you got me beggin' you for mercy.
May. 11th, 2008 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enamouredThis is kind of an old meme, as it was started months ago with people who do icons here on LJ. The idea was to chronologically post your icon-making progress, and I had started on part of it, saved it as a Notepad file, and then forgot about it until I cleaned out a folder on my hard drive and thought, "Hey, this looks kind of neat." So I went back through my old icon stuff and found the images, and that took... two hours.
And here is a post that chronologically charts my icon-making progress. I doubt this will break your connection or anything, but just proceed with caution, 'kay?
March 2005-early May 2005
Okay, those first few are hideous (especially that first one, which was, at the time I made it, my favorite ever and God almighty, it is ugly). Seriously. But I think I had the right idea with a few of them, like the John Mayer one and the one with Andy Roddick (actually, looking back at that set, I think that for a beginner, some of those were pretty good, but the text on 'em sucked), but the execution was horrible. I can't believe I wrote a tutorial on that 10 Things one, because it is a hot mess (and way too yellow). In my early icon days, I used to up the contrast to horrid levels because I thought it was pretty. Oh, why didn't people tell me to not do that?
mid May 2005-mid July 2005
I made a batch of texty icons, and they became a hit. I was still not into using any font colors besides black and white for some reason. At the time, lots of icons had borders, be they thin 1 pixel ones (like around the Ewan one) or thick white ones (like around the Moulin Rouge one). I won for best humor icon at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
lost_awards for that first one, because it was around the time of the first season finale and everyone found it hilarious. There was a brief time in icon-making when people used tiny text beneath larger text, and I was trying to do that with the Rachel one on the second row (I made a lot of Rachel Bilson icons around that time and I do not know why, but randomly, the one of her on the first row is still very pretty to me now), but I didn't exactly... get it across very well. Sometime around then, I got accepted into takenote_icons, which makes me cringe a little because this stuff =/= my best work. But hey, it was a different time, and I thought I was awesome and apparently someone else did too.
late July 2005-September 2005
Oh, wow, that's a lot of text icons right there. Also, note the trends in the first one: border brushes AND light textures! Kill me now. I still kind of like light textures, but I use them a lot less now than I did back in the day, when like, pretty much every icon had a light texture on it. Oh, and remember when using picture in a picture for icons was popular? (See #2) I still was using a lot of black and white text through I was slowly breaking that habit near the end of this "era". Those OTP icons and the "do not disturb me when I'm watching [insert TV show here]" icons got a lot of comments. I like the look of the Nicole Kidman/Robbie Williams icon set (#9), but I could've found a way to match the colors up better with the actual pictures used and then made them look a lot cuter. Seriously. The last one is still one of my favorites, because the color is vibrant and pops, but it isn't overwhelming and radioactive looking. Yay! Also: that one of Rachel McAdams still looks good to me. AND! Note that the text is not just black and white. Progress!
October 2005-mid January 2006
Finally, colored text! And ahh, those dashed brushes. I loved those things, man. Fandom-wise, I did quite a few Degrassi and Lost icons at this time (more Lost than anything, though, because quality Degrassi pictures and caps were rare). Cooper Black was becoming a somewhat popular font to use, and I loved it but tried not to use it a whole lot (see: the Kate one with the "k" initial; the last text one). I focused a lot more on color at that point--I used lots of gradient layers and textures to get pretty/creative colors (like in #12) or to get a nice, "natural and crisp" look (like in #10). I was trying to get better at using text, and I still like some of the ways I used it (like in #10, I like how "asking you" is on Shannon's shoulder). The text icons were still kind of popular, with their words coming from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cleolinda's recaps of S1 of Lost.
Thing to note: I still have the "cheer up, emo kid" icon and the "Sawyerland" icon in rotation at this journal, because they are awesome.
