Final Thesis

poisonfield — Sun, 06 Jan 2019 02:34:34 GMT

After 14 years of icon making on and off it is time for me to offically close the book on it.

Like many people I have found it increasingly difficult to find the time and motivation to maintain this hobby.
In my teen years icon making consumed my life and I was diven to be the best and most creative, a feat that is impossible when there are so many that are techically brillant and innovative with each and every icon they produce. This attitude made me angry and jealous of others in the community. Hindsight in my 20s has taught me that I brought my own uniqueness to the community and it was the process of improving my skills that should have always been the goal.

This post is intended as a thank you to you all for your support and coaching during my time on Livejournal. Even those with negative comments about me as a person deserves my thanks; they have allowed me to look at myself with a critical eye and grow as a person. Icon making has been a large part of my life for many years, but now it is time to direct my focus to other areas, each of you have meant the world to me and I thank you all.

I will be keeping this icon community intact for those that wish to access all I have made. Under the cut is some of the icons I've made over the years that I am most proud of, I feel it is a fitting way to finish off my final post on this journal.

Thank you all with all of my heart

Hannah

60. Icon dump

poisonfield — Mon, 19 Feb 2018 01:29:46 GMT

24 mediocre icons from the past year or so.

59.

poisonfield — Sun, 02 Oct 2016 03:12:21 GMT

Like big steaming pile on a farm, here is my July/August icon dump.

(click for tumblr link)

58.

poisonfield — Sun, 03 Jul 2016 00:44:07 GMT

Like big steaming pile in a field, here is my May/June icon dump

[33] misc icons
[1] graphic

57.

poisonfield — Sun, 19 Jun 2016 04:57:30 GMT

Since I didn't fill my 'ask the maker' requests last year I will not be participating this year. As a peace offering I've made another set of animated textures for you all to play with.

12 animated 100x100px textures
DOWNLOAD HERE

Previous animated texture set
Animated icon tutorial

RL update

poisonfield — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 08:30:27 GMT

Hey everyone,
Just wanted to let you all know why I've been MIA.

As some of you know I've been struggling with chronic depression for over 10 years now and I'm on my 6th lot of antidepressants that are barely helping. This year has been particularly rough and I haven't done much but work and sleep the past few weeks. What none of you know is that I am an alcoholic and as of next week I'll be seeing a substance abuse specialist.
Yep... It's no longer me joking around about drunk icons; I've made myself quite sick with the amount I've been drinking over the past few years. I've using liquor as an escape and self-medicating with it and it has gotten out of control.
I've always joked about the volume I drink and always down-played it until the other day, I was crying in a doctor's office over how hard things are and how I don't think I can function without the liquor to take my mind off it... not so weird until you realize I only went to the doctor to get a vaccination.

I appreciate your patience and I'll be getting the comms I run functioning soon and getting help to keep them going.
♥ Hannah

56.

poisonfield — Sun, 01 May 2016 23:57:17 GMT

Over-sharpened icon dump ~~just to mix things up.~~
[28] mixed fandom icons

55.

poisonfield — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 00:52:46 GMT

[44] assorted textures from contextures

54.

poisonfield — Sun, 03 Apr 2016 00:35:04 GMT

March icon dump.
[45] assorted icons
[2] graphics

53.

poisonfield — Sat, 05 Mar 2016 22:38:36 GMT

[48] assorted icons

Teaser:

52.

poisonfield — Fri, 05 Feb 2016 22:31:39 GMT

10in30 entry "Fringe"

alt:

51.

poisonfield — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 17:46:27 GMT

15. animated icon textures.

A lot of these are greyscale, keeps the file size small. Remember LJ requires file sizes less than 40kb for icons. I made a tutorial (that can be found here) with tips to make and optimize .gif icons.

Download .zip

50.

poisonfield — Sun, 17 Jan 2016 17:36:22 GMT

10in30 entry; Stromae

Near:
Far:

49.

poisonfield — Sun, 20 Dec 2015 23:23:26 GMT

2015 icon dump
aka the post where Jensen Ackles spends a lot of time looking at the floor, usually over-sharpened.

