Admin Post: Welcome, iconmakers!

[tinny]

In the recent exodus from LJ, some iconmakers have completely turned their back on LJ. With this community, I'm hoping to give iconmakers a place to gather and chat, to exchange ideas and show each other our icons, and to promote any iconmaking activities going on around here.

I'm sure there are also those who are crossposting, or still actively engaged in the iconmaking community on LJ. The iconmaking community on LJ was, last I checked, determined to stay together on LJ. I support that decision. A community lives by its numbers, and the more people leave, the harder it is to keep interesting activities going. The goal of this community here is not to split the iconmaker community down the middle. So what is it? Let's find out!

To get a sense of what you would like to see, how you see this community developing, please fill out this poll:

Poll #18196 Icontalking base poll

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 30

LJ vs DW

View Answers

DW - I have no (longer an) account on LJ and want to make icons on DW now
10 (34.5%)

LJ - I am an active iconmaker on LJ and want to stay there
2 (6.9%)

Both would be okay
17 (58.6%)

Neither (I am not an iconmaker (yet))
0 (0.0%)

Skills

View Answers

Pro - I have been doing this for more than a year
13 (43.3%)

Intermediate - I think I have medium skills
9 (30.0%)

Beginner - I am a beginner at iconmaking
6 (20.0%)

None - I want to learn how to make icons
2 (6.7%)

Other - I am not an iconmaker
0 (0.0%)

What I expect from this community

View Answers

Interaction with other iconmakers
20 (69.0%)

Finding other iconmakers to add to my circle
10 (34.5%)

An up-to-date list of active challenges on DW
25 (86.2%)

An up-to-date list of active challenges on LJ
7 (24.1%)

Icon community promos
21 (72.4%)

Icon challenges to be run here within this community
18 (62.1%)

Icon tutorials
15 (51.7%)

Concrit for my icons
7 (24.1%)

Something else I will tell you in a comment
0 (0.0%)

But of course, this is an iconTALKING community, so go ahead and talk to me! And to each other!

Feel free to promote this community to your heart's content! The more members, the merrier!
<center><img title="Icontalking banner #01" src="https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/file/10291.png"/><br><lj user=icontalking><br>A place for iconmakers to talk about icons and get up-to-date info on iconmaking activities. Join <a href=https://www.dreamwidth.org/circle/icontalking/edit>here</a>!</center>

Comments

LIYM

[tinny]

Share the last icon you made! Please indicate if you'd like to receive concrit or not.

Re: LIYM

[fueschgast]

Helloooo! I've been making icons for over a decade. I'm hoping that icons on DW will become more creative and that there'll be fandom-specific icon communities.


And here's one of the last icons I made:



Please no concrit.

Re: LIYM

[tinny]

Hello!! Me, too. :D I've just posted a progression post and had to dig through all my old icons. My earliest are from 2004. O_O

Great Ten icon! The text work is awesome, and I love how you brought out the highlights in his hair.

Re: LIYM

[fueschgast]

Heh, my earliest icons are from 2004 too. Now you only need to tell me there they were of 24. XD

Thanks! I'm proud of this one. I'm trying to improve the look of my texts and I think I'm now a bit above decent.

Re: LIYM

[tinny]

Now you only need to tell me they were of 24. XD

No, Phew. :D

Mine were mostly Angel, Alias, CSI, and Enterprise icons. I never got into 24, at least I never got very fannish about it.

I'm trying to improve the look of my texts

Text is hard, yo! If it just wasn't that much work all the time. ;D

Re: LIYM

[fueschgast]

Alias! CSI! High five! :oD

Re: LIYM

[seraphina_snape]

Love the icon! It definitely showcases The Hair - always a good thing. *g*

What kind of fandom-specific icon comms do you want to see? Because I wouldn't mind there being a Doctor Who icon community or something like that...

Re: LIYM

[fueschgast]

Pretty much every day is rad-hair day for Ten! :oD

Yeah, Doctor Who, Sherlock, Orphan Black (I'd just be happy with a general community for that show - I have nowhere to fangirl it!), and actually icon comms for all my fandoms.

