icontalking | Activity #14

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Activity #14 - Ask the Maker

Ask The Maker 2018 banner at icontalking

It's June, and that means it's time for Ask The Maker again!

Ask The Maker is where you can ask your favorite makers about how they do that thing. You can ask for tutorials, guides/"How to", or ask any other questions related to their work. Check out the Maker thread (below) for makers who have signed up and are ready to answer your questions.

You can also ask questions to the community at large, and hope that someone is able to answer them. Do this in the Questions thread (below).

By now we've known each other for over a year, and know a little about everyone's abilities and style. I for one am looking forward to interesting questions and discussions!

Feel free to promote this activity! (You can use the header above.)

The more participants the merrier! I will promote it at an official promo comm.

Here are the rules:

1) Maker-Driven

Rules for makers who want to sign up

Sign up by commenting to the Maker thread.

Please don't sign up if you know that you can't or do not plan to fulfill the requests you get within a month.

If you are an icon maker and you're willing to write tutorials, guides or answer questions (Q&A's), please sign up here with your name and where you post your work. Please state what you're willing to do/answer and if people can hotlink your work or not. Use this posting template:

There is no fixed time limit in which the signed up makers have to write these tutorials or answer questions, but it would be nice if everyone managed to post their answers within the next month. I will make the master list post around mid-July (i.e. in six weeks). Even if you take longer than that, please try and answer your questions. Please let people know if you find out you cannot fulfill the requests. Try not to leave people hanging.

All tutorials/Q&A etc. need to be posted in your community/journal and be posted publicly. In-depth explanations on tutorials is not a must, but highly encouraged.

When you finish your requests, post a link to them as a reply to the original request comment here. That way, me and the person requesting will be able to see them and I can add them to the master list.

2) Question-Driven - I have a question and anyone can answer

If you have a question about techniques, a specific look, etc, but you can't ask any maker directly (e.g. because they didn't sign up), you may ask your question in the Questions thread.

Be aware that there is no guarantee that you'll get your question answered. You will increase your chances by asking specific questions about specific techniques and by giving icon examples, from different makers if possible. Please don't ask about single specific icons, nobody should feel pressured into participating.

Please don't hotlink icons from other makers without asking them. Reupload the icons (e.g. to imgur.com or upl.co) instead.

What's What

Question categories and examples

Guides - a guide is a general explanation post. The maker will make a post explaining how to achieve a particular effect, use a technique, use a tool, etc.

#1 - Text and typography in gimp by

cool_spectrum
#2 - A flat pastel coloring guide from last year by

tinny

Tutorial - a tutorial is a step-by-step description of how to make a particular icon. Only the maker of an icon can make a tutorial of how they made that icon. If you ask for a tutorial, you must provide said icon with your question. This kind of question only makes sense in the Maker thread.

Last year's tutorial by

fueschgast
Example tutorial #2 by

word_never_said

Q&A - everything that doesn't quite fit the first two categories. Ask away, hope for the best. :)

Maker thread

Questions thread

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Makers who are willing to write guides and tutorials and answer questions:

Sign Up Here

Username + where you post your work:

tinny https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/tag/art-icons

What can we request from you:

Ask away, all types of questions are fine.

Can we hotlink your icons?:

Yes.

Edited 2018-06-03 19:29 (UTC)

All your icons are so amazing, so I'm just gonna ask a simple one.

Pick one of your favorite icons, and sort of describe your train of thought in how you put it together, from centering to icon textures used--

Maybe that wasn't so simple. I'm so sorry, I'm just fascinated with inspiration and how one gets it/

Thank you! <3

I feel like I'm always doing pretty much the same compositions and style. *g*

But I'm happy to write up something! I will pick one of the rumble icons, because I put a lot of thought into those.

I thought about this for a while now, and since you're more interested in inspiration (and how to transport it into composition) than in the making of a particular icon, I think I'm going to make a composition guide. Is that okay with you?

Something like this, which I adore:
https://bittergraced.livejournal.com/19559.html by

theotherayn

Would that be okay?

That would be perfect! Thank you so much!

Okay, the composition guide is done!

Let me know if that was not what you were looking for!

https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/508943.html

This is seriously everything I've wanted-- so much good stuff here! Thank you so much for making it! *flails happily*

I may be late, but I'm posting anyway, in case someone has a question for me.

Username + where you post your work:

alexia_drake and my icons are at my journal.

