Icon Progression 2019 - Sheliak

[sheliak]

★ J a n u a r y ★

This month I only posted icons once, for a remake challenge + a few random things. But I did keep working on the Dani Moonstar iconpost of doom! (That is going to be a recurring theme.) Various fandoms, some but not all remakes

★ F e b r u a r y ★

Again, just one post! But I'm honestly really proud of this batch; even after a year I'm still very happy with it. icontalking Butterfly Challenge + extras, including the first time someone asked me for icons and I made some for them! (I think the first, anyway. I remember it feeling like a milestone at the time.) Butterfly Challenge submission, teen girls from the 80s X-Men comics On my journal, with alts and off topics

★ M a r c h ★

Another one-post month, and a lot of the icons in this one were overflow from my New Mutants megapost (I ended up with a lot of random X-Men icons in there), so they're not all actually from this year. I got off to a terribly slow start this year, I guess... I did keep working on my Dani icons, but none actually got uploaded. X-Men overflow

★ A p r i l ★

And in April, I almost forgot to icon entirely (a mixture of RL and off-Dreamwidth fandom stuff), and ended up making icons last-minute because I knew I'd be sad if I didn't. *headdesk* Dragon Chronicles

★ M a y ★

May went great, iconwise! ic_animated had a Spot Color challenge that I found super inspiring. (I got a banner! My first ever banner!) I also returned to the Chronicles of the Kencyrath—one of my first ever icon fandoms—because a character I liked died in the latest book, and he was one of the few the author had illustrated. So I assuaged my sadness with icons, including some extra-large ones. (I've discovered that I kind of like 200x200 icons? Mind, they're not useful on this site and I don't know exactly where they would be, so they don't have much of an audience so far...) I also started iconning Classic X-Men as a way to get back into the fandom / x_men_classic community. Which worked for a while! Spot Color challenge submission More Spot Color at my journal Chronicles of the Kencyrath Classic X-Men: Starjammers

★ J u n e ★

And in June I was even more prolific! I kept on doing batches of icons for my favorite Classic X-Men issues (I wasn't able to keep that up forever, but it was really fun while it lasted). That middle icon, of Lilandra in the spiderweb, is one of my favorites of the year. And I also got to play with the absolutely fantastic Dark Phoenix movie posters. Classic X-Men: Banshee & Company Dark Phoenix movie posters X-Men Classic: Lilandra Neramani X-Men Classic: Magneto X-Men Classic: Jean and Ororo (with some less than inspired spot color) X-Men Classic: First Night

★ J u l y ★

Another productive icon month! I participated in my first icon battle! I also did the Video Game challenge on ic_animated (and leapt at the chance to make icons for Six Ages, my current fandom obsession) and the Celestial challenge on icons10in20, for which I went back to my Cassini icon post and repurposed a particularly abstract image of Saturn's rings into a background texture (#3 above). I also experimented with erasing a character's eye color and letting the background texture show through—this mostly works with blue eyes/blue background, and while it doesn't always work out it can have some nice results (also #3 above!) icontalking's Calm and Clear challenge kind of stumped me for a while. I mostly work with comic books, which are, um, the opposite. All drama, all the time! I tried some different fandoms—Dinotopia book icons, Kay Nielsen's fairytale art—but in the end I settled on something completely different. I ended up using stock art and going for a cut paper effect, using repeating textures (... most of which I had to modify to do that and not have obvious edges in the middle of shapes). I'm pretty happy with how that batch turned out! Video Game challenge Comic Book Iconbattle Celestial challenge Calm and Clear Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind Six Ages again, bigger My Comic Book Icon Battle submissions, reposted Celestial: Carol Danvers, 80s X-Men edition "Cut Paper" (stock art) Dinotopia Art by Kay Nielsen

★ A u g u s t ★

Aaaand in August I ran out of steam. I participated in two challenges, neither one on this comm, and ended up with one (small!) batch of icons in the end of it. Ah well; I do like some of them. I'm especially happy with how that first one of Rahne turned out; I had fun patching the two images together for it, so that her teammates are in her thought bubble. One theme was "Vintage", so I used old, faded scans from classic New Mutants comics. Vintage challenge Double Trouble challenge Combined post (New Mutants)

★ S e p t e m b e r ★

This month, I was doing canon review for the Trick or Treat fanfic exchange. Naturally, I ended up iconning the fandoms that were iconnable! It didn't end up being a lot of icons in total, but I really like #1 there (I'm still happy with how the text turned out) as well as #3. 80s X-Men + X-Men: The End

★ O c t o b e r ★

This month, I participated in the Speech Bubble challenge on ic_animated, which was fun. Also, another banner! I don't seem to have posted those icons on my journal, which is odd for me; I may've just added them into the New Mutants megaposts. Which I have been working on! But... slowly. In this month, Six Ages was ported to computer (it was originally a phone game) and so—after beating my head against various technical difficulties for a few days—I was able to get at the portraits and textures. Which I had been longing to make icons from! All the textures in that batch were from the game—the backgrounds all different sections of the main background of the game—as are almost all of the runes. (I did have to draw one of them myself.) I had a great deal of fun with this batch even though I think I'm the only person on Dreamwidth in the fandom. Speech Bubble challenge submission Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind

★ N o v e m b e r ★

This month I revisited my "cut paper" technique! I used textures (modified to repeat) to color in a lot of corner box headshots of my favorite characters. This was a lot of fun! (The second post—more 200x200 icons that I enjoy making but don't have an audience for—actually got posted on December 1st, but since I made every single icon in it in November, I'm listing it here. The only reason I split these icons between two posts was that I was too tired to finish formatting the "complete" version on the 30th!) "Cut Paper" X-Men & New Mutants The Same, but Bigger

★ D e c e m b e r ★

December was another month in which I failed to icon (the spillover post from November does not count), then realized, quite late, that I would be said if I did not make any icons. This time I made a lot at the last minute! Nothing terribly fancy, but the composition turned out pretty well on some of them. Once again I made some double-size icons as well as the regular small ones... but this time they all went in the same post. King of Dragon Pass

★ 2 0 1 9 ★

It was hard to put together a beginning/middle/end this time, since so much of my iconning was concentrated in the middle of the year! This year, I started using two new techniques—high-contrast spot color and "cut paper" texture fills—that I'm really happy with and love. I'm really glad that I got both of those things to work! As far as last year's resolutions go... well, I failed to finish the Dani Moonstar icon post o'doom. I did work on it! But it is not done. I got very little done on organizing my textures; in fact, I acquired more (and failed to organize those either). However, I did manage to get myself to do some smaller iconposts. So there's that! And I did participate in some challenges, although not as many as I would've liked.

★ R e s o l u t i o n s ★

... I still want to finish my Dani Moonstar megapost and organize my absurd number of textures. The same things I resolved to do last year and then failed to get done! I think the Dani iconpost is more manageable than the other thing, though. I'd like to icon for The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, which I suspect will require honing my nonexistent live-action-iconning skills even though it is not exactly live action. But that will require either finding a source of screencaps or taking my own... Previous years: 2017, 2018

Comments

[breyzyyin]

Oh wow, your icons are absolutely amazing to look at and I loved seeing and learning about your progression throughout the year on them. ♥ I wish you all the best in your icon-making goals for this new year too! ♥

[sheliak]

Thank you!

[tinny]

Awesome icons! (And so many good ones I overlooked when I chose your best ones for bestof. /o\)

I love to hear about what new things you did, and what techniques were fun to try. I didn't realize that Calm and Clear would be a difficult theme, but I love how you overcame the challenge and what you did with it! Very creative indeed.

I hope you can manage the resolutions this year! Good luck!