icontalking | Activity #50

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May was a bit low on traffic this year, let's make it up in June with this year's Ask The Maker! Sign up, everyone, and let's have at it!

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.

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).

I am looking forward to interesting questions and discussions!

Please promote this activity!

You can use this code here:

The more participants the merrier! I will promote it at an official promo comm.

Here are the rules:

1) Maker-Driven

Rules for makers who want to sign up

Sign up by commenting to the Maker thread.

Please don't sign up if you know that you can't or do not plan to fulfill the requests you get within a month (until the end of July).

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:

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. I will make the activity result post mid-July. Even if you take longer than that, please try and answer your questions. 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, I and the person requesting will be able to see them and I can add them to the activity result post at the end of the month.

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 or are not on DW or because your question is more of the general kind), 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 postimages.com or your dw account) 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 - Text and typography in gimp by

cool_spectrum
#2 - A guide to picking textures (from our 2019 round) by

seraphina_snape

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.

Trippy Tutorial by

tinebrella
Tutorial (from last year) by

abyss_valkyrie
Tutorial by

tinyumbrella

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

Maker thread

Questions thread

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Makers, please sign up here

Username + where you post your work:

geckoholic @

bl00dredskies
What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.) I usually have a ton of layers and play around a bunch, so I don't think step-by-step tutorials for any one icon would be all that helpful. But for Q&A or guides, ask away!
Can we hotlink your icons?: Yep.

Edited 2021-06-04 19:40 (UTC)

Oooh I am so happy you signed up! I am going to ask about your glowy style this year! It's been fascinating me for so long and it looks so gorgeous!

If you say that any one icon tutorial won't be useful... is it okay if I just ask "how do you get them to look so bright and vibrant and glowy"?

Like in these examples, maybe?

Sure thing, will do!

I am fascinated by the vivid colouring, so your pearls of wisdom about:

(or just one of them, if that's too much)

Username + where you post your work: my personal dw journal:

tinny (the art-icons tag)
What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.) anything you like. Tutorials for any of my (more recent) icons, guides, questions. I'll do my best.
Can we hotlink your icons?: yes.

I have two questions for youuuuuu actually.

First one, you have this thing you do with your icons where they're both colorful and muted and it's very pretty. Like these two:

And then there's this thing you do with enhanced background colors, like with the one I'm using on this comment and this one:

PLEASE EXPLAIN. XD

Edited 2021-06-04 20:19 (UTC)

Thank you for your questions! <3

I'll answer the second one first, because I already posted a guide on making the background one color in 2016:

https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/285319.html (Technique 2: Solid Color Times 3)

In this Detective L example, I just later painted the lamps yellow/orange to make them stand out again. But usually, I leave everything one color, and the guide covers that.

I am honestly not quite sure about how to answer the first one. I think I've written a guide on that before, as well, but it's not exactly that.

https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/480352.html (matte coloring guide from 2017)

I haven't really changed my style much since then, so those should still be the way I do it. But I think I could give some more examples on getting that muted skin tone in particular. The first example you gave was very simple and already had that effect from the get-go, so I didn't do anything. :) The second one is closer to what I usually do. I think I'll write up something about that, and maybe some others for comparison? Sounds doable.

Okay, so I wrote a short tutorial on each of those icons in the first row and a third one I chose.

Most of the techniques are mentioned in my 2017 matte coloring as well, so there is a lot of overlap. I still hope this new tutorial brings some new information.

Enjoy!

https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/651350.html

aurora_amethyst @

1wonderment/

1wonderment and at my personal journal
What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.) Tutorials, Q&A, guides, psds (I usually offer the psd with the tutorial).
--->(If you know of anything that you're not able to answer/do, please mention it)<---
I guess just be aware that I use Photoshop, so not all tutorials will be translateable. I have some knowledge of GIMP, so I might be able to answer some questions about GIMP.
Can we hotlink your icons?: That's fine.

fuesch
What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.) anything
Can we hotlink your icons?: sure

Username:

agirlahaunt @

dearterror

What can we request from you? I can give out psds for specific icons (if I have them saved) or general tutorials, guides, tips, etc.

Can we hotlink your icons? I upload all my icons with a third-party host (usually Imgur) so sure! I'm pretty sure it's not hotlinking if you use the imgur link.

Activity #50 - Ask The Maker

Maker Thread

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