A Collection of Arty Stuffs

Doctor Who Series 8 & Friends

amazingchi — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 16:46:42 GMT

So I have been out of the scene for waaaay too long. I blew away the cobwebs by doing a few, then a weekly challenge and now a 20in20 set. So without further ado, here they all are. I did ten of each high/strong colouring and low/muted colouring.

20inspirations Round 34:

[1-5]
[6-10]
[11-15]
[16-20]

Extras:
[21-25]
[26-30]
[31]

2 Steve Rogers/Captain America Tutorials

amazingchi — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 19:37:00 GMT

These two tutorials were requested by vapor at icon_talk

->

Judging by the fact the first bit I have in my PSD looks like the base has had some work done before I cropped it, I guess I did all the prep on the cap itself. Unfortunately I cannot tell you exactly what I did, but I'm guess it was the triple duplicate - screen / blurred screen / blurred soft light - method I detailed in the Clara tutorial.

Anyway, this is stage one:

The reason I think it was the method I used before is because it comes from roughly the same era of icons and it's a bit blurred! So first step was sharpen.

The type of sharpen is lost, but at the time I was running with 'smart sharpen' a lot so I imagine that's what it was [exact specifics unknown, sorry!], it's also set onto 61% opacity as full 100% was too sharp. Looking at it now, I should have just masked certain parts like the collar's edge, but oh well. Hindsight and new knowledge, eh?

What I've got next is a bit surprising as at that time I usually ran with curves and vibrance first, but what I have is two textures.
and (both from midnight_road)

The first is set to screen on 17% opacity and the second on soft light on 37% opacity.

-> ->

Next is the curves. It's a weird one.
This is all on the RGB graph.

Point 1 - Input: 111, Output: 106
Point 2 - Input: 159, Output: 161
Point 3 - Input: 207, Output: 203.

It's only subtle, but it's a step nonetheless.

And now vibrance (Vibrance +100) set on color layer type.

Then you've got your bog standard black -> transparent gradient set (angle 90, you know, black at the bottom) set on soft light.

Now it's time for one of my most used textures. You know when you find a texture and use it on EVERYTHING. This was that texture a few months ago. I still use it a lot, mind, just finally decided to try other ones out :P.
(also midnight_road)

Set it on screen.

Duplicate the base layer and drag it on top on soft light to get some darkness and contrast back...

Now I've got two identical gradient maps, both #455168 to #f8ead9, the first set on soft light (25% opacity) for a bit more contrast, the second is the big changer, it's set onto color (50% opacity). I'm not sure why I did it, must have been one of those moments. Because the gradient is blue to a pale skin tone type colour, he retains the blueness of the suit better whilst also getting a muted effect. At least, that's my reasoning anyway!

-> ->

And that's that, really!

->

Now, again, I think I did my standard base prep [see Clara tutorial for that] but anyway, I started this particular PSD file like this:

Which again, I immediately sharpened to:

I think I decided that the background was too busy but must have also determined it had some worth because I used it to my advantage by getting out the smudge (and a bit of blur tool, from what I remember), working diagonally until it looked like this.

I then duplicated this, and thank god I hadn't used motion blur since because I just ran it again and the settings that were already on it gave me the same as the layer that already existed! Anyway, angle was 27 degrees on a 28px distance. Set the layer to soft light.

Curves time. Another fiddly one, I'm afraid. It's actually a similar shape to the last one but offset more :P.

Point 1 - Input: 109, Output: 93
Point 2 - Input: 158, Output: 148
Point 3 - Input: 206, Output: 192

A black to white gradient layer, soft lighted, gives this:

And then a Vibrance+100 (set on color again)

Now, I've got another gradient layer, and don't ask why I did this, because I'm not at all sure, but its #e9e9f8 (light pastel blue) to #f9f8e4 (light skin toney yellow) angle 180, set on multiply.

Now, another fun curves layer! Woo!

Point 1 - Input: 124, Output: 134
Point 2 - Input: 184, Output: 190
Point 3 - Input: 243, Output: 254

An transparent to black radial layer set on soft light follows:

Now the fun bit. I took this texture:
(by val_valerie)
duplicated it and flipped it horizontally and set that to lighten, and stamped that. I think at that point I put it on the icon, and proceed to smudge it until it look like this:

Setting that on screen yields this:

Deciding that I didn't like the colour, I added a Hue/Saturation layer to the texture layer only. (Hue -152)

Duplicating the smudged base I set one of those on top on soft light and that was that.

