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

[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 :))?