ZENETIC

» 025; this is me on the regular so you know

ionizable — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 21:43:36 GMT

[ 55 ] » person of interest

[ 55 ] » total

this is an icon dump ._. i miss iconning

some (not all) available in 200x200 or 300x300, drop me a line and i can link u if u want!

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» 024; i caught up to try to get your name

ionizable — Thu, 21 May 2015 14:28:20 GMT

hallo

[ 40 ] » person of interest

[ 40 ] » total

well it has been over two years since i last posted here. whooee

anyway i know my modus operandi was that i'd post my weirdass icons and ramble about each and every single one in extensive hover text, BUT i am presently about to leave on a trip and therefore these are being posted now or never (so, now)

that's it, that's all, i just really love this show and w o w it really shows that i haven't been making icons for over two years. haaahaha. haha yikes

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» 023; sache que je serais une femme changée

ionizable — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:45:57 GMT

YYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY I FINISHED THIS ROUND!!!

[ 35 ] » 20inspirations: round #25

[ 35 ] » total

alright. so. i had paragraphs of text here. but i decided to put them in hover text paragraphs on top of the icons so that nobody needs to look at any of those words unless they really wanted to (hah). ANYWAY. here are some other things i talked about that were hard to fit into icon-specific blurbs:

SAVE BOMB GIRLS

REALLY THOUGH

PLEASE :(

so ya i'm basically turning this post into an ode to the fabulosity of bomb girls. a dedication to its amazingness. a memorandum of its tragic underratedness. and if you've ever seen me complaining about all the things i wished they'd done differently on twitter, know that it's because i love it so much that i want it to be the very best that it can be, only THAT CAN'T HAPPEN UNLESS IT GETS RENEWED.........

other things i'd like to say about this post:
- there are no and there will never be any icons of Clifford Fakey McFake Accentson because he got more screentime in the series finale than vera did and that is JUST. A CRIME. NOBODY ASKED YOU TO JOIN THE SHOW, CLIFFORD. NOBODY EXCEPT GLADYS' VAGINA AND AS MUCH AS I LOVE GLADYS AND HER LIBERATED, FORWARD-THINKING ATTITUDE OF LETTING HER LADYPARTS DO THE THINKING FOR HER, I CANNOT CONDONE THAT PARTICULAR BAD DECISION IN A SERIES BASICALLY CHOCK FULL OF GLADYS' BAD DECISIONS.
- i'm sad i didn't make more icons of gladys and her face.
- there are a lot of icons of betty, and kate, and betty and kate. i'm sorry about that, but not really #yolo
- oh. whoops. i barely made any icons of lorna, and zero for mr. lorna. maybe next time
- i'm stopping myself from talking any more in an effort to distract you all from the mess that is this post now
- i lied, i have one last point. YAY YAY this is a normal post! i mean, aside from the mess, it's NORMAL. no more pink-only icons for me, no sirree.

blocking | stock | pastel | down the rabbit hole | minimalism

vibrant | border | faceless | retro | chiaroscuro

obscure crops

artist's choice

alts & rejects (21-25)

alts & rejects (26-30)

alts & rejects (31-35)

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comments are appreciated, concrit is welcome!
please credit either ionizable or zenetic if using.

» 022; 20 shades of pink

ionizable — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 07:22:12 GMT

post title © superjesster

hi. this post is full of pink and full of barbies and of COURSE this is the first entry i ever make to 20inspirations, i mean... of course. anyway you can blame this entire post on superjesster, spittingfish, and/or fancifull. i'm not sure who exactly is at the root of the actual cause of all of this, but i'm happy to equally blame all three for haranguing me about these icons and putting the idea into my head at all. special s/o to orangeinsanity who showed me these dumb stupid dumb videos in the first place, then actually started quoting them with me (loudly) in the middle of the sidney smiths lounge, then bought me THIS SHIRT for valentine's day and i am actually sure that mpgis is a large part of why we are now "best" friends.

