icontalking | Activity #26

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Activity #26 - Ask The Maker

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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

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Ask questions for a specific maker here

Ask questions for the community here

Username + where you post your work: Sheliak + https://sheliak.dreamwidth.org/tag/icons
What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.) I'm up for anything!
Can we hotlink your icons?: Sure.

Username + where you post your work:

tinyumbrella (previously

timetobegin) and i post at

oh_crime
What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.) I'll give anything a shot! I don't save my psds, so i will recreate anything rather than showing the exact same icon
Can we hotlink your icons?: sure

Edited 2019-06-02 01:07 (UTC)

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

I always struggle to make comic book icons look normal, do you have any tips and tricks for colouring? I like your colouring on these:

Username + where you post your work: https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/tag/art-icons
What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.) Anything
Can we hotlink your icons?: yes

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.

Username + where you post your work:

goodbyebird @

spankulert
What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.) I probably won't be able to do a tutorial for a specific icon unless I saved the PDF, but ask away.
Can we hotlink your icons?: Yup :)

Edited 2019-06-02 12:10 (UTC)

Username + where you post your work:

seraphina_snape |

raptor_inc (icon tag)
What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.) ask me anything
--->(If you know of anything that you're not able to answer/do, please mention it)<---
Can we hotlink your icons?: sure, they're all up on imgur anyway, so there's no point of reupping them

Ooo! I have a question for this!! I'll have to get on my computer later so I can pull example icons.

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

I think that first one was just a crop from a page, unaltered. (So the answer for that one is “start with a scan with coloring you like, and don’t mess with it.” Probably kind of disappointing? Although it might be worth mentioning that comic book coloring has changed a lot over time; I work mostly with older comics, stuff from the 80s and modern digitizations of it, and the colors there tend to be a lot flatter than stuff from the last two decades or so.)

The second one is pretty similar, just with a texture for a background.

The basic thought process on most of my icons like that is:
- Pick a scan you like the coloring on.
- If you’re using a texture as a background, match it to the coloring and quality of the scan. (If the scan is an old, faded comic, especially one that uses halftone/dotted coloring, you want to use faded/papery textures rather than the kind of bright/smooth texture I used for the second Corsair above.) I can pull up some examples if that’d be useful?
- Upping contrast can help a lot with faded scans, although you have to be careful not to overdo it. If you do this, fiddling with the brightness as well is usually a good idea.

The third one is where it gets a bit fancier. I didn’t save the .xcf file (if you like I can try reverse engineering the icon to be more sure of the steps?), but this is approximately what I did, starting from the cropped panel and working in GIMP:
1. Used Free Select to get a layer of just the character I wanted, erased the background edges.
2. Copied just the glasses for a second layer (and erased around them in that layer).
3. Went to the character layer and used the Colorify tool to convert it to grayscale. (NB: I might’ve first copied the layer again, and used color to alpha to get just the linework and layer that on top of the grayscale. I don’t think I did that in this case, but I did it in some of that batch.)
4. Added a texture as a background.
5. …. Saved. I thought I was done at this point. Then I noticed that the background was a bit too orange, so I went back and upped the contrast a bit so that it’s redder. This had the effect of also losing some of the grayscale effect on the character, though there’s still some gray in his jacket. The first version of the icon is here: https://i.imgur.com/Bmy0fOF.png

I hope that was of some use! And if you've got any follow-up questions I'll do my best to answer them.

I really love what you did with these icons: https://i.imgur.com/34IGnom.png
https://i.imgur.com/aC6J3Ju.png
https://i.imgur.com/mjfaO3t.png

I just would love to know how you work out the composition (re. what textures to use, what images, the text and placement etc). Hope that makes sense *fingerscrossed*

Edited 2019-06-03 09:58 (UTC)

Do you participate in icontests? If so, what is most likely to make you want to participate? (themes, provided caps, fandoms, seeing other entries, open or anonymous makers, inspirations, etc.)

Edited 2019-06-03 10:59 (UTC)

What are some of your favorite tutorials?

How do you do text so that it looks so ... un-blocky and fluid? Like here:

Relatedly, do you have any fonts you would recommend?

1) Ah. Good question!

In those two examples, I actually didn't do anything at all. They probably look okay because the contrast between the font and the background isn't that strong.

But some fonts look a little pixelated by themselves, and those I blur. I.e. I stamp the whole icon, blur it, and then set the mask to all black. Then I draw into the mask with a small white brush to make the things that are too contrasty or too sharp a little less so. This often includes text, but not only. I don't really like doing something to the whole icon that requires stamping, but I have found no other way to smooth out text.

Example:

Left: sharp, right: blurred

2) I already listed some fonts I use very often in a comment below. Besides that, let me see... I love fonts that look like they're handwritten.

My faves there are:

https://www.dafont.com/beastform.font
https://www.dafont.com/coalhandluke.font
https://www.dafont.com/indelible.font
https://www.dafont.com/landliebe.font
https://www.dafont.com/muurahaiskarhu.font
https://www.dafont.com/rebel-heart.font
https://www.dafont.com/kg-two-is-better-than-one.font
https://www.dafont.com/vni-thufap1.font
https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/amatic

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)

I personally am most inspired by themes and inspirational challenges.

I will almost never enter a challenge with provided caps because I like iconing my own things - which is usually why fandoms don't work for me either, because I just icon my current fandom and nothing else.

As to anonymous or open: I like both. Both have their attractions.

For the first example, the letters aren't completely monochrome, but have some sort of texturing; is that part of the font as well?

Thank you for the tip and the font recs! I'll definitely put them to use on the next icons I make. :3

Ah, yes, I put a texture over the text. I often do that. I like to use bold and non-serif text that has a weight of its own, and that can handle some lighting or other texturing on top of it.

In this case, it was photon 6, from this pack here:

https://www.deviantart.com/azuremonkey/art/Photon-126724056

Some more examples of lighting and/or textures over text:

Edited (examples) 2019-06-03 20:39 (UTC)

I prefer themes and techniques, because finding caps are hard enough i'd rather be able to make it easy on myself. I do love entering things as it gives me purpose.

But sometimes caps or fandoms are just that good

i like seeing the entries as we go, as i like to comment on them but i'm not picky!

I don't have any favourites but here are some of the ones i bookmarked to look at:

https://ultraviolence.livejournal.com/29282.html < interesting colours and effects
https://psychedelicats.livejournal.com/37253.html < trippy effects
https://accios.livejournal.com/74150.html < muted, yet vibrant
https://bel-perdente.livejournal.com/45380.html < working with less than ideal caps
https://good-tutorial.livejournal.com/28869.html < in depth colouring
https://bel-perdente.livejournal.com/45589.html < interesting colouring
https://good-tutorial.livejournal.com/31133.html < vibrant colouring

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

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