Activity #26 - Ask The Maker

[tinny]

this banner is featuring an icon by tinyumbrella

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:
<center><img src='https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/file/205196.png' title='Activity #26 - Ask The Maker 2019' alt='Activity #26 - Ask The Maker 2019' /> <user name="icontalking"> <a href="https://icontalking.dreamwidth.org/34730.html">Activity Post</a> </center>

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:

<b>Username + where you post your work:</b> <b>What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.)</b> --->(If you know of anything that you're not able to answer/do, please mention it)<--- <b>Can we hotlink your icons?:</b>

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

Comments

Re: Maker Thread

[ideare]

would you be able to do a guide/tutorial on how you made this parker icon?

Re: Maker Thread

[tinyumbrella]

oh +1 on that, it's beautiful!

Re: Maker Thread

[seraphina_snape]

I wrote up a basic guide here, but if there is interest, I could do a full tutorial.

Re: Maker Thread

[seraphina_snape]

Oh, give me a few days? I've been trying to find the file, but it's entirely possible it's on an external hard drive somewhere and I have no idea which one. If I can't find it, I'll write up a close approximation of how that icon came to be.

Re: Maker Thread

[seraphina_snape]

Okay, I cannot find the original icon file or the texture, so I'll just have to wing it. I do remember thinking that this icon was a lot simpler to make than the end result makes it look, so this isn't going to be super long.

There are three basic components: the full-body shot of Parker, the silhouette profile, and the background texture.

The prompt was "two-tone & full body", meaning I had to use at least one full body image and two colours. I started by looking at full body screencaps. My go-to fandom is Leverage, so I eventually picked a cap of Parker from The Girls Night Out Job where she wears a lovely gold dress. I started by cropping the image (I usually crop to 100x100 straight away - I can always make it smaller later, and the smaller the size, the less I have to erase from the image) and colouring it to my liking. Then I erased the background until I only had Parker's body left. That took care of the first step.

I have no idea where I found the texture - I'm almost sure it was an example texture for some other challenge around the same time, but I honestly don't remember and I can't find it again. I do know that I picked it because it fit the "two-tone" part of the prompt, being shades of gold like Parker (her dress and her hair and her skin). That sorted out step 3.

I added the texture as the background and thought: that is not enough contrast. I felt like the full body image of Parker didn't really stand out enough. She pretty much disappeared inside the texture. Plus, I still needed a second colour for my two-tone icon, and I decided it needed to be a darker colour in order to make the gold (and Parker) stand out more and the one with the most contrast was black. I played around with various shapes first - a rectangle (didn't look good), a broad vertical stripe behind Parker (clashed with the horizontal stripe of the texture, no matter at what angle I put it), a black circle (added yet another geometric shape but looked a little odd on its own). Eventually - I can't remember how - I thought maybe it needed to be an irregular shape and immediately thought "it could be ANOTHER PARKER!" (You can never have enough Parker in an icon or your life. *g*)

So step two was me trawling for screencaps that showed Parker in profile (to make her recognizable because from the front or back she looks a lot like other long-haired women). I don't remember the exact cap I used, but from the collar it looks like it was FBIAgent!Parker. I cropped the image, used the pen tool to colour every part of Parker black and then erased everything that wasn't black. I pasted this image between the texture and the full-body image.

And that was it.

EDIT: If you want me to, I could write up a proper follow-along tutorial with screencaps and whatnot, but it wouldn't be the same icon since I can't find the texture.