[ 30 ] » 20inspirations: the most popular girls in school

[ 30 ] » total

the theme for this round was mood rings, which would be fantastic and amazing FOR ANY OTHER CLAIM. but how many moods, emotions, etc etc feelings can you really ever attribute to a stop-motion dollar store barbie? as it turns out, at least 20, and all of them can be twisted into relating to some sort of variation of pink. or. that is what i am telling myself. i am telling myself that pink is usually associated with vapid one-note girls (not that i condone this belief in any way, since pink is (was) MY FAV COLOUR, but... wait a minute...) and surprise! what are barbies!

watch me never make another pink icon again for the rest of my life. i miss greens. i have also lost the ability to look at purple and not think it is just a very dark magenta that i could possibly squash into this post one way or another. why did i do this to myself again??

hover over each icon for the supposed mood i was supposedly aiming for

alts

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comments are appreciated.
please credit either ionizable or zenetic if using.

» tutorial 014; dark of the morning, it comes without a warning

ionizable — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 08:43:48 GMT

Requested by cool_spectrum!

» » »

A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for the Mountains guild battle at iq_coliseum.
» Program: Photoshop CS5. Vibrance and topaz are used.
» Difficulty: Easy!
» Okay this is actually a really quick icon to make, I don't... understand how I ended up writing so much? I was like "Oh yeahh let's knock off one more tutorial! This one's nice and short! Simple!" and then of course I get super tl;dr and want to talk about everything forever. Of course.

Here's the original cap of Seo In Guk's qt little confused face, from the first episode of Answer Me 1997 (fabulous, fabulous show, btw. I highly, highly urge you all to check it out, even if you're not into kdramas. It's just so cute and emotional and aljkfdsdjf I love it so much. High school dramas are usually insufferably cliched, but this was quaint, quirky, poignant, and surprisingly heartfelt? The friendships just all tug at your heart? The way they handled the gay storyline was just ;; heartbreak forever and yet also it was so great and optimistic and lovely? Nvm about the ending though, the ending was so cheeseballs and terrible, I can't believe I love this show as much as I do with a pander-y ending like that bahah)

Um. Right, so, there isn't much you can really do with this cap (sorry about that, to everyone in my guild btw! haha I need to work on my battle cap choosing skills D:) so let's just crop it down and focus on his facial expression and see if we can accentuate the funny shapes all over his face. hehe

~~This is a very, very simple icon (not very many steps at all!) so I'll spend more time talking about the crop than I normally do. haha~~ (I said that when I first started writing this tutorial and NOW LOOK WHAT HAPPENED. I should never give myself permission to talk more, omg?)

01. The way the light's playing off one side of his face and hitting his nose, in contrast with the shadow on the other side of his face and from his glasses, was just ultimately the most intriguing thing about this cap to me. I also really liked the furrow from his eyebrow, and the way his mouth was sort of being really petulant, so I tried to just get as much of all of that in as possible. The yellow of his shirt stood out to me as well, but I wasn't able to get as much of that in the crop as I'd hoped for. In the end, though, I think it worked out.

» »

02. Let's start with some basic prep work, then. Duplicate the base (CTRL-J) and set it to screen 100%, then copy merge everything (CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-E). Gaussian blur that top layer at 3.0 pixels (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR) and then surface blur it at radius 8 and 18 pixels (FILTER > BLUR > SHAPE BLUR).

»

03. Set that blurred layer to soft light 100%. At this point it was a little too bright for my tastes, so I went back down to the screened layer and set the opacity to 75%.

04. Now let's get started on colouring. Create a vibrance layer (+100) (or saturation +35 for similar results).

»

05. Create a black to white gradient fill layer, at 36.86 degrees so the shadows in his face can really be emphasized, and with the scale down to 75% for a harsher transition. Set it to soft light 100%.

»

06. Time for colouring via curves! Let's start with the red channel. First, drag the point in the bottom left corner over to the right a little bit (0, 13). This makes the shadows darker and less red.

»

07. Then, drag the top right corner over to the left a little bit (255, 246). This makes the light spots brighter and more red.

»

08. Now let's create a new point (still in the red channel) at (176, 169). Arching the curve by raising it in the top right quadrant usually serves to infuse the colour of the channel you're working in throughout the bright spots of the icon first, and then as you make the arch more dramatic, it infuses red throughout the other parts of the icon. We won't go too crazy in this icon, because all I wanted was just a little bit of warmth and contrast, and we can get that from yellows rather than reds, a little later on.

»

09. One more point in the red channel, this time at (71, 84). This time, by lowering the curve in the bottom left quadrant, we're doing essentially the opposite from the last step; this reduces the amount of the colour of the channel we're working in (so less red, basically), starting at the shadows first.

