PSP8 Full Icon Tutorial - Squall
Made in PSP8, but I suppose it's easily applicable to any other graphics program.
Going from this to
I started out with this screencap from the opening sequence of FFVIII. I selected a part of the image, cropped it and resized it to 100x100 pixels.
As it was, the image was too dark, so I Duplicated the Base, set the Blend Mode to Screen (Op. 100%) and then duplicated it at least 5 more times. Lastly, I duplicated my layer on top one more time and set it to Soft Light, 100% opacity. I desaturated the Soft Light layer and went to Adjust>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set the Radius on 2.
I wanted Squall’s eye to be sharper and brighter, so I took the Sharpen Tool, (size 2, round brush, hardness 40), zoomed in and sharpened the iris once, directly on my Base layer.
After that, I Merged all the layers and my base now looks like this—
Now for the fun part. Brush madness!
I took this texture brush
by [can’t remember, check my userinfo] and pasted it on top of the base layer, setting the Blend Mode to Overlay at 65% Opacity.
It was too plain, so I chose pure black on the color Palette, created a New Layer and stamped this brush
crumblingwalls on it.
I then took a tiny text brush [again, check my userinfo for the resources], rotated it 90 degrees and added it.
By now it was a bit dark, so I took this brush
by inxsomniax, chose pure white from my color palette, rotated it 90 degrees also and stamped it in.
v
So far it’s very much lacking in color, so I pasted as New Layer this beautiful texture
by makeuplovegloss and set it with Blend Mode Screen at 90% opacity.
And voilà! We’re done.
I also found I liked this icon without so many brushes, makes it more simple-looking, but it all depends on your personal taste. Same goes for borders. I usually add them, but this time I did without. If you want to add one, an easy way to do it is taking the Selection Tool (marquee), creating a New Layer and selecting the parts of the icon you’d like to add border to. You can play around with different widths, for example, or you can add random border lines, by choosing a color and flood-filling on the new layer.
>>
or 
Going from this to
I started out with this screencap from the opening sequence of FFVIII. I selected a part of the image, cropped it and resized it to 100x100 pixels.
As it was, the image was too dark, so I Duplicated the Base, set the Blend Mode to Screen (Op. 100%) and then duplicated it at least 5 more times. Lastly, I duplicated my layer on top one more time and set it to Soft Light, 100% opacity. I desaturated the Soft Light layer and went to Adjust>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set the Radius on 2.
I wanted Squall’s eye to be sharper and brighter, so I took the Sharpen Tool, (size 2, round brush, hardness 40), zoomed in and sharpened the iris once, directly on my Base layer.
After that, I Merged all the layers and my base now looks like this—
Now for the fun part. Brush madness!
I took this texture brush
by [can’t remember, check my userinfo] and pasted it on top of the base layer, setting the Blend Mode to Overlay at 65% Opacity.It was too plain, so I chose pure black on the color Palette, created a New Layer and stamped this brush
crumblingwalls on it.I then took a tiny text brush [again, check my userinfo for the resources], rotated it 90 degrees and added it.
By now it was a bit dark, so I took this brush
by inxsomniax, chose pure white from my color palette, rotated it 90 degrees also and stamped it in.v
So far it’s very much lacking in color, so I pasted as New Layer this beautiful texture
by makeuplovegloss and set it with Blend Mode Screen at 90% opacity.And voilà! We’re done.
I also found I liked this icon without so many brushes, makes it more simple-looking, but it all depends on your personal taste. Same goes for borders. I usually add them, but this time I did without. If you want to add one, an easy way to do it is taking the Selection Tool (marquee), creating a New Layer and selecting the parts of the icon you’d like to add border to. You can play around with different widths, for example, or you can add random border lines, by choosing a color and flood-filling on the new layer.
>>
or