Icon Progression 2018 - Sheliak

[sheliak]

★ J a n u a r y ★

After making a very nice little statement of my ambitions to keep iconning and keep learning new techniques, I did not do very much this month. I admit that the post is large, but most of the actual work was done in December; and it still took me the rest of the month to finish. I only got it up on January 31st out of sheer stubbornness, and it's all crop/resize and a very little bit of color manipulation. My mistake was—well, I made a couple of mistakes. First, I was a little burnt out on fantasy illustration after my Bilibin and Canty posts. Second, I gave myself a ton of scans and wouldn't let myself knock it off halfway through. (Should really have done this and saved the Vikings for February.) As a result, by the end of it I was heartily sick of poor Arthur Rackham. Still, I'm glad I posted something, and some of the icons are nice. Art by Arthur Rackham (90 icons)

★ F e b r u a r y ★

A pretty productive month! But I didn't really experiment much. I kept on using found text from the source, for example—although I do like the effects I got with it! I didn't enter the icontalking challenge this month, which I regret; it would've been a challenge. The Cat on the Dovrefjell (45 icons) Scarlet Witch (35 icons) Queen Zixi of Ix (60 icons) The Queen's Thief (38 icons), The Heartstrikers (2 icons) and A Matter of Profit (10 icons)

★ M a r c h ★

This month I started the laborious process of actually organizing my textures. My 8000+ textures. I should have done that earlier. (As of this writing, I... am not actually done...) I did participate in the icontalking challenge this time, making textures! Also, I entered my first non-icontalking challenge this month. And it spurred me to experiment more than I had been; icons 3 and 4 above both involved new techniques for me (I'm pretty sure #3 was the first time I used multiple source crops in one icon, for example), and I'm really happy with how they turned out. I only made two icon posts this month, but the second one was pretty enormous. icontalking challenge: Texturize Me Individual textures (15 per batch): Flowerpot, Frames, Ash Words. icons10in20 round 1 Girl Genius (65 icons) X-Men (336 icons)

★ A p r i l ★

Not a very active icon-making month; I'm afraid I was focused on sorting my textures. I entered this month's challenge and further challenged myself to only use art assets from my source canon, King of Dragon Pass. (So, for example, the texture in the backgrounds of icons 1 and 3 is the game background texture, and the golden square on those icons is the in-game symbol of the goddess those characters worship.) This was also the month in which I started icon_library, a book icon community. icontalking Step Up challenge King of Dragon Pass (20 icons)

★ M a y ★

This month I did a challenge for icons10in20, and it got away with me. Drastically so. (As in, it spawned a huge iconpost that is still not posted, because I am bad at breaking things into batches.) As for the challenge itself... well, I wasn't sure about my attempt at levels at the time, and now I'm sure I think it's bad. On the other hand, I'm really happy about how my black and white "squish the cornerbox art together" icons turned out, and I like how my found-text turned out on icon 3 up there—the character in the icon is an in-universe rock star, and the text comes from her logo on another character's T-shirt. So that was fun. icons10in20 round 2 New Mutants (15 icons)

★ J u n e ★

I spent most of this month working on my massive New Mutants icon post, which I did not actually manage to complete. More on that later. I took a short break from this to revisit the Elemental Logic series, which was one of my very first icon fandoms and one I hadn't touched since June of the last year. I also flaked out on entering a Negative Space challenge, which I regret because some of the icons I made for it were among my favorites from this month. (I forgot to claim + misinterpreted the end date.) I still haven't actually posted those icons, aside from here (icons 1 and 5 above were meant for the challenge). Elemental Logic (15 icons)

★ J u l y ★

Decided to break up the New Mutants megapost into character-specific posts. Still failed to get the Dani Moonstar one done before the end of the month. Or, indeed, the year. I did post some Raksura icons, though. Books of the Raksura (25 icons)

★ A u g u s t ★

Kept working on the Dani Moonstar post of doom (and other New Mutants icons). Also, my first foray into live action, a set based on Dark Phoenix posters. That counts, right? Dark Phoenix movie (10 icons)