»

10. Okay, now let's head over to the green channel. (Yes, we're still stuck on this same single curves layer. BAHaha) Edge the bottom left point over to the right (0, 9), to continue to make the shadows darker and this time, less green.

»

11. Edge the top right point over to the left (255, 245), to -- yes -- make the light spots brighter and a little more green.

»

12. Okay, basically the same thing in the blue channel now! The blue channel is actually my fav channel to really get drastic with the changes. You'll see. I decided I didn't want to make the shadows too yellow (which is what you get when you want to make something less blue, in curves?), so instead I just went straight to making the bright spots a little brighter and bluer.

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13. (185, 172) to continue to make the icon feel a little brighter, a little cooler overall.

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14. And now let's mess that all up by making the next point (53, 83) to just really make that a moderately dramatic curve. Green! Yellow! Shadows!

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15. Okay, final steps in this same single curves layer. Head back to the RGB channel, and this is where we'll do some final brightness/contrast work. Create a new point (168, 153) to make everything, esp the lighter spots, brighter.

»

16. And then bring it down again (55, 59).

This is usually my standard method of colouring with curves. Idk why, I guess I just like being able to click points and drag them all over the grid and look at how the brightness/contrast and colour strength changes according to the position relative to the curve. If you noticed, I didn't touch the green(/magenta) curve, and went a little overboard on the blue(/yellow) curve because I had an idea that I wanted this icon to end up fairly yellow, but not tooooo far into green or red either way. I also knew that I wanted the icon to have drastic lighting, which is why the brights are so bright right now (otherwise I would have dragged the RGB curve down on the right side to darken everything a bit).

It's totally possible to create more points and mess with the curve a little more to do funky things with colours and contrast, but I'm simple and like looking at S's because sinusoids are neat and polynomials are gross. Also I find that once I start creating new points I just never stop clicking and then the image quality is so messed up I have to delete everything anyway. But that's just me lmao I only have a tenuous grasp on understanding what I'm doing in this layer anyway so I usually tend to stick to the same techniques ahhaha

»

17. Okay let's finally move on. This texture, by ???, picked out haphazardly because I probably saw those colours in my folders and thought "oh yellow yes good" and set to screen 25%.

18. Now a colour balance layer! I like using colour balance for contrast too. I like using everything for contrast tbh

SHADOWS: -30, -15, -10
MIDTONES: 0, -20, 0

» »

19. This texture by tinebrella, gaussian blurred at 2.5 (I KNOW. SACRILEGE. But all I wanted for this icon at this point was just more colour) and set to screen 25%.

»

20. Take another gradient fill layer, only this time instead of black to white, go from a dark purple (#581d47) to lightish brown (#9d8753). I know that's kind of a weird yucky sounding colour combo but set it to 35.22 degrees and soft light it at 100% anyway. Woowww check out how rich the purples made the shadows! And how nice the background behind him is now. See? See? Purple and brown can mix okay.

» »

21. Almost done :) Let's head over to Topaz Clean, now. This step isn't absolutely necessary (careful sharpening could prob also do the trick) but I am a big ol' sucker for topaz and use it everywhere so.

I don't remember the exact settings, but I always start off with the Crisp preset, and lower the strength to either 0 or 1. In this case I think it was 1, and the accent was lowered down anywhere between 0 and 3. Then I took a layer mask to try to reduce the oversharpening he was starting to get around his glasses and shirt edges, as well as the oversmoothing on his chin.

»

22. One more black to white gradient fill layer, this time -55.3 degrees because the texture in step 19 washed out the top left of the icon around his eye a little too much, with the scale set to 150% so it's a very general, gradual transition between the two colours. Set it to soft light 50%.

» » »

24. Finishing touches! Copy merge all, then sharpen via paint daubs (FILTER > ARTISTIC > PAINT DAUBS > 1, 1) and set the opacity to 50%. It's still a little too sharp in some areas, so I layer masked out the problem areas. Aka everywhere apparently.

