)

★ 2 0 2 5 ★

2025 was a bit of a fallow year for me—I did make icons, but fewer than usual. I did manage to post every month, but I only had 13 posts total, and most of those posts were tiny. Most of the icons I made were pretty simple. I was tired, the times were depressing, and I didn't get much done. I didn't even manage to post 2024's icon progression! (Although I did finish it—fairly early, iirc—and I eventually made the draft public on my journal. Just in too much of a funk to actually post it here.) But I did consistently post icons! It makes me sad to skip a month, and I didn't do that last year. So that I can be happy about. And I did get into a couple new icon fandoms in Galaxy Princess Zorana and Transformers, so that was fun.

★ R e s o l u t i o n s ★

It's weird to make resolutions when I'm finishing this post so late (April!) Anyway. Last year was rough iconwise; this year I'm doing better. I've had 9 icon posts so far this year, compared to last year's 13 total, and participated in a couple of challenges. (I was going to say "as opposed to last year's none", but I did do remakes last year, which possibly counts?) I've been having fun. There's certainly still room to run out of steam (especially as the weather gets hotter), but who knows. I'd kind of like to try additional challenges—I've gotten back into icontalking and bestof_icons a bit, but there are others. I should explore! Previous years: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 (never posted this to icontalking)