MOVING!!!

iconicallyhales — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 19:52:10 GMT

I've moved to iconicaly_hales!! Different name, same results!!

Why? Simply 'cause the whole FO thing was getting to be too much of a hassle, not to mention having to sign in and out of different journals every time. This journal will remain here with all that's here. Nothing'll change, except all my posts will now be at my new community. There are already a few of the newest entries there, if you'd like to go see, and all the memories will be linked to here (until I make new ones. :D).

Thanks, everyone, for all the friends that have come by this journal. You guys are all so awesome and never fear, for I shan't give up teh funneh. :D

Love!
--Teh Hales

iconicallyhales — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 01:30:25 GMT

My friend asked me to give her a tutorial for an icon I made recently, and I descided that I'd share it with others, 'cause goodness knows I always like to have a little help on my icons! XD Warning: This is a very thorough tutorial, so it might get a little boring. Those of you how are familiar with Photoshop, forgive me. ^^;

So, this tutorial will be for my "holdmyhand" icon which won Best Fits Lyrics in ygo_chorus and is used in my Puzzleshipping claim for iconfiend100. Note, this tutorial is for Adobe Photoshop 7.0 and I have no idea how it'd work in other programs. Sorry... ^^;

First, of course, you probably want to know what icon this tutorial is for:

I know, I know, it looks kind tough to do (at least for those of you who, like me, aren't grapics saavy.. most of this stuff I don't really understand what it does... I just play with the tools for a lack of anything else to do! XD), but believe me, it's suprisingly simple! :D

Well, with any icon you have to start with the original image. In this case, it's this image:

Snagged from Kokorononaka.net. Worship franthenut for the awesomeness that is that gallery! XD

Now that you've got the image, you need to resize it to 100x100. If you're not sure how to do that, you can see where the crop tool is here and the settings you'd want to set the crop tool for are here. The cropped image would look like this:

Usually, I feel that the image may be a tad bit blurry for my choice, so I will sharpen the image.

That's your base. It's important to keep that, because you'll need it later for the bounding box of Yuugi and Yami no Yuugi's hands. So, I suggest saving a copy of the base as a jpeg and keep it available for later. :D

With that aside, you can add, what I like to call, the pretties! These are a combination of brushes, overlays, and other doohickeys which I'm sure have a technical name, but I don't know them. :3

First, I desaturate the image to -60:

Then, I added an overlay of sorts to the original image. I snagged it from a tutorial put together by hobbit_hunter. ^^; It looks like this:
.
I open this doodad up (because it's saved as an image. I suggest you do the same, if you'd like to use it in the future. :D Don't credit me for it, though, 'cause I don't know who it came from...>>) And then I copy the image and paste the bugger over the base. It'll then give you two layers in the layer box. Now, unfortunetly, you won't be able to see teh Yuugis in your base, so you'll have to change your Master Opacity Channel to 50%. (click el link for the resulting image!)

Sadly, we're not done yet, but with this kind of icon, I think it's worth a little effort. XD

Now, you need to go back to your base and duplicate that layer. Take that new layer and move it above the overlay. The base will be on top and your overlay will dissapear. Again, you get to play with the Master Opacity Channel and change your new layer to 50%, but you also need to change the layer style to overlay.

It may not look different right now, but that will change, 'cause we have to duplicate another layer. This time, the overlay. Duplicate as shown with the base layer and move it above all the other layers so it's at the top. Again, change the Master Opacity Channel to 50% and also change the layer to overlay. It'll change the original image to a pretty purpleish color with little writing at the bottom:

Next, we add brushes!

Before I add the brushes, I find it helps to add/create a new layer. That way, if I screw up, I can always deleate the layer and not have to worry about starting over. XD You can do this by typeing Ctrl+Shift+N and a new layer popup will come up. Just press ok for now. ^^

The first brush (icon brush #5 by insomniac) I added (to the new layer) gave the light affect in the lower left and upper right corners. It's used twice to get the desire effect. The brush looks like this:
.
Now, of course, you have to rotate the canvus 180* to get the brush in the upper right hand corner because it's designed for the lower left. The brush also is in the color white or #FFFFFF. You can change all that by clicking on one of the colors shown in the toolbar. This will give you a Color Chooser popup and from there, you can change the color!