[23] Supernatural
[11] Celebrities
[10] Movie
[4] Stromae wallpaper

Also, CHECK OUT MY ART ON POSTCARDS! :D:D:D

An update as to my where-abouts

poisonfield — Fri, 02 Jan 2015 12:34:30 GMT

Hey everyone, happy new year!
So here's the thing, I've worked super hard at my job all year so I've just got a promotion (this is a substantial change in role and more importantly pay haha!) and I'm just about to move house. I don't want to give up iconning but it is defiantly taking a back-seat in my life. I'll be doing my best to stay active at tmfaction and tasteislife but beyond that I'll probably not be around anywhere as much as I was a year ago.
I hope you all understand
<3

48. November Inspo: Sleeping with Ghosts

poisonfield — Sun, 02 Nov 2014 12:30:22 GMT

47.

poisonfield — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 14:49:09 GMT

[23] Supernatural icons
[9] Hannibal icons
[4] Orphan Black icons
[3] Orange is the New Black icons

46. August inspo: text

poisonfield — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 10:20:43 GMT

45. Ask the Maker

poisonfield — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 13:17:37 GMT

Finally I can cross these tutorials off my to-do list! These were requested by the wonderful dixon.

to
This icon was for the 'Adventures in Wonderland" challenge at 20inspirations. I took the challenge as 'Alice in Wonderland is one scary dream, so I'll just throw my character into a nightmare'. I wanted to play into the fact that Dean is so self-defeating and always so willing to sacrifice himself, all the while being such an important individual with being both the Righteous Man and the Michael sword.
To start off take this screencap and crop it. We're then going to take this texture made by lookslikerain, desaturate it and darken it so it is a medium grey shade like this
- take the texture then set to softlight ~25%
- rotate 180° set to softlight ~25%
- Take the original texture, invert and burn out the darker areas, set to screen ~10%

Add a curves layer to lighten the icon and increase the green tones slightly mine looked like this. Then to increase the reds and yellows add a colour balance layer, mine looked like this.

Next we're gonna throw on the crown of thorns texture (found here via google images).
Then take this brush and paint over on a new layer some bloody smudges, in a nice bright red (I used #ea1111), then on another layer paint in some darker areas for where the blood was thicker (I used #6e0707), set both to multiply.

As a final touch add a vibrance layer and bam! You're done!

The whole process:

to
There was no idea for this icon, it was just a flat-out mess.
Take this screencap, crop it and blend out the edges with the smudge tool, then paint over the edges with a soft black brush set to softlight to even it up if you're a little sloppy (like I am)

Change the icon to black and white using your preferred method, I used a BW gradient map cause I find it gives better contrast, then lighten using your preferred method, I used a curves layer.

Take this texture (I don't remember who made it, sorry), sharpen slightly and put onto the icon (don't resize) and set to screen. Then desaturate the texture and put onto the icon set to screen in a slightly different placement.

The whole process:

to
The idea behind this one was to pretty much have Dean looking evil and melty (not every idea I have for an icon is a really solid one :P).
Take this screencap ~~where you from? you sexy thing~~, do a nice close crop, desaturate (I used a BW gradient map) and lighten using a curve layer so you can darken the shadows at the same time.

Then paint over the shadows with a soft black brush set to soft light, then paint out any light areas left over and the eyes

Paint a light spot on the eye to retain the source of light. Apply this texture (I don't remember who made it D:), grey scale and darken it. Resize and apply over the eye set to multiply, then erase any areas that don't fit. I edited it slightly here so it looked a bit more drippy.

Then add this texture and this texture set to screen to finish it off (the second is by innocent_lexys, the first, not sure D:)

The whole process:

44. Ask the Maker

poisonfield — Sat, 19 Jul 2014 16:04:47 GMT

These tutorials were requested by the lovely ladies setentpet and dixon over at Ask the Maker.

to
The idea behind this icon was to show off how fierce and powerful Abaddon but at the same time show some depth to her cause what's the point of a bad-arse-bitch whose is as shallow as a puddle?
Start off with this screencap, crop it, lighten it using your preferred method (I used a curves layer) and paint out the background.

Throw this stock image over the top, set to screen and erase the bottom with a soft brush. This makes it look like she's on flames as opposed to just having the texture slapped on the icon. Then I darkened up the area with a soft black brush set to soft-light.

Now for the colouring:
- add a black and white gradient map set to soft-light 30% to bump up the contrast
- add a curves layer to increase the red tones (mine looked like this)
- add a colour balance layer to increase the red tones further (mine looked like this)
- paint over the dress on a new layer in a pastel blue with a soft brush set to hue 20%

- add a black fill layer set to colour 20% to desaturate it a little
- add this texture (not sure who made it sorry!) set to screen 50%

The whole process:

to
The idea behind this one was like flowers growing from a grave stone, because Hannibal is an agent of death. But I wanted it to be vibrant to really attract attention like hiding in plain-sight.
Start off with a nice mid-crop, get plenty of head-room but leave enough shirt to know who the character is. Lighten the icon with your preferred method (again, I used curves), then black out the background and his face/next.

