Icon Progression 2023 - Sheliak
Jan. 13th, 2024 04:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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icontalking| ★ J a n u a r y ★ |
     In January I mostly did requests for rachelmanija. I'm proudest of the Wooly Accomplice. It was hard finding a sufficiently disreputable sheep image, and I like how wooly the text came out! Wooly Accomplice Biggles Hang gliding I also posted catchup for previous years: Catchup: Glorantha Catchup: Tigress Queen Catchup: Dani Moonstar |
| ★ F e b r u a r y ★ |
     This was a miscellaneous sort of month. Hummingbirds, a flashback scene from Girl Genius, book covers, random photos, dollmaker images, fandoms I'm not in... The icons that took the most work are #3 to #5. #4 was an amalgamation of dollmaker images. #5 was another of my squares-for-the-round experiments, though I'm not sure how successful it was; I'm happier with #3. I no longer remember if I managed to use text-to-path (a tool I struggle with), or if I just rotated letters to get the circle effect—the latter seems more plausible to me, though. Girl Genius, hummingbirds, book covers, misc Medieval genitalia broaches (NSFW for most W) Misc Snowpocalypse |
| ★ M a r c h ★ |
   And again, a grab bag month! A ton of variations on one image of Ernalda from Glorantha, some illustrations from the non-fantasy books L. Frank Baum wrote under a pen name, movie posters (two different scans of the same one), artifacts. The tigers were an attempt to make an icon based on a funny quote from a Twilight Zone producer—I'm not entirely satisfied with how the text turned out, but it's the most ambitious thing I did this month. (Also, I believe, the last time I did text this year.) Misc |
| ★ A p r i l ★ |
   Again, another small grab bag. Nothing too ambitious, but I was still trying to make these work in the round. (The owl is Flaco, an eagle-owl who escaped from Central Park Zoo last February and is still at large.) Misc |
| ★ M a y ★ |
   It was the last day of the month, I wasn't feeling well, Flight Rising dragon scries were the easiest thing I could think of. No background because I like how the transparencies look and also, I was being lazy. Flight Rising |
| ★ J u n e ★ |
   You may notice a certain aura of declining energy so far, and it continues. This was a super busy month IRL, and I only managed three (3) icons. The middle icon (from a Mediæval Bæbes album cover) was the most complicated to do—I used layers to keep the border frame clean. Misc |
| ★ J u l y ★ |
   Did some icons for a darkfic comm never actually opened. #3 was hard—the original image wasn't wide enough to get the crop I wanted, so I had to finangle the background and it took quite a few tries before it looked good. Anyway, I like some of these, even if they never got to live in their intended habitat. ... I am a bit embarrassed to realize that one of them wasn't actually 100x100, though. Darkness! |
| ★ A u g u s t ★ |
   Six Ages 2 finally came out so I could icon it properly! Most of these were made pretty quickly, although that doesn't mean I'm not proud of them. Balurga (central icon) was the only one where I did much more than crop—the original image has ominous designs on that mound in the background, and I tried to preserve them with color manipulation to bring out the reds. Six Ages 2 |
| ★ S e p t e m b e r ★ |
   icontalking had a Beards challenge, and I thought of the Lhankor Mhy cult of Glorantha. Worshippers of Lhankor Mhy, god of wisdom, are obligated to wear beards—but artificial beards are acceptable. Hence, this collection of learned women in handmade beards.Originally meant to do some tabletop icons as well (these are all Six Ages 2) but the month was busy and I didn't get around to it. Bearded female sages |
| ★ O c t o b e r ★ |
  In October... I basically crashed. Also, I played a regrettable amount of Cookie Clicker. Hence, these two icons. I should really have resized the cat down further—I think the original image was, like, 102 or 104 pixels, and shrinking it just enough to get a black border was a mistake, because it made the image as a whole fuzzier than it had to be. Those two Cookie Clicker icons |
| ★ N o v e m b e r ★ |
No icons. :( This was my first time missing a month since I started, and I'm sad about it. But I'd several times before then only managed to do something on the last day of the month, and in November my job kind of ate me, so it's not really surprising. |
| ★ D e c e m b e r ★ |
     I was determined that December would not be a repeat of November! So I made myself some non-shareable Six Ages icons very early. (Still very happy with those.) The yellow one, I layered a bunch of textures for the background; the others used a border I'd worked on in the past, but with a slightly improved process. (The earlier version of the background isn't well centered—I shrunk the image down before merging the layers, and so the circle and pattern wound out of sync. This time I merged layers first, then resized, and that worked a lot better.) Then I went through some of my to-icon-later folders and picked a few of the more manageable ones. (There's a lot of really pretty art in SCP! And the Unicorns of Balinor original covers are gorgeous.) I ended the year on a high note, iconwise. Personal icons SCP Foundation Unicorns of Balinor One cat |
| ★ 2 0 2 3 ★ |
         This year was a patchy one for me. For months at a time I didn't have much time or energy for icons, and when I did, I didn't tend to do anything very complicated, or try new techniques. I only did text (something I find challenging) in the first three months of the year. Just making things at all was a victory—and I missed my first month since I started iconning. That sounds really negative. It wasn't all bad this year! I had fun during my bursts of energy, especially with the Six Ages and SCP icons. And I made a bunch of icons I really do like. I had fun during my relatively brief bursts of energy, especially with the Six Ages and SCP icons. (Speaking of, if you're reading this before the 21st or so, I do have a best of icons nomination thread...) |
| ★ R e s o l u t i o n s ★ |
I always make the same resolution: icon every month. I failed last year, but usually do manage. Beyond that... hmm. Icon some of my other icon-someday folders of scans? That seems good. I'll do that. I'd also like to get back into challenges—I say that a lot, but they really are fun! And I'd like to make more icons for people—I like the range of topics I get to work with when other people give me suggestions. Previous years: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022 |
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Date: 2024-01-15 03:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-05-12 02:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-18 03:17 pm (UTC)It's always annoying when work and other "important" stuff eats up your energy. I'm glad to see that you had fun making icons regardless!
I'm very happy to have you around! To a good year 2024!
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Date: 2024-05-12 02:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-05-10 01:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-05-12 02:01 am (UTC)