Activity #33 - Happy New Year

[tinny]

It's the time of year for looking back at how far we've come!

( ---> the texture activity #32 is not quite over yet, you have the whole day today to submit textures! )

1) ICON PROGRESSION

Tell us what icons you made this last year, select the best/the most extraordinary/the most representative, and tell us about them.

Tell us about your progress, your fandoms, your ideas and techniques. What changed over the course of the year?

If you want, you can make resolutions about your iconmaking: what you would like to do this year, techniques you want to try, goals you want to achieve.

There are quite a few progression posts from the previous years by now, in which you can look for ideas how to go about it:

=> https://icontalking.dreamwidth.org/tag/progression+post



Here are some more examples of what they might look like:

Icon Progression 2015 by jsfunction
Icon Progression 2016 by rashiea
Icon Progression 2017 by sweet_lyri

If you want to use pre-made layout codes, here are some (the posts also contain more links to other progression posts) :

http://icon-talk.livejournal.com/106468.html (4 layouts)
http://icon-talk.livejournal.com/101746.html (3 layouts)

all by rocketgirl2


* You can post your progression/resolution posts as new posts directly to this comm
* If you post(ed) a progression post to your journal, you can make a new post here and link to your journal
* If you have more than 5 icons in your post, put them under a cut
* Note: you must be a member of this community to be able to post

Deadline: any time you want! These things take time. Post them to the community any time you like!

2) ICON REMAKES

Since the LJ version of the bestof_icons remake activity is mostly over already, I'm offering it here, too. In case you'd rather make icons this month. *G*

* Leave a comment in the thread below and link your icon posts/tag/comm
* People can choose icons for you to remake (2 or 3 is a good amount)
* You can also choose icons for yourself to remake
* They must pick an icon that you made some time in 2018
* How you choose to remake it is up to you. You can use the same cap, the same kind of crop or color scheme, the same emotion you were going for. It is up to you to define what "remake" means!
* Feel free to explain your thought process when you post the icons

Deadline: January 25th 2020 - I will make a roundup post for the remakes

Comments

REMAKES

[tinny]

If you want to do remakes and want us to choose which icons of yours to remake, comment here with a link where to find your icons from 2019.

Re: REMAKES

[fueschgast]

https://fuesch.livejournal.com/tag/-%20icons

Re: REMAKES

[tinny]

Wow, I adore the Doctor Who set!

Soo... I selfishly chose my own favorite characters:



I hope the lj-proxified versions show up over here... :/ If not:

2) is #10 from this post: https://fuesch.livejournal.com/54201.html
3) is #09 from this post: https://fuesch.livejournal.com/53682.html

Thanks for playing! I hope these inspire you!

Re: REMAKES

[fueschgast]

That was fun!

   

Re: REMAKES

[tinny]

Sooo, finally I come back to comment on these! I love the texture on the Cas icon! The coloring on Sheppard (and the more central placement) looks gorgeous! And I just still adore the smiles in the Star Wars trio icon - the coloring now makes it look even more nostalgic.

Thank you!

Re: REMAKES

[sheliak]

How about these?

Re: REMAKES

[fueschgast]

Thank you so much for choosing that Orphan Black icon! At first I didn't know what to do with it, but then I tried to remove the obscuring fan and it worked out pretty well. Now I'm really happy with that icon. (^◡^)

     

Re: REMAKES

[sheliak]

https://sheliak.dreamwidth.org/tag/icons

Re: REMAKES

[tinny]

Thanks for playing!



I love the art style of the second one, it would just be neat to see more of it. *g*

Re: REMAKES

[sheliak]

For the first one, my first thought was to go find a digitially colored reprint scan. And there's nothing wrong with that icon, but it doesn't quite work for me. So I went back and tried the old scan again but messed more with the colors. I'm not sure which of them is better, but the second one carries more of the anger that I was going for, I think. (OTOH, I went and got a new scan of the other super-closeup of that character, and that one turned out better than the original.)

For the other one, I went with a slightly different crop of the same character, and also did one of the background characters.

And this one (more background characters) didn't turn out at all at the smaller size.


(The full source image for the second of the original icons is here: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/sixages/images/b/bf/IMG_1615.png )

Re: REMAKES

[tinny]

I love what you did with these. The first remake has a better view of his (her?) eyes, so I do like it quite a lot. I like the other angle, too.

The remake of the second one turned out great! At that distance, the lines stay beaufitully sharp. I really like the one with the horses, too! (But I can imagine how it would lose the interesting parts when downsized.)

Thank you!

Re: REMAKES

[aurora_amethyst]

https://wunderkind-lucy.dreamwidth.org/tag/%2A2019

Re: REMAKES

[sheliak]

How about these?

Re: REMAKES

[aurora_amethyst]

Sorry for the delay!