The funny thing was I wanted to tweak it and show you what I'd do now if I did it, and I did save the .png... but I forgot to write down to keep the PSD of the new altered one. It involved using a gradient map at the end instead, I know that much. This was the result, anyway:

Ah well.

I hoped you enjoyed these, and that this was of some worth to someone!

DoctorWho20in20 - Round 35

amazingchi — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 20:17:14 GMT

I'm glad this round was extended but even so I find that I've run out of time to actually work on them. I'm busy for the rest of the week, but I'm semi-happy with at least most of them so oh well!

Themes

accomplished	complex composition	element	faceless	first episode

green	happy	outfit	profile	summer

Category - viewing direction

Category #1	Category #2	Category #3	Category #4	Category #5

Artist's Choice

AC #1	AC #2	AC #3	AC #4	AC #5

20Inspirations - Round 27

amazingchi — Wed, 14 Aug 2013 12:25:50 GMT

So first time at 20inspirations and they give us a texture challenge. Cheers for that. Well, this forced me to spread my wings texture wise. I never really have an idea of what textures I'm going to use before I star an icon, so this was a totally different approach, with varied results...

ICONS

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5

#6	#7	#8	#9	#10

#11	#12	#13	#14	#15

#16	#17	#18	#19	#20

1st Row: Paint
2nd Row: Grunge
3rd Row: Light
4th Row: Decorative

Alts:

Don't worry, Ask The Maker (icon_talk) requester, I am working on your tutorials, I shall get them finished after the next and final 20in20 set I need to do.

Inspired 20in20 - Round 25

amazingchi — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 16:46:47 GMT

Round 25 at inspired20in20 saw the bingo card being unleashed. This was a tougher round, the freedom of choice is almost too much and yet somehow a few of the prompts were so difficult to get an idea for. Not happy with a couple of these, few experimental, some came off... some didn't! :P

ICONS - CARD #2

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5

#6	#7	#8	#9	#10

#11	#12	#13	#14	#15

#16	#17	#18	#19	#20

If you want to request a tutorial, I'm always happy to oblige at icon_talk :)

Avengers & Who

amazingchi — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 23:29:43 GMT

I've only just realised that I haven't put the icons I made as part of The Avengers lims_movie in a post on here. I've also got a bunch of Who icons from the start of a bingo set to share too. I was gonna attach them to one of my 20in20s I've signed up for this month, but they'd feel less tagged on here!

13 Avengers
5 Doctor Who
+2 Alts

1-5

5-9

10-13

14-18

ALTS:

The Cropping Guide

amazingchi — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 01:21:13 GMT

So applepips16 presented me with the challenge of explaining my thoughts when cropping, which was interesting, considering I don't really have any. It's mostly trial and error. Though, there are those screencaps that just scream a certain crop. In the next several paragraph I will attempt to explain the mysteries of my cropping, and to be honest, I'm just as interested to learn as you are at this point. This should be fun!

The focus square thingy:

I've made it 300x300 to illustrate it better. The point of this is... well, I'm not entirely sure really. I remember in Photography Society they mentioned that you should line up focal points on the lines, or even better on the intersections. However, when it comes to icons and using this thing, I find that icons tend to have their focus situation neatly within any of the 3x1 horizontal or vertical sections... but sometimes breaking the 'rules' works just as well, so I don't really know what's going on here. However, the guide looked wrong without it.

Centre:

Ah, the bog standard crop. There's not really much to be said about this except when all else fails it'll always be there to fall back on. Mostly used to let the character sit proudly squarely in the... well, centre. In terms of the diagram thing above, the centre crop utilises the central column. Yeah, that's about it, it's hard to go wrong with a centre crop.

Left/Right:

This tends to be used with semi-close crops, and with the 'half face' (or 'one eye' as I've seen it dubbed) crop (like Natasha and Martha above). One thing about this and the following types is that I try to get whole facial features in the icon. The first icon, Natasha is at an angle so that allowed me to get her whole nose into but keep her eye out. For Martha, since she is practically vertical, splitting her in half works. Mouths are fine to cut off, noses are either whole or half and eyes must never be partially cut, whole integer numbers of eyes only or I think it looks weird. In the case of Bats there, I think the original aim was to put some text in the negative space but never found anything that worked and decided I liked the black more. That's also another main reason behind the left/right crop; the ability for room to have text without obscuring your subject.