25. Copy merge everything and set it to soft light, 25%.

26. Finally, copy merge everything again and (this is just me being nitpicky but) take the blur tool and lightly go over the bridge of his glasses where they were a bit too oversharp. There. At this point I finally forbade myself from tweaking any more tiny little things. ahah

Comments would be great! If you need clarification on anything, or have any suggestions/comments/concerns ("why was this so long? when you had all of like 17 layers??? tl;dr"), feel free to let me know!! If there are any other icons you'd like to request, pop on over here and ask away! (｡◕‿◕｡)

p.s. WHAT? I'M ON TUTORIAL 14 ALREADY??? FOURTEEN? how?? omg. you guys are the best ;; i can't believe ppl have asked me about all these icons despite the fact that i stink at writing and ;; ;; ;; thank you? fourteen is just such a weirdly huge number? aaahhh

» tutorial 013; i'm sure you'll tell me anything under the sun

ionizable — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:18:43 GMT

Requested by cool_spectrum!

» » »

A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for the Mountains guild battle at iq_coliseum.
» Program: Photoshop CS5. Vibrance was used, but that can be replaced with saturation layers. The Topaz filter was also used, but it could probably be skipped.
» Difficulty: Easy.
» This icon is basically just an exercise in injecting colour and slapping on grunge textures.

Here's the original cap we'll be working with.

» »

01. The first thing I did was a pretty boring crop -- centered, with as much of the landscape visible as possible. This leaves a lot of open space up at the top, so let's fill that in with a new colour layer underneath (#bfc5d3) matching the colour of the sky nearest the mountains, so that when we try to smudge/smooth it over later, we won't have to take as much care near the details of the mountainscape.

» »

02. Now what we want to do is make the difference between the sky in the cap and the fake sky colour in the background less noticeable. If you go back and look at the last step, you'll see a straight, jarring line between lighter parts of the sky with the darker colour we picked out for the fake sky extension. So to get rid of that, let's copy merge everything into a new layer (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E) and gaussian blur it at 2.0 (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 2.0). Now create a layer mask and hide all the blurriness that doesn't have anything to do with the line between where the cap ends and where the new fake sky starts.

» »

03. Copy merge everything, and then duplicate it and set it to screen 100%. Now we're going to use a technique I am PRETTY sure I jacked from someone else (proooobably fouroux, I think): copy merge everything after that, and then gaussian blur it at 3.0 pixels, then surface blur it (FILTER > BLUR > SURFACE BLUR) at radius: 8 and pixels: 18.

»

04. Now we're going to want to set the gaussian/surface blurred layer to soft light 100%. Since it's now way too bright, go back and go down to the screened layer and set it only to 50%. There we go. That looks a little better.

05. Alright, let's start injecting colour, now. New vibrance layer (+100) (or a hue/saturation layer +40). That in itself does wonders, but the fake sky colour in the background got lightened too much in the previous screen/soft light steps, so let's start working on that next.

» » »

06. Create a new, deep blue layer (#0a3194), then set it to overlay. Yikes! Layer mask time, so the only deep blue saturation visible will be the blues that occur in the sky. There we go. Soft. Nice. Pretty.

07. Selective colouring layer! Time to cool everything down by bringing out the blues and greens.
REDS: -30, 0, +75, 0
GREENS: +100, +25, +100, +50
CYANS: +100, +65, -40, 0
BLUES: +100, 0, +100, 0

»

08. It's a little flat looking, so let's create a black-to-white gradient fill layer. Let's make the direction 41.19 degrees (so it's darker at the bottom left, to even out the bottom right), scale 150% (to smooth out the transition between black to white), set to soft light 75%.

09. New vibrance layer (+100), or hue/saturation (+25), so we can see the blues and greens a little more clearly.

»

10. New orange colour fill layer (#cc8c48), soft light 50% to warm things up a bit.

» » »

11. Now this texture by fuuurs, set to screen 40%. Katniss' face got a little too washed out with that, so layer mask a little bit off her face.

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12. This texture, by ??, set to soft light 65% to brighten things up.

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13. Then this texture, by innocent_lexys, set to screen 25%.

14. Another vibrance +100 layer (or saturation +30).

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15. Copy merge everything, then use the Topaz Clean filter. In this case I don't remember my exact settings, but I'm certain the accent was set down to zero and the strength settings fairly low so that the details weren't completely overwhelmed. The outcome is still pretty strongly topazed, though, so let's just set the opacity for this down to 50%.

» »

16. This texture... of mine... set to screen 100% and moved around (since it's larger than 100x100) until I felt like the right parts of the icon were getting lightened.