February 2006-mid June 2006
I used Cataclysmic (the font seen in 6, 10, and for "enchanted" in 15) a lot. And Alpha Mack (in 2 and 3) as well. My text started to get better all over--placement wise (I like the split in the second one) and highlighting wise (how I used different colors in 15). I think I used the curves feature for the first time in that second one. I experimented with different cropping (like in 2, 9, 13, and 14), but I think color was a bit hit and miss, because I would get something kind of neat like in 4 or 10, and then I'd end up with something kind of blah, like 5. #6 was part of probably my most popular set of icons, which had just plain text with sayings from t-shirts on them. It was weird to not completely texture/brush up text icons for me before that, so I was surprised that they were as popular as they were. They looked plain to me.
late June 2006-October 2006
I kind of started to experiment a little bit more at this time. I think for the first time I started to kind of see textures not only as a way to add color to icons, but also as a way to add accents like brushes do. I took that idea and applied it to 2 and 3 and I liked the result. I like a lot of the colors in the icons from this time because they were varied--be they kind of dirty/grungy/pretty like in the second one, plain looking even though they required a few color burn and curves layers in 4, a little bit washed out, like in 9, or semi-monochromatic in 10. I started to use a wider variety of fonts, but I became hooked on Trash Hand (and that addiction still hasn't quite gone away; I have a thing for very readable handwriting fonts, if you haven't figured that out yet). And after I did the set with Jensen Ackles and Jason Schwartzman, I didn't make icons for a couple of months.
January 2007-September 2007
I did not post a lot of icons last year, as it was v. busy for me. But I feel like the ones that I did make were quite good. Looking back, some of the ones I was amazingly proud of look kind of spotty, but I feel like I took more time on them and made a conscious effort to make them look good instead of just cranking out something that, at the moment, seemed perfect. The Moulin Rouge ones I did were partly to atone for the ones I'd done two years before, and I still love quite a few of them. I like the dirty/messy/grungy look of the Clone High ones, and the text on the ones from that set that did have text on them is really neat. The Michael Phelps set is, to me, one of my best, because I feel like I experimented a lot with those--there's only nine icons, but I tried something different with each one, and I liked the results (I got either interesting coloring, like in the one on the first row, or something a bit more complicated, like the one in the second row). The Mean Girls set was hit-and-miss, but the "boo you whore" one is a favorite to me because I used two pictures and it didn't look horrible (and sometimes, my icons with two pictures look good when I make 'em, but afterwords I look at them and go "Lordy, what was that?"). The Orlando set also had some gems. Overall, the ones here are more of an example of me using textures as accents, with probably the best examples being in 8 and 10.
October 2007-present
And this brings us to the more recent ones. There's more variety, slightly more interesting cropping, and I've tried to overcome this thing I have about not having my subjects 100% clear and in view (see #3 and #8). Oddly enough, pretty much everything on the bottom row was done for some kind of icon challenge or another. I feel like those make me try something different.
That was fun. [collapses]
And here is a post that chronologically charts my icon-making progress. I doubt this will break your connection or anything, but just proceed with caution, 'kay?
March 2005-early May 2005
Okay, those first few are hideous (especially that first one, which was, at the time I made it, my favorite ever and God almighty, it is ugly). Seriously. But I think I had the right idea with a few of them, like the John Mayer one and the one with Andy Roddick (actually, looking back at that set, I think that for a beginner, some of those were pretty good, but the text on 'em sucked), but the execution was horrible. I can't believe I wrote a tutorial on that 10 Things one, because it is a hot mess (and way too yellow). In my early icon days, I used to up the contrast to horrid levels because I thought it was pretty. Oh, why didn't people tell me to not do that?
mid May 2005-mid July 2005
I made a batch of texty icons, and they became a hit. I was still not into using any font colors besides black and white for some reason. At the time, lots of icons had borders, be they thin 1 pixel ones (like around the Ewan one) or thick white ones (like around the Moulin Rouge one). I won for best humor icon at
lost_awards for that first one, because it was around the time of the first season finale and everyone found it hilarious. There was a brief time in icon-making when people used tiny text beneath larger text, and I was trying to do that with the Rachel one on the second row (I made a lot of Rachel Bilson icons around that time and I do not know why, but randomly, the one of her on the first row is still very pretty to me now), but I didn't exactly... get it across very well. Sometime around then, I got accepted into takenote_icons, which makes me cringe a little because this stuff =/= my best work. But hey, it was a different time, and I thought I was awesome and apparently someone else did too.late July 2005-September 2005
Oh, wow, that's a lot of text icons right there. Also, note the trends in the first one: border brushes AND light textures! Kill me now. I still kind of like light textures, but I use them a lot less now than I did back in the day, when like, pretty much every icon had a light texture on it. Oh, and remember when using picture in a picture for icons was popular? (See #2) I still was using a lot of black and white text through I was slowly breaking that habit near the end of this "era". Those OTP icons and the "do not disturb me when I'm watching [insert TV show here]" icons got a lot of comments. I like the look of the Nicole Kidman/Robbie Williams icon set (#9), but I could've found a way to match the colors up better with the actual pictures used and then made them look a lot cuter. Seriously. The last one is still one of my favorites, because the color is vibrant and pops, but it isn't overwhelming and radioactive looking. Yay! Also: that one of Rachel McAdams still looks good to me. AND! Note that the text is not just black and white. Progress!