Like this one.

Top/Bottom:

The top/bottom crop follows much the same pattern as left/right for obvious reasons. Top crops lean towards a "no eye" approach to cropping, sometimes just a mouth and chin, like in Tony's case. That cap gave itself to a top crop as his helmet intersects the corners perfectly in such a way that meant none of his features were cut off weirdly. I've found that the bottom crop lends itself to less close crops than the top crop (as seen above). The top and bottom crop types give an even better platform for text place since you're now presented with a big horizontal block to work in, which is easier than the taller, thinner alternative the left/right provides.

Extreme:

Extreme is just of the above two dialled up to 11, I haven't really utilised this one as much and these were the only two I could find in my brief scour through my latest entries. As you can see, with the Tony one, it allowed a big space to fill with text but with Bats, I left the space alone for atmospheric reasons (does that even make sense?)

Far:

Tends to allow the scenery to play a part (like with Big Ben), almost always creates negative space and is often the "extreme" version of a centre crop. The Eleventh Doctor one was just one of those ones that screamed "make me negative space".

Close:

And the reverse. Unless you're literally a wizard, these are formed from caps that are already close ups. There's not much to say about this one other than it's hard to pull off unless you have friendly caps. When it comes to close cropping, you will come to love high quality screencaps. If you find a source, never let it go.

My Four Golden Rules:

High Quality Screencaps rule, okay? Anything remotely close to a close crop falls down without decent quality images in the first place

No weird bits of faces, try to get it cropped in such a way that you either split the face directly in half or crop out entire facial features. When in Free Transform, try rotating the icon slightly, that sometimes helps (I'm not sure but I think I did for the Natasha one up there)

Lines. It's all about lines (as I'm about to give a specific example below). That rule of thirds thing is all about lines. The edges of faces, horizons, tables etc etc, stick them on the 'thirds' and 90% it looks awesome. The "far" 11 up there, the top of his head hits the bottom third for example. Clara's chin in the (Im)Possible icon hits the top third line for another example and so on. It doesn't have to be perfect, sometimes you have an awkward icon that would leave a weirdly fiddly bit and Rule 2 trumps Rule 3 so don't be afraid to fudge the line a bit which leads me to Rule 4...

There are no rules. Sometimes you gotta ignore them and just go crazy.

Addendum:
I mentioned that left/right/top/bottom/anything but centre lends itself to easier text, but for those brave icon makers, sometimes you can get away with slapping text right over your subject.

This isn't a text guide, so I'm not going to go into that too much, I just wanted to clarify that a centre crop does not mean you can't have text.

Individual Icons:

This one got picked out in the brief. When I came to doing this set (the theme was Masquerade, which meant all the icons had to be obscured in some way, forcing interesting crops to reveal themselves) this screencap stood out. The way Coulson, unfocused in the foreground, covered Thor was tantalising. As for the crop itself, actually, I can use that diagram, Thor's eyes and mouth are almost following the horizontal splits. Also, something you may have spotted in my work is that I like lines that are intrinsic in the cap to hit the corners, in this case it's the line splitting Coulson and Thor, which hits the top left corner. There's also the natural line that follows across from Thor's mouth to where Coulson's collar hits the edge of the right side. (You'll also notice that Thor takes up roughly a third of the icon, too...).

If you want any more explanations of individual icons, I'll edit them in here.

As for the guide, I genuinely don't know what else to add, so I might as well stop rambling now. I don't know if any of this has been any help whatsoever, to me it seems fairly standard but I don't know haha. Well, it's been interesting, anyway, so thanks for the challenge! Also, crop no longer looks like a real word.

Clara Tutorial

amazingchi — Sun, 21 Jul 2013 16:28:15 GMT

First things first, thank you applepips16 for requesting this (also, thanks for a wonderful text tutorial, it's one I've gone back to many times). I'll start thinking of ideas to stuff into the cropping guide you also asked for, but for now, I know I can do this!

