Progression Post 2021 — Sheliak

[sheliak]

★ J a n u a r y ★

In January, I made some more style testing icons (meant to go on my graphics account to see which Dreamwidth styles can handle weird sized/shaped icons and which can't). A few are actually pretty as icons, but most are meant to break stuff. Then I finished some Six Ages icons—I'd been trying to make icons of the advisor portraits, which is awkward because they're rectangles and cutting them down to squares often eats the shoulders and looks awkward. So I tried circles instead! In many cases this worked better. I also posted some very old X-Men icons I had lying around, and made a few more random icons. Style testing icons X-Men icons (old; from 2019) Misc Six Ages advisors in the round

★ F e b r u a r y ★

I branched out from Six Ages to make icons from its parent canon, the tabletop RPG setting Glorantha—I made a batch of icons using runes from the official website. Gloranthan Runes

★ M a r c h ★

In March I returned to my cut-paper technique and made a bunch of suns, just to practice. I also made some of them partly transparent—I like transparencies; I think they let me push the boundaries of the format a little. And I think some of these icons turned out nicely! Cut Paper (Texture) Suns

★ A p r i l ★

This month I did another small batch—Six Ages "heroes", with associated magical runes. (You may notice a theme building.) In my ongoing attempt to deal with "turn a rectangle into a square" problem I have with these source images, I decided to let the runes float outside the "box." I think the result was interesting, at least? For those characters with set names, I also included their names, in the font the game uses to label portraits. (I initially didn't post that first icon with the rest, for reasons. But it was actually the first of the batch.) Six Ages Heroes With Runes

★ M a y ★

I was extremely busy in May, and made one icon because it was important to me to post something. It's another cut-paper practice piece. One post, one icon

★ J u n e ★

In June, a friend asked for icons referencing a confusing plot point in a book she was reading, which meant I got to practice text again. Mom or Marmoset

★ J u l y ★

Another of those sad one-icon months! I like this one, but it was very low effort. Somewhat pointless link

★ A u g u s t ★

August was not a month of many icons either. I kept on messing with my Six Ages runes and portraits, and did a bit of random poking around too. Six Ages practice Random

★ S e p t e m b e r ★

In September, I made a small post probably of interest only to myself (more Six Ages, this time several attempts to make the player clan's tamga symbol work as an icon). Then I tried, as an experiment, making square icons that are meant to display well in the round. I ended up with two small posts of this. (Basically, the vast majority of Dreamwidth styles assume solid square icons, and several of them display other shapes and size oddly. However, square icons can often look odd themselves in the few styles that show icons as circles—parts of the composition can be cut off.) I used a frame mask layer to make sure the images looked good when reduced to an 100-pixel-diameter circle. The "part 1" post below includes a composite image of all the icons with that layer included, to show more or less how they'd display in the round. I'm really happy with how several of these icons turned out! Tamgas Squares for the Round, part 1 Squares for the Round, part 2

★ O c t o b e r ★

My first icon batch in October was attempt to finish an old, old batch of icons I'd had sitting on my computer desktop for years—New Mutants characters (original run), with their full and codenames (usually), on background textures divided into geometric sections. It was my first attempt at making a themed set like this, and I'm really pleased with the results! ... although I decided I wasn't quite satisfied with my Sunspot icons; they were nice, but I'd been trying to give each character an icon using a particular red/yellow/black texture set, and he didn't have any. So I made some more. Then I returned to the Six Ages tamga, again—this time, the opening screen of the game, which shows the player clan (with tamga banner!) during their migration. New Mutants Sunspot Tamgas

★ N o v e m b e r ★

In November I made three posts. In the first, I once more wrestled with the Six Ages tamga. In the second, I made a joke at the expense of an infamously silly plot twist. And lastly, I made icons from the Wheel of Time TV series promo posters. Some of those turned out very nice! ... I also had the dubious experience of making an icon with unpublished spoilery images, which I cannot share because spoilers. It's another of my Six Ages runic ones; I'm not sure those have an audience besides myself. (But it's a very devoted audience of one!) Tamga and runes Attack of the canonical vampire yeti! Wheel of Time

★ D e c e m b e r ★

December was an odd, odd month iconwise. I made a bunch of icons for the webcomic Tigress Queen, but that post was nowhere near done by the end of the month; I made a couple Star Wars icons, but I didn't want this to be a two-icons-one-post month. I actually spent most of my effort on another spoilery project. (Well, spoilers arguable. But I wasn't sure about posting it.) But I wanted to post something! So I searched my folders and found two small image batches and made a quick post. Victor Ambrus art + T. Kingfisher covers

★ 2 0 2 1 ★

Honestly, I started this post a bit depressed because I didn't do that much iconning this year (and like I said, some of my favorite stuff I don't feel comfortable sharing at this point). But as I went on through it, I ended up a lot more satisfied. I may not have done a huge amount, but some of it was good! I kept working on both text (which has pretty consistently been my Thing To Work On) and non-square shapes. In the latter area, I did end up with quite a few icons that I think are pretty but dubiously useful—some of the transparent ones are going to display oddly on most styles. I keep chasing that idea, though. (That last "icon" is actually the frame/base for the unfinished/spoilery project of mine. I'm including it mainly as proof that I finally, finally got a satisfactory-to-me result with the Six Ages tamga! Although now I look at it, there's at least one thing I'd like to do better. Ah, well, work still in progress...) And hey–the Wheel of Time icons are technically live action! Hah. ("Technically" because pretty much all the hard work was done for me by the poster-makers. Still!)

★ R e s o l u t i o n s ★

This year, I'd like to make more icons. Like I said earlier, seeing how little I did this year made me sad, and I'd like to be happier with my output next year! Aside from that... I haven't done a challenge in a while; I kind of miss that. And of course I'll keep working with text, and I expect I'll also keep working with weird shapes. Previous years: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020