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

I've been loving your glow lately, any tips or tricks? I find sometimes my glow overpowers or underperforms

eg.

i adore that last icon too, if you feel up to a tutorial?

oh and maybe any info on how you blend your textures to make it look like a normal background/foreground, it's not one of my strong points. eg

firstly, thank you for asking so many questions! <3

1) GLOW

Oh god.... I feel like my glow is very hit and miss. I can't even say I'm doing anything in particular. My process for glow is:

- make the brush large and soft, paint a blob in a light color (white is best by far, but sometimes I use a saturated yellow or blue). Make sure the glow is on the correct side, matching the direction of the lighting on the subject
- I sometimes actually leave it on Normal blend mode, but most of the time I set it to Screen or Soft Light.
- smudge it until it doesn't look circular anymore
- erase it from the middle of the subject's head, leaving the edges.
- smudge again (repeat...)

That's it. I smudge it (which makes it softer) until I think the subject looks lit but not washed out. I'm not sure that's a good process - and it doesn't always work. I have lots of examples where I definitely overdid it. This one is too light I think:

2) MINI-TUTORIAL

I don't think I can write a whole tutorial on this icon. I didn't do much. :) I'll sketch it here for you:

- here's the cap:

* you can see that the lighting is already all there in the cap (the Detective L caps are all lit like that, they're a lot of fun to work with)
- I filled the background with a blue color (#375676)
- I added a texture (from the British Library here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/albums/72157638733975756)

- I didn't even change the color of the texture, just set it to Overlay at 69%. (As you can tell from the layer palette, I just added it as is first, and only later decided to make it blue by adding the blue layer and setting the texture above it in Overlay mode.)

- I masked Xiaoman and duplicated her twice:
- The first duplicate, I sharpened and set to 50%.
- The second duplicate I set to Linear Add at 40%.
* The percentages depend on the cap, but that is one of my normal processes for base preparation for dark and slightly blurry caps. Sometimes I mask the sharpened layer, too, but I didn't do that here.
- I painted a yellow blob (#f0bf74, taken from her face after the whole lighting process) in the right half of the icon and moved it behind her and set it to Color 100%.
* I did this because wanted the background colors to fit the original lighting of the original cap, and now we have blue on the left and yellow on the right. (But I hated how that yellow came out... it's too muddy and greenish.)

- I painted a white blob into the upper left corner and set it to Soft Light (100%)
- I painted another smaller blob in the same corner and set it to Soft Light (100%)
- I duplicated that smaller blob
* this is why the glow is soft but still strong in the corner

That's it. Here's the layer palette:

I was very unsure about this and hated that the yellow didn't come out yellow enough for my taste. So I made seven alts (of which I posted four):

3) TEXTURES

In that particular icon, I actually didn't do *anything*. I just chose a texture that matched in color to the cap. But usually they don't.

a) Imho, the main thing with fake background is accurate masking. Which is why I mask at full size these days. I use the magnetic lasso to mask the subject and then quick mask to fix what the lasso got wrong. Only then do I resize to 100x100. (I like to work at 100x100.) That gives me crips edges. If I want to put a texture in front of the subject, I do the same: mask it crisply, so the styles match.

b) Coloring: I usually add a plain color layer in a color picked from the texture or from the subject and set that to Lighten at low opacity. This will give the icon a consistent look. That's my way of making the coloring match. Doesn't work with all the caps or all the textures, so I usually keep changing the texture until one fits.

c) Background-Foreground: the only type of texture I can do this thing in a way that I like the results are flower textures. They're easy because flowers have a nice round form behind which to place the subject. I have tried with other textures, but only rarely. Examples:

Did I answer your questions or did I misunderstand any of them? I'll happily explain more/something else if I got anything wrong.

That was really good!! thank you for the time it took to write all this up.

I don't think i've ever used Linear add before so i will have to give that a shot, it's suprising how little you can do to make an icon amazing.

I usually cut out on 200x200px but maybe i should try doing it with full size one of thes days.

I like your lighten layer idea on colors to make it look consistent! that's really cool!

Activity #26 - Ask The Maker

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