- >

The cap originates from Grande Caps

Now, a fair bit has happened since I made this set so I'm not entirely sure what I set out to do here and some of the details may be somewhat fudgy, I can't actually remember what I did so I can only go off of what the PSD tells me. I can remember on seeing the cap that I wanted it to fall into the "composition" section of that month's inspired20in20, which meant I had to do something physical and snazzy with it but there was a definitely an element of winging it, that's for sure.

Anyway, the first stage is the prep. Now, I know I've borrowed this from someone but I cannot for the life of me remember who, if you read this please step forward and I will credit you. I do this for every icon I make now, so you deserve it!

First I duplicate the base and set the duplicate to screen. Duplicate the screen layer once and Gaussian Blur it (the amount depends on the size of the original cap, in this case I went with 2.5 I think, I'm not entirely sure, I know I have for caps of the same size in my most recent set so it's a fair estimate). Duplicate the blurred layer and set that to soft light. You should have four layers, [from bottom to top: Base - Screen - Blur Screen - Blur Soft Light] and this:

Next I would have Copy/Merged all visible [Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E] or if that had decided it didn't want to do that [it's very temperamental on me for some reason] just used Select All [Ctrl+A], Copy Merged [Ctrl+Shift+C] and Paste [Ctrl+V], which achieves the same thing but just takes longer. Next, I would have opened up a 300x300 canvas, but because I don't really want to have to cut her out again, I hope you don't mind me posting 100x100 versions for the sake of this tutorial!

Paste the layer above into the smaller canvas and use Free Transform [Ctrl+T], duplicated and sharpened to get to this:

Now, the fun bit: cutting out. First, I duplicated [in case something went weird I could always rely on having a back up] placed a black fill layer behind the duplicate sharpened layer:

I find that flicking the visibility of the black layer (and having a white base) helps cut out more efficiently as stray dark bits appear on the white and stray light bits appear on the black. I 'cut' using a Layer Mask, incidentally. Also, in this case, I found her errant strands of hair irritating so I just masked them out too and it didn't make her look weird so I pressed on. For some reason, I didn't fancy a block colour background with this one, so I took another duplicate of the base layer and Gaussian Blurred it [somewhere around 9-10px] and then since that didn't fill it up, I duplicated [I duplicate a lot, can you tell?] another base layer, moved it to the top and across and blurred that to the same degree. Setting the top layer to screen, you get to this background [the black fill layer has to be visible for this to work]:

and with the Clara:

At this point you can copy merge all and shrink down to 100x100. It's always best to copy merge first before resizing, by the way. I can't remember who first told me that either, I've seen it in a few tutorials now so I feel I ought to say it too as it's true.

Now the colouring/texture stages! Colouring for this was rather straightforward. I added a curves and a vibrance, it's my first stop on any icon. Most of the time it works. First the curves, it's a bit trickier than most of mine in that it has three points:
Input: 78 Output: 72
Input: 182 Output: 171
Input: 212 Output: 209

The Vibrance layer has the settings: Vibrance +100 and is set to 'Color' in the layer type. [I find this usually works best and maintain contrast the best]. We're now here:

Look at the warmth in her skin now, that's much better. Now, the next few layers I can't be certain of what order I actually did them in. However, I suspect that I probably would have started with my go to texture first. This is it:
(Credit: deny1984 @ midnight_road)

Pasting that in as a new layer and duplicating it once [woo for duplicates], set the first to screen and the second to soft light, I didn't like the 'bits' so I Gaussian Blurred the screen layer at around 5px and got to this, which is nice:
but I decided I wanted the icon to be pink/purple so I added a Hue/Saturation adjustment to only the Soft Light layer:
Hue: -64
Saturation: +88
Lightness: +2
and bingo!

I think at this point I must have determined she was too dark. I may have done this before the Hue change, actually, thinking about it. Anyway, instead of curves or brightness changes like a normal person, I appear to have gone with a Solid Color layer set to screen [#dbddd8], placed below the screened brown texture layer.

Again, I probably did this step immediately after adding the brown textures [and probably before the color fill layer too in fact, apologies for this oversight] but I duplicated the base and put to the top on soft light:

Most likely I wouldn't have had this on 100% at the time, since you can see it's a little too dark, but it was set to 100% by the end. Next is the only step that I am certain didn't occur in layer order. I do remember that I felt it was a little bland and needed a little something something. So I fished out this texture:
(from the same set as the first texture @ midnight_road [#43])
It was set to screen and placed under the brown soft light layer, at which point I would have shifted the soft light layer back to 100% to retain the contrast [your layers above the Curves + Vibrance should be from bottom to top: Solid Color (Screen) - Blurred Brown (Screen) - Purple Texture (Screen) - Unblurred Brown (Soft Light) - Duplicated Base (Soft Light)

You'll notice that this is very close, and you'll be glad to hear there's only two more steps. I put a black/white Gradient fill layer [black at bottom] set to 60% on the top followed by a Brightness/Contrast with Contrast: -50, as I felt she was a little bit too 'glowy'.

