Activity #03 - Ask The Maker

[tinny]

It's time for our next activity!

This time, it's not an icon challenge, it's Ask The Maker!

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.

This time, 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).

Ask The Maker is one of the most popular yearly activites for iconmakers on LJ and it always takes place in June. Who knows, maybe it'll turn into a tradition here on DW, too?

The results of the poll we did here this month were tied on doing it maker-driven or question-driven, so there's going to be both! :D I've taken the rules for the maker-driven part directly from the original comm icon_talk. I hope they are working for everyone. The second part is all new, let's see how it goes!

1) Maker-Driven


Rules for makers who want to sign up

Sign up by commenting to the Maker thread.

Please do NOT 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> (.PSDs are not allowed) --->(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. My current plan is to make the master list post on July 29th. If you can't do it until then, I can't guarantee that you'll be added to the master list. But please try and answer your questions, even if it takes you longer than that. 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, me and the person requesting will be able to see them and I can add them to the master list. If you do not post the links in your thread here, I will not see them and they will not be added to the tutorial 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), 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 upl.co) 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 - Background Coloring Guide by hyacinthos
#2 - Text Guide by naginis

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.

Example Tutorial #1 by kitamikeita
Example Tutorial #2 by aeriiths

Q&A - everything that doesn't quite fit the first two categories. Ask away, hope for the best. :)


Maker thread

Questions thread

Comments

Question thread

[tinny]

If you have questions not directed at a specific maker:

Please Ask Here

Re: Question thread

[fueschgast]

1. I've realized that the reason I get uncreative is because lately I've started my icons with the caps instead of resources. And then I can't find any resources that fit with the things in the cap that I want to showcase. Do you know a way reliable way get unstuck from the cap and use it in a more creative way?

2. What's a good way to sort your resources? I have them sorted by maker and want to keep it that way, but I also want to sort them by type (and some contain more than one), so it'll be easier to find them when I'm, looking for something specific. Is there a way to assign something like tags to Windows folders? And I don't even know what to call some of these styles!

Re: Question thread

[tinny]

2)

You can tag files (but not folders, afaik).

This is a very detailed explanation with pictures (and a link to a previous article about how to search by tags) :

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/tag-your-files-for-easier-searches-in-windows-7/

To tag many files at once, you'll have to use special tools (I don't have any immediate recs for that, though). I take it all back, you can simply select several files at once and add a tag to all of them at the same time. Yay.


I personally went the opposite direction and made folders named by style. This is my list of folders:

animated
bitmap
blur
border
clipart_n_dots
clouds
color_light
color_soft
color_textures
fancy
grunge
light
light_spots
line_grunge
lines_n_squares
misc
noise
paint
paper_grunge
pencil
photo
scribbles
soft_grunge
splatter
text

Inside the folders, I added the maker name to the beginning of each filename. This way, I always still know who made what, but they are grouped by style. I have no idea whether I've named these styles accurately or not, but as long as I know what they stand for... :D


Here's a screenshot from my paint folder (click for full size):

Re: Question thread

[fueschgast]

Ah, thanks!

Now I'm curious: What are animated resources?

Re: Question thread

[tinny]

They're gifs, you can use them to make animated icons.

I got my latest set from here, by poisonfield

The only icon I have made from that set so far is this one:

Re: Question thread

[fueschgast]

I had no idea it's possible to open gifs in PS and get all the frames!

Re: Question thread

[tinny]

It is! It's very annoying that the first thing PS does when you open a gif is warn you that you'll lose the frames. :(

I think it's different in different versions of PS, but with mine (CS4) you have to use "Import/Video Frames to Layers" with gifs (just like with video files) to get all the frames.

Re: Question thread

[fueschgast]

Aha! I still have the original CS. I had tried out a newer version once, but it was so different, I couldn't deal with it.

Re: Question thread

[sallymn]

1. I usually do start either with the base picture or (loweringly often) with a line of text I wasn't to use and need to think of an excuse to do so... I have folders full of cropped 100x100 pics ready for inspiration to strike :(

If I feel the need to push, I try opening it and doing something fairly random - throw on a texture or brush that might but might not work, change the colouring to another palate, go back to the original and try cropping a different way or rotating it. This one, for instance, I tried four different colour schemes before this one clicked for me...

Re: Question thread

[goodbyebird]

1. I never directly crop my caps, I always copy&paste onto a different canvas, and I always paste twice so I can go back to the unedited cap whenever I want. That way, you have a lot of freedom when it comes to moving the image around/rotating/resizing. I've stumbled across a lot of fetching crops that way.

Secondly, try pasting on random textures, set the opacity to 50%, and then scroll through the blend mode.

Also, I find using other parts of the cap as texture works sometimes when I'm stuck.

Re: Question thread

[lavenderspark]

How to use textures? Like in ways other than just as a background. I don't have an icon to use for reference, but I know they're used in all sorts of ways. I just can only ever think of backgrounds.

Guides/tutorials would be extra helpful! I use PaintShop, but it really doesn't matter, I can figure it out from other programs. Thanks!

Re: Question thread

[tinny]

I found this loooooong tutorial on how to do lots of different things:

http://aintafairytale.livejournal.com/36137.html

It's not exactly what you're asking for, I think, so I'll keep looking. But I like it, so I'm giving it to you here anyway. :)

Re: Question thread

[sheliak]

I've used them to add color to a black-and-white image, usually a pen-and-ink drawing.

I've got some examples, but I'm afraid I don't have the textures on hand to link to, so they might not be the clearest. My strategies so far have involved having the base icon as one layer and the texture as another; there are a couple of things that I've tried.

Just adjusting the transparencies:
->
In this case, I picked a green that shaded from blue-green to yellowish, and oriented it so that the mermaid's hair was over the yellowish part.

The other thing I've tried is erasing selected areas of of a PNG image and layering it on top of the texture, so that the texture shows through the "cutout". Here's an example where I used two textures:
->
I used one of them for the circle, then a small patch from another for the flower in her hair, to make it stand out better.

And I've tried combining the effects a couple times, like so:

In both of those icons, I started by making a cutout, then fiddled with the transparencies a bit. I used one texture each for those.

Re: Question thread

[tinny]

I love these examples! The idea with the texturized color background works really well with lineart. Awesome!

Re: Question thread

[goodbyebird]

Soft light/screen/multiply/overlay are all great blend modes that can really boost your coloring in various interesting ways. Try popping a texture on and scrolling through the blend modes :)