For the Elizabeth Bennet icon, I decided to go for a close-up crop and a pastel but vibrant coloring. The icon was looking a little blah, so I decided to try a complex layout. I copy-merged what I had and duplicated the image several times and resized them in different sizes.



For the Mulan icon, I decided go with a close crop. I thought about doing negative space, but Mulan's face would not be as visible. Since the original icon emphasized the reddish tones, I decided to emphasize the blues a little more. The icon seemed to be missing something, so I added a cloud texture on the right to add to the overall bluish tone.



For the Cruella icon, I wanted to go for a complex look that focused on Cruella's half-black, half-white hair style. I found a texture that had an interesting mix of blacks and creams for the composition and blended a close-up crop of Cruella. I added text that also incorporated the half-black, half white look. It was still looking a little bare, so I added a stripe of red, Cruella's other signature color.



Thanks for choosing these three icons! ^^ I hope you enjoy the remakes!

Icon Progression 2019

[goodbyebird]

2018 was a complete bust for me in regards to icons, so this year started out a bit rough lol. Mostly got back to it because I had a need for Harlots icons, and Star Trek Discovery was calling my name.



I was watching Voyager, and I had to scour for caps where the characters weren't moving too much ;) the red and yellows in the show made coloring a treat though.



Decided to focus on Discovery and Killing Eve for a lj challenge. Tried to push myself a bit with coloring and compositions, ended up with some results I was most pleased with. Of course the one everyone liked the most had my customary close-crop and took five minutes to make.




Season 1 of Xena was progressing slowly as I was trying to vid while watching, but low quality footage or no, soon an Amazonian Warrior Princess with broad shoulders and a great sidekick became too much to resist!

I did have a lot of trouble figuring this show out, and had to do a lot of work on the initial cap to achieve passable results. Annoyingly I have none of the PSDs since I did them all in three stages... and the results varied widely. As usual, I post everything I save though, including the garbage :p Also, I went way overboard with the blue overlay on their eyes, but I couldn't help myself.
(you can clearly tell I saved one initial cap PSD, because I kept playing with it lol)




Bless the many fake death scenes, as they were close-crop heaven and free of movement!



Next post was pretty multi-fannish, mostly me doing random challenges and scrolling through my screen caps folder. Kept plugging away at Xena and felt like I was getting better at achieving the level of sharpness I wanted.




Then cave the comic book icon battle + various icon challenges... the icon battle was interesting as I had to work with images provided by others, including manga. Continued throwing color combinations at Xena and ended up with my favorite icon of the year! (last one) Gentleman Jack was super pretty, queer, and featured an unprecedented amount of yummy handporn, though the coloring vexed me throughout.




Last post of the year was a hodgepodge of challenge icons. My brain doesn't do so well with winter and the few times my inspiration did kick in, my energy levels were still bottoming out. Made a push for The Witcher and The Mandalorian icons as both shows provided me with breezy fun and I wanted icons to use right away. Mostly defaulted to my close-crops. nexticon proved super helpful as it feels very low-pressure and it's only one icon at a time.



Can't say I've pushed myself to learning anything new this year - which tends to always be the case. Iconning is usually a relaxing thing for me; there's the rare occasion where I pick a challenge and push myself, but mostly I sit back and just do what comes naturally. Mostly that's clean icons with close-crops, though Xena ended up with a lot of different approaches since the base caps were so challenging.

Ran a couple of challenges. Found some new fandoms. Happy to be back to iconning! Won't be bringing my laptop to work this year, planning to focus on reading, but when I'm home I'll definitely be cracking on with photoshop.

For resolutions, let's say
* run one challenge or battle
* two cap posts
* one tutorial
* at least four icon posts

Re: Icon Progression 2019

[tinny]

Thank you so much for playing! (You are welcome to post your progession posts as new posts to the comm, if you like. But this is fine as well.)

I like the glowy style of a lot of your icons. Also: Xena! :D

Can't say I've pushed myself to learning anything new this year - which tends to always be the case. Iconning is usually a relaxing thing for me; there's the rare occasion where I pick a challenge and push myself, but mostly I sit back and just do what comes naturally.

Yeah, me, too! I always make resolutions to learn and try new things, and then I just icon the same things over and over because it's fun and relaxing and I just love looking at the faces of my current obsessions. I have stopped fretting about it. It's way too much fun, and I love iconmaking as a relaxing hobby. For some reason, progress (or at least change :D ) somehow always sneaks in after all, but I only notice it during those progression posts. I love making them.

Your resolutions are very tangible and sound possible! Good luck with them!

Re: Icon Progression 2019

[goodbyebird]

Oh change definitely sneaks in over time without conscious effort. Unavoidable, that one!

Thanks :) I did try to keep low expectations so hopefully I'll manage then all hehe.

[aurora_amethyst]

My progression post is here. It's rather short as I only got back to icon making in October.