And that concludes this edition of me waffling and floundering around attempting to remember what the heck I did. Thank god for the PSD or I'd have no clue whatsoever. Some of the steps are possibly in the wrong order, but ultimately they end up in the same place so no harm done. Expect a similarly all over the place guide to cropping in the near future...!

Inspired 20in20 - Round 24

amazingchi — Sat, 20 Jul 2013 20:12:29 GMT

So, for Round 24 Inspired gave a chance to take a stab at any of the previous 23, so I took the opportunity to have a go at one of the ones before I stumbled across it: Good Vs Evil, which suited my claim: Nolan's Batman films...

ICONS

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5

#6	#7	#8	#9	#10

#11	#12	#13	#14	#15

#16	#17	#18	#19	#20

(I'M BATMAN)

Inspired 20in20 - Round 23

amazingchi — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 18:53:41 GMT

So, I've been away due to University stuffs and despite being free for ten days or so, I've still somehow managed to end up rushing half of these...

Something Old - Cropping

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5

Something New - Composition

#6	#7	#8	#9	#10

Something Borrowed - Text

#11	#12	#13	#14	#15

Something Blue - Colouring

#16	#17	#18	#19	#20

Comments appreciated :)

Inspired 20in20 - Round 21 - AvengersVerse

amazingchi — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 15:10:18 GMT

Cutting it close, in true superhero style! Personal events and long essays have taken up pretty much all of this month, however managed to sneak in a few before that all kicked off and had just enough time at the end! So here's 20 icons of Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

The theme was Masquerade @ inspired20in20

ICONS

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5

#6	#7	#8	#9	#10

#11	#12	#13	#14	#15

#16	#17	#18	#19	#20

Doctor Who 20in20 - Round 30 - Tenth Doctor

amazingchi — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 21:46:54 GMT

Okay, I'm going to start with a warning. Some of these are quite terrible. I think I may have used up all my creativity in the last set I posted [please do go have a look, I beg of you, just to prove that I can do something with icons that doesn't suck!]. Some of these I do actually quite like. It's probably rather obvious which are which, but hey, I've picked up a few little tricks along the way so it wasn't all for nothing. For now, here's a Tenth Doctor batch:

Themes

blue	dark	double	enemy	levels

mystery	quote	recycle	scared	truth

Category - black & white

Category #1	Category #2	Category #3	Category #4	Category #5

Artist's Choice

AC #1	AC #2	AC #3	AC #4	AC #5

Inspired 20in20 - This Is Sparta

amazingchi — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 23:47:14 GMT

This month on inspired20in20 we were given free reign on claim, but needed to a homage to other kinds of icon contests. I've picked III: This Is Sparta, the tribute to icon battles. I made it a proper tribute by doing two per screencap used! This is probably my favourite ever batch of icons. I'm so glad I cut down on entering 20in20s to give me time to explore ideas! Absolutely love some of these. I hope you do too.

Also, don't forget I am available on Ask the Maker, so feel free to pick my brain on any of these over there! :)

ICONS

#1	#2	#3	#4

#5	#6	#7	#8

#9	#10	#11	#12

#13	#14	#15	#16

#17	#18	#19	#20

Doctor Who 20in20 - Round 29 - Martha Jones

amazingchi — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 21:33:02 GMT

20 Martha Icons for doctorwho20in20

Much like the Inspired set in the previous, I suffered massive timing issues, but determination won through and I've got 20 to post. It's pretty obvious which ones I actually managed to spend some time on. However, saying that I do kinda love it when this happens as it forces me to refine simple techniques which will come in handy all the time! :).

If you see any that pique your interest and wish to know the story, just ask for a tutorial on Ask the Maker at Icon Talk and I'll happily oblige!