I added a floral image, I wanted it to look like a painting 'cause Hannibal is one classy mother, I used this one that I found off google. I found it easiest to layer it over the icon set to screen and erase over the shirt and tidy the outsides. Then use the burn tool to darken the area if flowers at the collar to make it look like they are behind it.

Now for some colouring, paint over his blazer with a bright blue on a new layer, I used #03a1c5, then painted over the shirt, tie and handkerchief with a yellowy-limey colour, I used #e1de50. Set these to colour 100%.

Add a vibrance layer to make the colours 'pop' and that's really all there is to it!

Whole process:

43. Ask the Maker

poisonfield — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 14:16:34 GMT

These tutorials were requested by queen_bartonia at Ask the Maker. I only had the psd for one so I did my best with recreating them.

to
So the idea behind this icon was I wanted a painted look while having his face melting, I think I failed on both fronts, but I still got an icon out of it. So we're starting with this screencap ~~oh hey there Dean Winchester and your yummy face~~, crop it to the far left and paint the background and around his face in black.

Desaturate the icon using your preferred method (I was being lazy for this one and used 'image -> adjustment -> desaturate') then increase the contrast, I used the burn tool to remove half the face and darken around the edges on the right. Then added a curves layer to finish the contrast off.

So the next few steps involve using these textures 1, 2 and 3 (I don't know who made them, if you do let me know). I desaturated them all, some of them I increase the contrast, some I inverted, they are a mixture of set to screen and multiply.
texture 1 set to screen with areas over face erased, reversed and repeated.

texture 2 set to screen, areas erased,texture 3, inverted and set to multiply, areas around face erased, then texture 2 again, rotate 180˚ set to screen, areas erased

Plant over the left side painted area with a mid-grey, set to multiply ~65%, texture 2 leave at normal, erased over right side of icon and over face,texture 3, inverted and set to multiply, erase over the face. Finally paint a light blob over the face just to brighten that up.

Whole process:

to
The idea of this was to have that 'flicking your hair in water' look but with paint. Start with this image. Start off by cropping it and painting out the background (you can be a bit sloppy, it'll be hidden by the textures)

Then take out this texture by pandavirus, I recoloured it set to hue with #885036 (a colour selected from her hair) and cover the icon set to multiply so it fits with the natural movement of the image.

Then brighten the icon and increase the orange hues (I used a single curves layer looking like this)
Deepen and darken the orange hues with a colour fill layer filled with a pale orange colour (I used #ce936b) set it to colour burn ~20%.
Lighten the whole thing with a colour fill layer filled with a buff colour (I used #c7b2a5) set it to screen ~20%
Duplicate that layer and set to softlight

Bump up the yellow tones with a colour balance layer arranged like this

Add this texture desaturated, inverted and set to screen over the bottom left and this texture desaturated, and set to screen.

Whole process:

to
The idea behind this one was to do something I don't usually do and make it super-saturated, neither panned out. Start off my cropping the image, painting out the background (I selected a colour from the original background of the cap #80a593) and repaint where the top of his head should be

Lighten it with a curves layer, then add a colour layer filled with the same colour you painted the background set to darken ~35%, duplicate and set to soft light 100%

Lighten it again with another curves layer, then add a vibrance layer (set to around vibrance: 65, saturation: 44) and duplicate the vibrance layer to really make the colours pop.

Add this texture set to screen, use the burn tool to tidy up the areas over the character.

Then add this texture set to screen, then duplicate the edited layer of the capture, bring to top and set it to overlay ~50%

Then add this texture by pandavirus and this texture (no idea who made it, sorry, let me know if you did), both set to screen 100%

Then cause I think the original was a little pale, add a selective colour layer, set the black colours to black +45.

Whole process:

poisonfield — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 13:42:14 GMT

I haven't forgotten about the request post, or the remainder of the Ask the Maker icon tutorials, I've just got no motivation to icon, plus I've just received some paid commission work (which obviously needs to take priority) and I've gotta start producing work to sell next year and yeah... I've been unwell so it's all piling up. But it'll all get done eventually.

iconredcarpet is on again, the first round of nominations are open and the rest will open over the next few days. Thank you so much to the wonderful people that already nominated me, it's always so incredible to see people appreciating my efforts :D

iconredcarpet iconredcarpet iconredcarpet

42. Ask the Maker

poisonfield — Sun, 13 Jul 2014 11:47:24 GMT

A bunch of people requested a composition and texture guide at Ask The Maker, so... hopefully this covers it?

So for me composition isn't something I think too much about for the most part. The only time I really consider it is with regards to negative space. The closer I crop to a character the more I'm trying to focus on the emotions they are displaying, the further I crop the more I'm focusing on the emotions they are NOT displaying, such as a feeling of isolation.