Re: LIYM

[seraphina_snape]

I just hunted down my first icon post and I can say with some certainty that I've been making icons since April 10, 2006. :D I think I've come a long way since then.

Last icon made (from this batch):



Concrit is fine! Let me have it. :p

Re: LIYM

[fueschgast]

Hello there! It's a small world! XD

Re: LIYM

[tinny]

Great icon - I liked the whole set! *g*

I'm always ready to give concrit, but I can't think of anything for this icon. The coloring is beautiful, and the sharpening really good, too. It looks a bit dark on my monitor, but most icons do, so I have learned not to read too much into that.

The texture is interesting and creative and small enough not to overpower the composition.

FIYSL

[tinny]

Share favorite icon(s) you've seen lately.

Re: FIYSL

[tinny]

I just looked through a few icon comms, and found these pretties:


- - -

waeful | efficio | aftanith | nrgburst

Re: FIYSL

[seraphina_snape]

I love the third icon! Makes me want to go and watch an episode of The Nanny right now. I'm practically hearing the theme song in my head as I write this. :D

Re: FIYSL

[fueschgast]

The icons you used for your comments (except thesurvivor one). Argh, they're so pretty that I hate myself. I used to be creative (my best phase was when I made icons for sydney_stills), but now it takes me so much effort to come up with something interesting. DX

Re: FIYSL

[tinny]

Thank you!

I find that icon challenges really spark my muse, because coming up with interesting themes by myself really is difficult.

(except thesurvivor one)
Haha, I made almost exclusively Noah Wyle icons in 2015, so... not all of them are great (or to everyone's taste :)).

Oh, and the yellow "Beauty" icon was made by oxoniensis. It's one of the very few icons I use that I didn't make myself.

Promos

[tinny]

Do you know of any icon communities we don't have listed yet? Share here!

[stargazered]

Not an icon maker, but as someone who frequents DW, I would like to also add that Dreamwidth's filesize limit is 60kb, not like LJ's 40kb, which makes animated gif versions of icons much much easier.

[tinny]

Yes, that is true!

Our first goal now is gathering the iconmakers who want to be active on DW, and then we'll create fun activities together!

We'll definitely be making use of the increased gif size limit!

[seleneheart]

I've been making icons for many years, but I sort of come and go with it. I don't think I've made any since last summer because I've been so busy with school. I guess I'm a seasonal icon-maker.

I recently deleted my LJ, so I'm all in on DW. I'd love to see the amount of icon making activities/challenges/concrit that could be found over there get translated over here.

[tinny]

Hello!

I'd love to see an iconmaker community grow over here, too. But at the same time I don't want to draw any people away from the LJ community, which is still some 200 makers strong and would suffer from losing people to DW.

So I think it's going to be a balancing act - until LJ goes away for good, which is just a matter of time, I think. I hope that we'll have built a foundation here by then, to attract iconmakers here.

The current status on DW is, sadly, dismal. Two iconmaking communities (and one of them is a copy of an LJ comm). That's ... nothing. So we'll just start small here.

Iconmaking is still a fun hobby and everyone likes and needs icons, so it should come naturally. *g*

My current plan is to start some challenges/battles here in this comm, as people seem to be favoring that idea in the poll. And then we'll see where we go from here.

We definitely need more promotion of this comm.

[makamu]

Fancy meeting you here *g*

It looks like I will be the community's resident newbie for a while. Moving to DW has given me this huge impulse to start to learn new fando-related skills when I have the time and this is the second step...(posting a meta challenge to myself for next month was the first)

[seleneheart]

I'm all in favor of learning new skills (keep learning until I die is the plan) - let me know if you want any tips or etc.

[makamu]

Yes, that's my plan as well :) And thank you! I might just takes you up o it soonish :)

[timetobegin]

I'm on DW and LJ (Holtzmann, i recognize you so maybe you recognise me :)) so i'm happy to have DW comms!

[tinny]

Hello! Yes, I recognize your LJ name!

I am active on LJ, too, but I don't want to take away people from the LJ communities by drawing them here.

