icontalking | Activity #26

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

Our poll decided that a good majority of our makers here would like to see this activity again, and I'm hoping for high participation.

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 this community has been active for over two years, and we've grown quite a bit, along with DW. This should make for an interesting mix. I for one am looking forward to interesting questions and discussions!

Please promote this activity!

You can use this code here:

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, I 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 or are not on DW or because your question is more of the general kind), 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 postimages.com) 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 guide lighten dark bases 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.

A 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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What are your favourite fonts? I'm always on the hunt for new and interesting fonts!

YAY FONTS!!!!

This might be a bit of a niche thing, but the only new fonts I got this year are specialty Chinese fonts:

https://www.freechinesefont.com/

They're huge, of course. Installing them has slowed down my Photoshop considerably. /o\ Apparently, the other 2000+ fonts don't even make a dent compared to the half dozen Chinese fonts. (Worth it.) (And going there again has made me install four more. I am doomed. /o\)

Otherwise, the ones I know by heart what they look like and that I always use are

Aleo Bold, Stockholm, Bombshell Pro, Poster Bodoni, Times New Roman, and Xtreem.

https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/aleo
https://www.ffonts.net/Stockholm.font
https://www.dafont.com/font.php?file=xtreem

(bombshell pro is not free and i have no idea where i got it from, i usually only have free fonts. poster bodoni and times are also not free but were preinstalled on my windows.)

Times New Roman sounds boring, but it's actually really good for very small text. There aren't that many fonts that look good small. Handel Gothic is another one, and Book Antiqua. That's pretty much it. If you have any others, I'd be happy to hear about them.

I always struggle with text in general, but I do have some favourite fonts that I use a lot.

For small text, I like A Love of Thunder - it's an all caps font that looks good even in really small size.

I like God Bless America for anything cursive, but it can be a struggle to make it legible on something icon-sized.

Fox in the Snow is something I feel looks best the bigger the font, so I use it mainly for wallpapers and sig tags. It works great in contrast with a more blocky font.

Other fonts I like:
Moon Flower
Another Typewriter
Hearts (for when you need a heart but don't want to draw it or find a heart texture *g*)
Tall Dark And Handsome
Lemon Milk
Reklame
Federation Starfleet

oi, i have over 2000 fonts, but I only know two of these. Yay more fonts! <3

Edited (two thousand) 2019-06-03 16:32 (UTC)

Activity #26 - Ask The Maker

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