So I like to make it painfully obvious where you need to be looking in my icons, none of this 'natural movement of gaze' rubbish they teach you in art class. I find the best way to direct this gaze by framing the icon in negative space to uncomplicate the composition and draw the eye to where the subject of interest is.

A photography favorite. This composition technique involves dividing the canvas into ninths as follows:

The idea is the subject should either fill 2/3 or 1/3 of the canvas or the subject should lie along one of the grid lines (I was taught different things between photography and art classes, so let's just go along with both). I find it's a nice tidy way to organise negative space. For example:

I'm not going to lie, I hate this composition, I do it more often than I'd like and for the most part unless it's used in blocking it can look awkward, but since I don't really pay much attention to composition until after I've made the icon sometimes it just happens. The premise is simple, split the icon in half using the subject or textures. It's a good way to keep a close crop and still have ample negative space. Once you're done though it's good to take a step away from the photoshop and come back and take a look at the icon, this composition goes wrong very fast (in fact it did with a couple of these example icons).

Lead room is a term that refers to negative space in front of a character/subject. It's the idea that having negative space in front of or in the direction of an object suggests movement and since the eye expects to see this space it is meant to be more visually pleasing. This isn't something I do very often as I favour center crops (and lets be real, my cropping skills aren't particularly refined) but it is always something to keep in mind when doing close-crops.

I love paint textures, they give this messy look that I'm drawn to. I use them primarily to 'finish off' an icon, where the icon feels like it's missing a little something. I do also use them a lot as decorative features or to distort the subject. I think if there is one texture type you want to use and learn to use well I'd say it should be paint textures. Plus I find they are a great way to get a softer grunge look than traditional grunge textures.

I brought myself a Wacom Bamboo about 5 years ago because cutting out background with a mouse was driving me nuts and I had just got my tax return. I use mine a lot, like A LOT, and if you have a spare $100 kicking around, I highly recommend getting a low-end one. It's great for idea for concepts that you can't execute with a texture or the texture doesn't quite fit and needs some hard-core editing.

There's no secret that I love using stock in my icons, to me there's something special about changing the screencap to be something uniquely yours.
Common stock textures I use:
Flowers: for me these represent death, I always relate them more to the flowers left on a grave than those given by a lover
Animal features: represents a change or a loss of morals
Wings: Represents power
Skull/skeleton: humanity, imperfections, death
Black smoke: evil
Landscape: isolation, escaping reality/obligations
Snakes: evil, bad intentions
Hands: control/influence

I find icons more interesting if they have a message, story, or emotion behind them. Even a simple crop and colour and say so much through composition, contrast and the colouring itself.
- Think about the characters you are using, are they happy, sad, confused, lost, etc? Is there an event or character trait/trope in their past that you want to emphasize?
- Think about you. We put hours into each of our icon, why not put a little more of you in instead of just your time? Do you relate to the character(s) in your icon for a particular reason? Is there an event in the character's life that you relate to? Is there simply something going on in your life you want to get off your chest? I make a lot of my icons dark and messy, because that's what's going on in my head and iconning is a good release.
- Think about symbolism through colours, texture use, obscuring parts of the image, negative space.

Things to remember:
- don't overcomplicate your composition. Make it obvious what the most part important part of the icon is regardless of how you've composed it, don't let all the elements in the icon fight for attention because it just makes it look like you had no overall plan for the icon. Even if you didn't have a plan, fake it until you make it, as they say.
- It's okay to try something out of your comfort zone, you'll never evolve your style unless you try new things, don't be afraid to fail!
- Making icons shouldn't be a chore. If you're not having fun, take a step back and try again later!

41. ask the maker

poisonfield — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 16:46:44 GMT

Requested by lady_kingsley and the example icon requested by anassa_anemou at Ask The Maker 6.0

For this guide I'm going to assume you have a good understanding of Photoshop and a basic understanding of how to make gifs, if not this is a great tutorial that covers the bare-basics.

Planning
To start with you want to have a general idea of how you want your icon to look. It's harder to play around with composition, textures and colouring after you've animated because you'll need to consider each frame not just each layer, furthermore each filter and layer you add is going to be adding to the file size, so it's good to plan to what will keep that icon under 40kb.

My tips for colouring and composition that will aid in smaller file sizes:
- Use negative space. The more of your icon that doesn't move the smaller the resulting file.
- Borders for animated clips are a great idea to preserve image quality without resulting in a huge file.
- Try to limit your textures to one or two as more tones = more kb.
- Make your colouring feature as few colours as possible, and always consider greyscale a valid option. After optimization having more colours and tones will result in a grainy low-quality icon if you're not careful. Just because you are making a gif icon doesn't mean you automatically get a free-pass to make your icon very low quality.
- High contrast is great because of the loss of detail during optimization and it also helps lower the number of tones in the icon.