17. At this point, the blues in the mountains are getting a bit too unnaturally neon, a bit overpowering, so: new selective colouring layer:
CYANS: -100, +17, +100, +33

18. Let's bring some contrast back now, with a new auto curves layer.

»

19. But again, the sky gets washed out, so let's do some more colouring. Taking a light blue (#79b0d4), brush over the sky and a little bit of the mountains and set it to normal, 50%.

» »

20. This texture by me, cropped so the cloud portion fits properly, set to multiply 70% to add a little tiny bit of interest to the sky portion.

» »

21. This texture, by tinebrella, set to screen 32% and layer masked so that most of the texture affects the cloud/sky portion again.

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22. Another texture by tinebrella, set to screen 40%.

23. Taking care of the neon-y mountains again, another selective colouring layer:
REDS +100, 0, 0, 0
YELLOWS 0, +42, +26, 0
CYANS -51, +38, +100, +27

24. Copy merge everything, set to soft light 40% for some more contrast.

»

25. This texture, by ???, set to screen 50%.

26. Needs some more contrast! New auto levels layer, set to 50%.

» » »

27. Let's colour in the sky a little more now. Take a very dark grey (#252b28), set to soft light 50%, with the portion that runs over into the mountains masked out.

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28. This texture, by midnight_road, set to screen 100%.

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29. Another black-white gradient fill layer at 19 degrees, scale 150%, set to soft light 100%.

» »

30. New vibrance +100 layer (or hue/saturation +35).

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31. New dark orange fill layer (#784830), set to soft light 100% so the grass gets a little warmer.

» »

32. Gaussian blur everything at 2.0 pixels, then set the opacity to 35% and mask out some of the parts that got too blurred.

» »

33. Vibrance +100 again, or hue/saturation +35, then layer masked so it's not too overwhelming.

» »

34. Sharpen via paint daubs (FILTER > ARTISTIC > PAINT DAUBS > 1,1), layer masked so it's not oversharpened.

35. More vibrance!

»

36. Black to white gradient fill layer, -167.47 degrees, scale 150%, set to soft light 15%. Voila!

As you can see, I clearly had no idea what I was doing throughout this icon and basically I was just slapping colours and textures and more colours and textures on willy-nilly. I think the basic takeaway point here is that you can inject as much colour as you want into an icon and as long as you can find the right gradients and textures to cover it up with, you can still somehow get the icon to come out with a crayon-y "intentionally" lq feel. I... don't know if that makes sense. I don't know what I'm saying anymore. It's late. This icon had more layers than I expected.

Comments would be great! If you need clarification on anything, or have any suggestions on how I can make these tutorials better, feel free to let me know!! If there are any other icons you'd like to request, pop on over here and ask away! (｡◕‿◕｡)

ionizable — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 03:19:06 GMT

Ask The Maker 4.0 || My Thread

» tutorials 010-012; well you can party with me in my castle

ionizable — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 07:07:01 GMT

Requested by zhaoxun! (LET'S PRETEND it didn't actually take me months to follow through on these reqs. D:)

» » »

A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for the Chapter One Main Quest: Adventure at theiconquest.
» Program: Photoshop CS5, but almost all of the techniques should be transferable. However, the topaz filter was used and accounts for a lot of the way the icon turns out.
» Difficulty: Easy.

Here's the original photo of Yeeun that we'll be working from, courtesy of the DCWG daum cafe. This was taken at the Wonder Girls' Wonder World Tour in Seoul, July 7 2012.

All sorts of gloriousness is clearly happening in this picture, from Yeeun's hair to her fiercely silhouetted pose to the gorgeous stage lighting. So clearly it needed to be iconned.

01. But out of all the glorious things I could have iconned out of this picture, I chose to focus on her hair and the side profile of her face. Fairly simple crop.

» »

02. Now let's draw attention to the shadowy lightness of her hair. If that makes sense. All those strands? Let's just really accentuate them by abusing the topaz filter, ha ha. I like to use Topaz Clean, on the CrispStyle preset. Usually I fiddle around with the strength/accent settings so that the topaz effect doesn't come out too strong (in this case, I'd just discovered topaz, so I was a bit overexcited whenever I tried to use it haha. In retrospect I do think I could have lessened the effect a bit :x)

Besides fiddling with the various sliders in the topaz filter, creating a layer mask is a tried-and-true method of trying to make sure the topaz effect doesn't overwhelm the entire icon. In this case, since I was focusing on her hair, I just quickly masked out the topaz effects on all other parts of the icon with my mouse.