Themes

body part	danger	emotional	favourite moment	first appearance

lyrics	plus one	profile	stolen claim	touch

Category - One Scene

Category #1	Category #2	Category #3	Category #4	Category #5

Artist's Choice

AC #1	AC #2	AC #3	AC #4	AC #5

The lyrics are Gabriella Cilmi - On a Mission, by the way!

Inspiration 20in20 - Round 19 - Community

amazingchi — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 23:37:59 GMT

20 Community Icon for inspired20in20.

The theme was Forbidden Love. Naturally, that meant I went Jeff & Annie crazy. Oh well, eh? :P. Sadly, I did not get to spend as much time as I'd have liked on my favourite couple [and the rest of the icons] as you can probably tell, but I was not passing up the chance to do this one no matter how rushed ad raw the icons came out. Mind you, if there are still any one there that you feel worthy of asking me how it was done, I am available on Ask the Maker at Icon Talk. I'll be more than willing to supply a tutorial :)

Anyway, enough chatter. On with the icons! [I notice that I can't use the "old" posting box any more, this should be fun...]

ICONS

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5

#6	#7	#8	#9	#10

#11	#12	#13	#14	#15

#16	#17	#18	#19	#20

Character 20in20 - Round 42 - Chuck Bartowski

amazingchi — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:43:15 GMT

20 Chuck Icons for character20n20.

Also, if you wish to know how any of these were made, I am up on Ask the Master [Master? Apprentice at best! XD. But hey, I didn't make the title...] over at icon_talk. I keep all my PSDs so it wouldn't be all that difficult to rustle up a tutorial if you want one. :)

10 THEMES

Cold	Fear	From Behind	Full Body	Gentle


Heart	Looking Up	Profile	Sweet	Vintage

CATEGORY

Color 1	Color 2	Color 3	Color 4	Color 5

ARTIST'S CHOICE

artist's choice 1	artist's choice 2	artist's choice 3	artist's choice 4	artist's choice 5

There are a couple of versions with text:

Etta Tutorial

amazingchi — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 12:47:44 GMT

I was requested a tutorial by eve_sparda via ask the maker at icon_talk for this icon:

First I took this cap and cropped it like so:

[like you didn't see that one coming]

I must at this stage apologise in advance for the ridiculous simplicity of what happens next. I mean, I'll seriously be done in enough steps you can count them on your hands. It does feel a bit cheaty when there's all you wonderful icon makers that spend ages perfecting your icons and I luck my way into one like this!

Anyway, what happens next is probably the only vaguely technical part of the icon, my prep work that I pretty much do in every icon. It is a bit standard fare and I have seen other people detail this process in their tutorials too but anyway, for completion's sake and for the fact I need some steps in this tutorial...

I duplicate the base and set it to screen. Then I take the screen layer and duplicate that. With the second screen layer I apply a gaussian blur on radius 1.7px [I find that tends to work almost perfectly on pretty much every 100x100 size image]. With the blurred layer I duplicate THAT too and set the duplicate to soft light instead. Sometimes the image doesn't look quite right and I fiddle with the opacity of the screen layers or the soft light one but in this case all three are left on 100%

The outcome of this is:

I copy merge everything into a new layer [totally forgotten if that is the technical term for this, forgive me. It's CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E anyway] and duplicate that too. On the duplicate I apply Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. The settings are Amount 80% and Radius of 0.4px and removing Gaussian Blur. It looked a bit too much so I reduced it to 60% opacity but the chin still look a bit too sharp so a bit of layer masking [not total black, I used a grey around 70 for the layer masking].

We now have this:

Now we're onto the fiddling about with adjustments stage, hurrah!

As always, I start with Curves and using auto curves [auto curves is a blessing]. A lot of the time I find auto curves works, it only really tends to fail with icons where you're focus is roughly fine beforehand but it's in sea of dark background and it tries to whiteout the entire icon as a result which is unhelpful, but as I said auto tends to work the majority of the time. The settings are for the two points it generated, Input: 63 Output: 87 and Input: 190 Output: 194.

And...

Looking back at it, I probably should have panicked a bit because it has lost some of that lovely innate contrast, but I think I just did the first two adjustments on autopilot because it's now second nature to start every icon after prep with auto curves and a vibrance layer. Now, this is where I reiterate the apology, because I discovered with a vibrance layer of +100 Vibrance +49 Saturation, this happens:

Yeah, told you, lucky so-and-so. That said there are a couple more slight tweaky adjustments to come so don't start the rage mob just yet.