From the poll, it looks like people want to see what's going on over at the LJ comms, so I'm going to post those lists here. So everyone who wants to join comms on LJ can do that, too.

I will make some battles here for the people who are exclusively on DW, because there's really *nothing* at all on DW so far.

It's a balancing act, to provide some activity here without draining the LJ iconmaker community. Let's see if we can manage! :D

[timetobegin]

It's definitely a balancing act! There are definitely a few people exclusively here, and i don't have as much time for icons anymore so i like the slightly quieter nature of DW, while having the LJ comms as well :) Look forward to the battles!

[makamu]

Hello! I came over in response to your kind invitation on teyla's journal. As I said there, I am complete newbie to both icon-making *and* image manipulation, so I am a complete newbie you can train from the ground up...Oh joy, I know :)

I have already downloaded GIMP and want to get cracking. But the learning curve seems rather steep at the moment, and I don't have much time as yet (RL reasons), so I'd be happy for any and all advice on how to get started

[tinny]

Hello! No worries, the community is small. That means I can go into details with everyone. <3

Also, according to the poll, you're not the only "complete newbie", so yay! :D

I personally don't use GIMP. But I tried looking up some GIMP tutorials on LJ for you.

The first and most important thing is to create a 100x100 version of your image without screwing up the aspect ratio.

Here are two good descriptions on how to do that:

http://gimp-users.livejournal.com/365497.html?thread=1772985#t1772985

http://icon-tutorial.livejournal.com/11304221.html#comments

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any with pictures. :/ I hope you can follow those so you have a good icon base to start from. Aspect ratio is key.


Here's a tutorial that shows results from several steps and has hints on where to find some tools in gimp:

http://icon-tutorial.livejournal.com/11017182.html#cutid1



Here's the whole list of GIMP tutorials, if you want to browse:

http://icon-tutorial.livejournal.com/tag/program%3A%20gimp



Let me know if these were too basic/too advanced, and if I can help you out in any other way.

[makamu]

I have done all the reading you suggested (thanks - some of it was too advanced, but I experimented a bit and figured it out), but I still have two questions:

1) I am currently working with a modelling shot an actor I like did as my base. The posts on aspect ratio you linked (oh Gods - me and maths! The trauma! *g*) all assume that screencaps are your source material, so what do I need to watch out for when I am using stills?

2) I also used another source - a screencap, for which I figured out the right ratio with my trusty calculator :). I cropped it using the neat fixed aspect ratio feature and it still seems too long. REctangular, rather than square. What did I do wrong?

Thanks again for creating this community and being an awesome mod and teacher :)

[tinny]

You're welcome, I'm glad I could help.

Thanks for asking again, this way I can better tell what details to go into. I was guessing a lot before. *g*

1) No, you don't have to do anything different with caps than with other images. You always assume that the images you start with have correct aspect ratio, so there's no difference. (There's often a difference in lighting, since caps are always too dark, whereas photo shots are always well lit, but that's another topic. ;))

2) One point that I didn't seem to have been very clear on is that you shouldn't have to calculate any aspect ratios yourself (sorry for giving you Math trauma. ;)). We always assume that the aspect ratio in the pictures we use is already correct, so all we have to do is not break it.

Here's an official gimp help page that funnily seems to do exactly what we need: https://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tutorial-quickie-crop.html

Why didn't I find that page before? :)

The aspect ratio of an icon is 1:1 (width and height are the same: both 100).

If you just resize any image to 100x100 (without cropping it to a square first), and the width and height of the original image were not the same, it will look ugly. It will squish people's faces, making them either too thin or too wide. That is what we want to avoid. At all costs. :D

So you have to make sure that when you crop an image, you set the aspect ratio of the crop to 1:1. You can also use 100:100, doesn't matter, just the two numbers have to be the same. And 1:1 is fastest to type. This way you get a perfectly square selection.

Then you can crop and you have a square image. The size will still be wrong, but it will be square.

That way, when you scale it down to 100x100, the aspect ratio of your original image will be preserved. Done!

Does this make sense (and work without giving you a headache :))?