»

03. Alright, first real step: new auto curves layer, then two new points in RGB: 56, 33 and 173, 148. The first new point lightens the shadows, especially in the stage background behind her. The second new point brightens the bright strands of hair, and the background as well.

»

04. New colour fill layer, #bedbf9 (very light baby blue). Set it to soft light 100% to brighten everything right up, as well as to cool the impact of the heavy red and yellow tones.

05. Quick colour balance layer, on midtones: +10, -19, +13. This solidifies the magenta/blue direction we're going in.

»

06. This texture by lumsx, set to screen 100%.

»

07. This texture by midnight_road, set to screen 100% for some more light.

»

08. Copy merge everything (CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-E), gaussian blur (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 2.0), and set to soft light 100%. This makes everything just a whole bunch richer, and gets rid of some of the grittiness that came from the texture in step 06.

»

09. Yeah, okay, let's add some more light. This texture (maker ??? sorry sorry sorry :<), set to screen 100%.

»

10. Let's smooth out the almost-gradient going on in the background by copy merging everything again, and this time let's motion blur in the vague direction her hair is heading (15 degrees or so?), and maybe 10 pixels or so to blur it just a little but not too much. Set to soft light 100%.

» »

11. It's a little too blurry for me to look at now, so let's sharpen everything: FILTER > ARTISTIC > PAINT DAUBS > 1, 1.

Okay, now that's a bit too sharp in places, so a quick layer mask to smooth out the parts that were getting pixellated.

»

12. The gradient is way too drastic right now, so let's reverse that by adding a white-to-black gradient fill layer at 90 degrees, set to soft light 100%.

» »

13. The downside of adding a white soft light layer is that things get all yurky and gritty. So. Copy merge everything again, gaussian blur at 2.0 pixels, then desaturate it (CTRL-SHIFT-U) and set it to soft light 100%.

»

14. Everything's too washed out now, so let's add a new bright baby blue colour fill layer (#6cdfe9) and set it to colour burn 100%.

»

15. The transition between blue and magenta seems a bit too drastic right now, so let's add one final blue colour fill layer (#3580fd) and set it to soft light 100%. Tada!

» » »

A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for the Chapter One Main Quest: Adventure at theiconquest.
» Program: Photoshop CS5. Vibrance is used, but that can be easily substituted with a hue/saturation layer.
» Difficulty: Easy.

Ugh. Ugh Sohee why are you so. Ugh. So perfect.

This was taken at the same concert as the previous Yeeun photo.

01. The first thing I did was crop it down, then smudge away the billboard watermark so I could get a nice, dramatic, evenly distributed center crop.

»

02. Alright, first, let's lighten everything up with an auto curves layer. Two new points in RGB: 94, 49 (to lighten all the shadows) and 196, 134 (to brighten everything else too).

03. New vibrance layer (+100) shows the hints of blue in the background.

» »

04. So, okay, yeah, let's build on those blues. Take this texture by midnight_road and set it to soft light 100%. I had to take the smudge tool and smudge some of the parts that were overpowering, especially the hexagonal shapes and the red in the bottom right corner.

» »

05. This texture, again by midnight_road, gaussian blurred at 15.0 pixels, then set to soft light 100%. This adds a bit more colour and also lightens part of the radial shape on the right hand side.

»

06. One of my favourite ever lighting textures, by happy_harper13, set to soft light 100%. Look at that. Look at how easily it evened out the radial shape on the left.

»

07. Alright, well, it's gritty and yucky, so let's go to my fix-all for that: copy merge everything, gaussian blur at 2.0 pixels, and then set it to soft light 100%.

»

08. This texture, by sinking_theship, set to screen 100% so the blacks aren't black anymore and everything is more or less smoothly blue, yay \o/

»

09. Copy merge everything and gaussian blur it at 2.0 pixels, then set it to soft light 100% again.

» »

10. Finally, sharpen (FILTER > ARTISTIC > PAINT DAUBS > 1, 1), then layer mask out the parts that got too sharp.

I was really uncomfortable with how quickly I finished this icon, since normally I add in 2398552 more steps, but people told me to leave it alone, so... I did. So. Tada!!!!