In my example I'll be using my concept was to have the character 'devoid of emotion', and since I wanted to work with tv-static for a while at that time I decided that it would be a great way to demonstrate my concept. I decided that I would have the character's face as tv-static as the face is the part of the body that primarily displays emotion and I chose Castiel from Supernatural as the character due to his characteristic clothes, so he could be recognised without his face.
Concept sketch:

You can see that I'm employing negative space and greyscale, as well as keeping as much of the icon stationary as possible to keep the file size small.

Construction
For the tv-static in the example icon I've gone to google and typed in "tv-static", refined the search to animated and this caught my eye. I'll be using this as my screencap, it already has good contrast and a nice dark background so I can be sloppy with my editing.

Now I'm going to create a mask to put over the static with the face as transparent to do this:
- Crop the screencap (I like to work in 100x100 but you can always do this step last)
- Desaturate using your preferred method (I use a black and white gradient map)
- Lighten and increase the contrast of the image using your preferred method(s) (I use curves and do it all in one step)
- Smooth out any pixelated edges using a blur tool
- Clean up the background
- Merge all layers if they are not already merged and duplicate. Erase the character's face (I find having a brightly coloured layer underneath allows me to see where I've erased easier)
This process:

Open your tv-static gif in another window and move all the layers in order across to your icon (I crop the gif first so I have more control over the static size), make the mask layer the top layer and reanimate using the same time lapse per-frame as the original gif (I increased mine from 0.0 to 0.01 because I find 0.0 too fast)
The result:

I found this a little flat so I added a new layer and painted in some shadows and highlights where they were in the original screencap. I blended them in using the smudge tool and set to 70% opacity
The result:

Problem was now I found this a little boring so I added this texture and this texture (I can't remember who made them sorry!) both set to screen and used the burn tool to clear away some areas that were a little grey and saved for web!
Result:

Optimizing your gif
"But Hannah", you ask, "what do I do if my icon is too big for Livejournal standards?"
Well dear person reading this guide, let me suggest some ways to compress your file!

Change the number of colours in optimization

Circled in pink is the common number of colours you can select for your gif. The more colours the greater the file size. Keep in mind that once you start to decrease this number you will lose image quality as Photoshop fills in those gaps with similar colours or tones. I recommend never going less than 64 for a greyscale icon (32 if you have lots of negative space) and for colour 128 (though I do think 256 is ideal).
Another things you can do is to remove individual colours from the palette. In the grid in the 'save for web' window you can select shades that are identical to others and remove them (remember to leave one behind!) by clicking the trash can. This won't make a huge difference to the file size, however if you are only over by 1kb this is a great way to get under the limit and have little to no quality difference.

Cut out some frames!
It might feel like you need all those frames in your animation, but really in clip icons you can usually get away with heaps less. Once the icon is cropped look at two individual frames and assess how much subtlety in movement you really need. For icons I will usually half the number of frames by deleting every second one, slowing the animation speed and assessing how the gif functions.
I ask myself:
- is the animation jumping?
- is the animation too short to still be visually effective?
- is the change in frame rate evident to someone that doesn't know what you've done?
If I can answer no to these questions then I proceed, if not, there is always the undo button!

Detailed setting in 'save for web'
I rarely play with these because I'm a very lazy iconner but incase you wanted to know about them:
- LOSSY: this function discards visual information. I recommend having this set below 20% otherwise your icon will look grainy
- WEB SNAP: I hate this function, you don't start to decrease in file size until too much quality is lost. I'm not even gonna bother explaining it to you, keep it at 0% and be merry.
- DITHERING: this is the imitation of missing colours using those in the palette. Most of the time I can't tell the difference between 0 and 100% to be honest
- TRANSPARENCY: Keep this ticked; visually the transparency makes no difference and keeps the file size smaller (it makes areas that don't move transparent so the previous frame is visible, the alternative is Photoshop will fill the area with colour, adding to the file size)

Change the icon itself
Try greyscale, borders, re-cropping to have more negative space and think about removing textures or colour layers that are not making a huge difference.

And that is all I really can think to say about gif icons.. If you have questions please ask as I can always add the response into the guide for everyone else :)

40.

poisonfield — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 14:29:20 GMT

8x Supernatural icons
5x Orphan Black icons
6x Hannibal icons
1x Lana Del Ray icon
1x Orphan Black graphic

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