★ S e p t e m b e r ★

I continued to work on the New Mutants icons—mostly still Dani—and made one small icon post for the Queen's Thief series, partly to celebrate the cover announcement for the last book and mostly to have something to post. I did push myself a bit this month—in icon 1, I cut up and spliced the texture to emphasize the letter the character is holding, and and in icon 2 I got fonts to work with me. (That does not sound impressive to you, I imagine, but it's something I struggle with!) The Queen's Thief (10 icons)

★ O c t o b e r ★

I decided to take a break from New Mutants, and work on a webcomic called Hemlock, which I had just discovered. This itself became a megapost, because this is my pattern and I regret everything. On the other hand, I make myself cut this one in two and post before the end of the month (as I completely failed to do with the New Mutants stuff), so that's something. Although now I do have some leftover Hemlock icons to post in the future, and a bunch of saved pages to finish iconning... Also, I discovered that halftone has a sad tendency to look like crap shrunk down. I spent the month experimenting with ways around that, some of which worked better than others. Hemlock (215 icons)

★ N o v e m b e r ★

I finally posted the Six Ages icons I made this summer when the game came out, and then made some more—I needed an icon on wikia, meaning 150x150 pixels, and I wanted a Six Ages one because Six Ages is the wiki I worked on at the time. It was kind of fun having the extra space to use! Six Ages (15 icons, actually from sometime in summer) Six Ages (22 icons, actually from November)

★ D e c e m b e r ★

This month I made icons to order for communities! That was a new experience, and I enjoyed it. I made 10 icons for girlgenius_fanworks, and a bunch for x_men_classic, for which I also made a header and several banners. (And then changed the comm theme colors to match my header and icons, because why not. I am a mod of that comm and can do these things, mwahahaha!) While working on the latter, I finally managed to download a new font onto my computer (I had nothing that looked appropriately comic-booky for the X-Men comm graphics). It was easier than I had expected, somehow. And I do think I'm better with text than I was. (I also finally figured out how to use free select instead of just erasing backgrounds. Work in progress...) 10 icons for girlgenius-fanworks 75 icons, 3 banners, 1 header for x-men-classic

★ 2 0 1 8★

Once again, I couldn't resist directly comparing early-mid-late icons from this year. (First row is January-March, starting with the first icon of the year; second is May-September; third is October-December.) The progression isn't as obvious this year as it was last—well, I'm not a raw beginner anymore! However, I learned some new techniques, and I am way better with text than I was. Halfway competent. Still working on it! I didn't do anything very complicated with textures this year—basically just used them as backgrounds for my comics-based icons, although I did layer them and splice them together sometimes. Last year I promised myself that I'd try iconning live action. Technically, I did that! But I used promo pics and it does feel a bit like cheating. On the other hand, I also didn't watch much of anything live action this year, so I think I'll retire that goal for the time being. When or if I start watching live action TV and movies again, I'll try iconning them as well. As regards my other resolutions from last year: I wanted to post at least once a month, and I did! I'm also much better with text than I was. I haven't really touched manga or animation, though. And brushes are still a mystery. Perhaps this year... And I still have a backlog of finished but unposted icons. In fact, it's significantly bigger. Argh!

★ R e s o l u t i o n s ★

This year, I solemnly swear that I will finish my Dani Moonstar megapost. And hopefully post my other New Mutants icons as well. Maybe even the rest of the backlog! But mostly, I want to get that one done. And also finish organizing my textures, but that one feels like the task of Sisyphus, because organizing my textures has a really unfortunate way of making me want to go look for more textures, which does tend to make the problem even worse. But aside from that, the main thing I want to do is learn when to quit. Or when to partition, is more like it. More smaller posts, less huge ones that stress me out. I'd also like to get back to participating in challenges and generally talking icons again; I stopped doing that for a long time last year, and I miss it. Previous year: 2017

Comments

[breyzyyin]

I love, love, love your icons (and it is always so awesome to see classic X-Men art and character designs get some attention)! You have such an awesomely defined style. I'm really looking forward to seeing more of your Dani Moonstar megapost, and more of your work in general. Good luck with your resolutions! ♥

[yourlibrarian]

Cool to see this -- it would be nice to see more icon makers do a yearly roundup.

[sheliak]

It's definitely something I like doing! It's fun to have a record of what I did when.

[sheliak]

Aw, thank you, I'm flattered! And the classic era X-Men stuff is my very favorite.

I'm actively working on the Dani post again now, so hopefully it'll be done in the relatively near future. *crosses fingers*