What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.)
Tutorials and Q&A. I do not always save my coloring process when I make icons, but I should be able to do something close if you request one about specific icons.

Can we hotlink your icons?: Sure.

Username + where you post your work:

fuesch icon tag

What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.)?
Anything.

Can we hotlink your icons?
Sure.

Wee, I'm happy you signed up! I still use the fuzzy hair technique you described in last year's tutorial!

If you have any particular technique in mind that you want to talk about this year, I'd be thrilled!

If not, this is the icon I meant with the colorful painted look (so sorry for confusing them!). I'd love to hear your process on it:

Edited 2018-06-11 19:02 (UTC)

Oh that's a lovely icon-- the colouring is amazing!

Oh, I'm sorry, I haven't done anything to make it look painted - that was all the hair- & lighting departments. But if you want, I can write about the icon anyway.

Oh well. It looks amazing, anyway!

If you think it would be boring to talk about this icon, I'd be happy if you want to talk about any other icon or technique, too.

Thanks.

I don't know, I've looked through my icons and nothing feels interesting enough. :o/

Username + where you post your work:

delacourtings + here

What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.) anything!

Can we hotlink your icons?: sure

Username + where you post your work:

sheliak
icon tag
icons listed by fandom

What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.)

Anything is okay! I've never done a tutorial or a guide before, but if someone wants one I'll do my best.

I work in GIMP, so my answers will be geared to that program, though—I can't answer questions specific to Photoshop or other programs.

Can we hotlink your icons?:

Yes, that's fine.

If you have questions not directed at a specific maker:

Please Ask Here

What is some of everyone's favorite texture makers? What textures do you find yourself using again and again? Inquiring minds what to know!

I'd say the texture makers whose stuff I use the most are

lookslikerain,

bourniio,

bombay101, and

white-bamboo, all of whom are/were very prolific as well as having styles that I like. Some others that I use relatively often are

proverbialSunrise,

spiritcoda,

spooky11,

sintonia, and

tiger_tutorials. There are also some that I don't have many textures by, but really like those I have—

kaelien makes great print/wrapping paper type textures,

queen-bartonia has some great vibrant ones, and

peacebloomings had a great fabric-based set. (Another in this category is elwyn, but I, err, forgot to mark which site that username goes to, which means I can't link to them. I think I found them through the fabric tag on

texturize, which is a great texture-finding resource.)

Some more recent discoveries:

dearestyou,

larmay,

yunyunsarang,

sanya4,

innocentLexys,

raiindust,

vitriolicism,

youcallitwinter.

Oh these are awesome! Thank you so much for sharing!

You're welcome! I hope you find a bunch of textures you like!

Thank you! Quite a few of these I haven't seen before!

You're welcome!

That's a really nice list, thanks!

You're welcome! I hope you find it useful.

I’m always having difficulties when trying to lighten and colour dark screen caps so I wondered how icon makers lighten and colour them?

That's a very good question. I thought I had a tutorial link about that somewhere, but I haven't managed to find it yet. :(

If I end up having to write something up myself, would you mind if it was Photoshop-specific?

Yes I use Photoshop so that would fine :)

I'm done! Only took me two months... /o\

https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/513453.html

Have fun lightening bases! :D

Will you definitely write that? I meant to write a guide about it, but I'm feeling overwhelmed with my to-do list. :o/

Oi, I was looking forward to you writing it up, since I'm already writing another guide on composition. *g*

Do you think you could do it if you had more time? I'm not going to be able to finish my guide this month, either. I'm out of town over the weekend.

If you don't want to do it at all, I guess I can do it, sure. But it will take me at least two more weeks to write two guides. (If you have any specific techniques in mind, let me know, and I'll build on that.)

p.s.: if anyone has any ideas about what to do as our next month's activity, I'd appreciate input on that, as well. I haven't had time to prepare anything yet.

I don't think I can, even with a bit more time.

I only know I would talk about Shadows/Highlights first, put Gradient Map (in greys) for its adaptability (I don't quite know how to put that one into words) somewhere in there and mention the helpfulness of using Layer Masks. I didn't even plan anything for coloring yet.

Here's what I wrote (yay two months later...)

https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/513453.html

If you can think of anything I didn't mention, let me know!

Oof, I feel that calls for a guide. I had started a comment, but it took too much time and effort to put together, because there are so many options to lighten and color and explain the differences between the choices. Would you like me to make a guide?

Yes please! That would be excellent and so helpful:)

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