With the added brush:

It looks kinda funny with the white so bright, so I change the Master Opacity Level of that layer to 60%

Once you've added the brushes and rotated the image back to it's rightful direction, you can, if desired, add the border brush I used (again, by insomniac, but it's called iconbrush #1). It looks like this:

You can add it as white/#FFFFFF to the light affect layer:

Or, as I did, create a new layer and add the brush:

From here, you can add whatever text you want and be done with it, or you can, like I did, add the little box with the color version of their hands. This gets a little tricky, though.

Remember that extra base I had you save? Open that up again. With that base, you're going to using the Rectangle Marqui Tool and copy the small hand area. It helps to magnify the image.

With that part copied, go back to your prettified icon and paste it:

Sure, that seems rather simple, but it's the border that gets a little tricky and nitpicky. If you want, take a simpy border brush and resize it to fit the new hands layer:

This is what I did, but I also felt that all the white blended too much, so I added black lines surrounding the border with the Line Tool. Here's where it's kinda wonky, and feel free to skip if you want.

For each side, I added a new line, and this means I'll have 8 lines total, and each line is a new layer. To help change all those layers to the same one as the border, you'll want to merge. Do this by first selecting all desired layers that you want to merge (each little eye represents selected layers). Than, merge them.

You can also do this for the previous layers (ie, the overlays, brushes, and bases) as well! In fact, I suggest it, so that you can darken the icon by using the auto contrast. Only use the auto contrast for the base and not the hand box layer.

Finally, you're down to your finished base:

From here, you can add whatever text you want, using the text tool. For this icon, I used ITC Garamond in all lower case. I find that seperating each line of text into a new text box often helps in placing. :D

That's it! My result was this:

(I played with the color variations a little bit, but since I still don't understand how that works, I'll leave that tutorial for another day...)

And if I did my job right, it should be your's as well... ^^;

I hope that was helpful to some of you, at least those who got through it this far! XD I hope I didn't bore you too much. If you have problems with your icon or questions you'd like to ask, feel free to do so! I have no life! XD

iconicallyhales — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 21:53:24 GMT

.
.

First: As you can see, this journal is Friends Only. That means that if you want to be entertained by moi, you need to comment to be added.

Second: CREDIT! I work hard to bring you all teh funny, so please give me teh credit for it!

Third: For my insanity, those of you who are new and are going back through the posts of this journal, please only comment one or two times to let me know that you're browsing. Otherwise, my email box will cry muchly. Thanks! :D

Sneak Peaks
So you know what crazyness you're getting into...

Note: I've moved to iconicaly_hales which has open viewing. All new posts will be there, but all older posts will only be found here, which will remain FO.

I'm supposed to be studying...

iconicallyhales — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 07:07:42 GMT

Seto:

1. 2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

Others:

11. 12.

Yuugipods

13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

Creds: Besides the standard pic creds that can be found in my bio:
1. "Never tickle a sleeping dragon" in Latin. From Harry Potter
2. Boulevard of Broken Dreams ~Greenday
3. Promises by The Cranberries
6. Not really a disclaimer but...(*snicker*) Jetshipping pwns! XD
13-18. I do not own Apple IPods... (I wish I did... my dern cd player eats batteries like satan...)

I'm think my humor is lacking slightly... But it's late, so forgive me for teh crappyness...

Icons for the Not So Rich and Famous

MOVING!!!

I've moved to iconicaly_hales!! Different name, same results!!

Note: I've moved to iconicaly_hales which has open viewing. All new posts will be there, but all older posts will only be found here, which will remain FO.

I'm supposed to be studying...