First up was a levels layer [this may have been auto'd too, not sure], settings: 0 1.27 254, which served to lighten things up a tad without losing any juicy colour or much contrast.

Now an actual personal step! Not one done by entirely photoshop witchcraft! I took a gradient layer of yellow [#fffc46]
to transparent and set it linearly upwards and reduced the layer's opacity to 28%. I got a bit more warmth in the bottom half of the icon from this. This was followed immediately by a black -> white gradient layer, black at bottom, white at top, and after applying it, I reduced the opacity of the white end of the gradient to 29%. I think it made the icon look a little less flat, but what do I know? Half of this was pure luck... okay pretty much all of it! :P

-> ->

And the final stage was another vibrance layer, Vibrance + 36, which was duplicated.... and that's it. I did warn you it was annoyingly simple.

So there we have it:

to

I do keep all my PSDs so if want another tutorial, I am happy to oblige. In fact, I almost demand that you do just to make up for this one! At least I got some tutorial writing practice. I apologise once again if you feel short changed by the simplicity of this! :P

Until next time, ciao!

*runs away from the torches and pitchforks*

Round 1 - Films of 2012 - The Amazing Spiderman

amazingchi — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 19:45:08 GMT

20 The Amazing Spiderman icons for allmovies20in20

Okay, so I've been mega busy with exams and the like, so I've only just got round to doing these today, which means they are rather rushed. However, it sort of became a vital lesson on honing the basic skills of Photoshop again, cos I have gone slightly over the top I feel on recent sets! :P

10 THEMES

close up	earth	euphoria	favorite character	indigo

night	pain	patience	silliness	worry

5 CATEGORY: Colors Wheel

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5

5 ARTIST'S CHOICE

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5

Inspired 20in20 - Round 18 - Fringe

amazingchi — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 20:57:10 GMT

20 Fringe for inspired20in20

Goodbye, Fringe. *wipes tear away*

ICONS

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5

#6	#7	#8	#9	#10

#11	#12	#13	#14	#15

#16	#17	#18	#19	#20

Character 20in20 - Round 41 - Olivia Dunham

amazingchi — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 20:01:20 GMT

10 THEMES

Close Crop/Text	Enemy	Gold	Hot	Imperfect


Light & Dark	Neon	Romance	Unusual Crop	Wild

CATEGORY

One	Two	Three	Four	Five

ARTIST'S CHOICE

artist's choice 1	artist's choice 2	artist's choice 3	artist's choice 4	artist's choice 5

Inspired 20in20 - Round 17 - Doctor Who

amazingchi — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 18:06:02 GMT

20 Doctor Who fo inspired20in20

ICONS

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5

#6	#7	#8	#9	#10

#11	#12	#13	#14	#15

#16	#17	#18	#19	#20

Character 20in20 - Round 40 - Rory Williams

amazingchi — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 23:05:07 GMT

20 Rory [Doctor Who] for character20n20

10 THEMES

Action	Alone	Bright	Center Crop	Chess Pieces


Family	Mysterious	Night	Pain	Sky

CATEGORY

Earth Tones	Earth Tones	Earth Tones	Earth Tones	Earth Tones

ARTIST'S CHOICE

artist's choice 1	artist's choice 2	artist's choice 3	artist's choice 4	artist's choice 5

Icon Quest - Main Quest 1

amazingchi — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 19:17:57 GMT

Hero:



Wizard:



Bard: -

Rogue:

Inspiration 20in20 - Round 16

amazingchi — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 23:14:27 GMT

20 Once Upon a Time for inspired20in20

ICONS

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5

#6	#7	#8	#9	#10

#11	#12	#13	#14	#15

#16	#17	#18	#19	#20

Character 20in20 - Round 39 - Sarah Walker

amazingchi — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 20:37:52 GMT

20 Sarah Walker [Chuck] Icons for character20n20

10 THEMES

Angry	Blur	Brave	Hands	Negative Space


No Eyes	Outside	Perfect	Silver	Soft

CATEGORY

Close Crop 1	Close Crop 2	Close Crop 3	Close Crop 4	Close Crop 5

ARTIST'S CHOICE

artist's choice 1	artist's choice 2	artist's choice 3	artist's choice 4	artist's choice 5