October 2005-mid January 2006
Finally, colored text! And ahh, those dashed brushes. I loved those things, man. Fandom-wise, I did quite a few Degrassi and Lost icons at this time (more Lost than anything, though, because quality Degrassi pictures and caps were rare). Cooper Black was becoming a somewhat popular font to use, and I loved it but tried not to use it a whole lot (see: the Kate one with the "k" initial; the last text one). I focused a lot more on color at that point--I used lots of gradient layers and textures to get pretty/creative colors (like in #12) or to get a nice, "natural and crisp" look (like in #10). I was trying to get better at using text, and I still like some of the ways I used it (like in #10, I like how "asking you" is on Shannon's shoulder). The text icons were still kind of popular, with their words coming from
cleolinda's recaps of S1 of Lost.Thing to note: I still have the "cheer up, emo kid" icon and the "Sawyerland" icon in rotation at this journal, because they are awesome.
February 2006-mid June 2006
I used Cataclysmic (the font seen in 6, 10, and for "enchanted" in 15) a lot. And Alpha Mack (in 2 and 3) as well. My text started to get better all over--placement wise (I like the split in the second one) and highlighting wise (how I used different colors in 15). I think I used the curves feature for the first time in that second one. I experimented with different cropping (like in 2, 9, 13, and 14), but I think color was a bit hit and miss, because I would get something kind of neat like in 4 or 10, and then I'd end up with something kind of blah, like 5. #6 was part of probably my most popular set of icons, which had just plain text with sayings from t-shirts on them. It was weird to not completely texture/brush up text icons for me before that, so I was surprised that they were as popular as they were. They looked plain to me.
late June 2006-October 2006
I kind of started to experiment a little bit more at this time. I think for the first time I started to kind of see textures not only as a way to add color to icons, but also as a way to add accents like brushes do. I took that idea and applied it to 2 and 3 and I liked the result. I like a lot of the colors in the icons from this time because they were varied--be they kind of dirty/grungy/pretty like in the second one, plain looking even though they required a few color burn and curves layers in 4, a little bit washed out, like in 9, or semi-monochromatic in 10. I started to use a wider variety of fonts, but I became hooked on Trash Hand (and that addiction still hasn't quite gone away; I have a thing for very readable handwriting fonts, if you haven't figured that out yet). And after I did the set with Jensen Ackles and Jason Schwartzman, I didn't make icons for a couple of months.
January 2007-September 2007
I did not post a lot of icons last year, as it was v. busy for me. But I feel like the ones that I did make were quite good. Looking back, some of the ones I was amazingly proud of look kind of spotty, but I feel like I took more time on them and made a conscious effort to make them look good instead of just cranking out something that, at the moment, seemed perfect. The Moulin Rouge ones I did were partly to atone for the ones I'd done two years before, and I still love quite a few of them. I like the dirty/messy/grungy look of the Clone High ones, and the text on the ones from that set that did have text on them is really neat. The Michael Phelps set is, to me, one of my best, because I feel like I experimented a lot with those--there's only nine icons, but I tried something different with each one, and I liked the results (I got either interesting coloring, like in the one on the first row, or something a bit more complicated, like the one in the second row). The Mean Girls set was hit-and-miss, but the "boo you whore" one is a favorite to me because I used two pictures and it didn't look horrible (and sometimes, my icons with two pictures look good when I make 'em, but afterwords I look at them and go "Lordy, what was that?"). The Orlando set also had some gems. Overall, the ones here are more of an example of me using textures as accents, with probably the best examples being in 8 and 10.
October 2007-present
And this brings us to the more recent ones. There's more variety, slightly more interesting cropping, and I've tried to overcome this thing I have about not having my subjects 100% clear and in view (see #3 and #8). Oddly enough, pretty much everything on the bottom row was done for some kind of icon challenge or another. I feel like those make me try something different.
That was fun. [collapses]
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Date: 2008-05-12 05:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-12 08:00 pm (UTC)