» » »

A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for round 3 at nikita_20in20.
» Program: Photoshop CS5. Vibrance is used, but you can easily substitute that with a subtle hue/saturation layer.
» Difficulty: ? This tutorial is going to consist of a lot of random textures slapped on for no particular discernible reason. My process was basically "let's throw everything on and see what sticks"......... I would just like to disclaim up here that I don't believe this is an effective iconning method for anyone ever ˚⌇˚

Here's the original screencap from Nikita 2x08, from disparue, I think.

» » »

01. I was feeling particularly lazy while cropping this icon, so it was just a quick center crop trying to get as much of only her in it. Usually I don't sharpen (FILTER > ARTISTIC > PAINT DAUBS > 1, 1) at the beginning, but for some reason that's what I opened with here. Then a quick layer mask over part of her hair that got a little bit too sharpened.

02. A vibrance +100 layer to bring out some of the hidden colours.

»

03. New auto curves layer for the contrast, then two new points in RGB: 75, 56 and 181, 160 to brighten everything up.

04. Another vibrance +100 layer.

»

05. This texture, by ellaangelus, set to soft light 100%.

»

06. This texture, by mosaically, set to screen 100%.

»

07. This texture, by paytheboy, set to screen 100% for some more grittiness.

»

08. Another auto curves layer to add contrast back in.

»

09. A blue colour fill layer (#253d7f), set to soft light 100% to bring out her clothing.

»

10. This texture by paytheboy, set to soft light 100% to brighten up her face.

»

11. This texture, by spud66cat, set to colour burn 25%.

»

12. Go back down to the base, duplicate it, drag it up to the top, and gaussian blur it at 2.0 pixels before setting it to soft light 100% to soften some of the grittiness that came from setting all those light textures to soft light.

»

13. New orange colour fill layer (#ca9e49), set to soft light 50% to make her look less green-y.

»

14. This texture, by mm3butterfly, set to soft light 35% to lighten things up.

15. Quick colour balance to tone down the greeny-yellowness and make a little more reddish: midtones +12, +1, +20.

» »

16. This texture, also by mm3butterfly, flipped vertically (EDIT > TRANSFORM > FLIP VERTICALLY) and set to soft light 50%.

17. New vibrance layer, +100.

18. New selective colouring layer:
YELLOWS 0, 0, +18, 0
CYANS -100, 0, -100, -100
BLUES -100, -33, -100, +100

» » »

19. This texture, yet again! by mm3butterfly, flipped horizontally, then smudged so its effect would be softer after being set to screen 90%.

»

20. New grey-to-black gradient map (#d9e6dd), set to soft light 100%.

» » » »

21. This texture by ellaangelus, desaturated, then IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST -25, +100 before being stretched horizontally (CTRL-T) and smudged and messed around with before being set to screen 100%.

»

22. Let's reintroduce some contrast with another auto curves layer and two more new RGB points: 59, 72 and 166, 168 to darken things a little more.

»

23. This texture by ellaangelus set to soft light 50%.

24. New selective colouring layer:
YELLOWS 0, -11, +100, 0

» »

25. New vibrance +100 layer, layer masked over the bottom left since we're not interested in making that part stand out.

26. New selective colouring layer:
CYANS +100, 0, -50, 0

»

27. New teal layer (#3a7c74) set to soft light 30%.

28. New colour balance layer, midtones: +15, 0, 0.

»

29. Copy merge everything, desaturate it, gaussian blur at 2.0 pixels, then set it to overlay 100%.

30. Finally, sharpen it (FILTER > SHARPEN > UNSHARP MASK). tada १|˚–˚|५

Comments would be great, aaaaaand YEEESSS I have finally completed all the icons that were requested here. Let's just pretend those weren't months and months and months ago, okay. Let's also pretend I didn't decide to finish these just so I wouldn't have a guilty conscience when I try to participate in the next one HAHA ●︿●

ionizable — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 19:32:32 GMT

ICON REMAKE - JOIN IN!-My Thread

» 021; i'm just sayin it's fine by me

ionizable — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 04:25:59 GMT

mini(?) icon dump! here are some icons from the past few months, made for turbo_lims and this enormous battle at theiconquest, as well as gifs from half of miss a's don't need a man mv. ik ik i'm super late with these gifs lol but i figured if i sat on them any longer hoping to finish the entire mv, i'd end up with 100 and/or i might never post them. so for now here's half, i might get around to the rest later but i have a sneaking suspicion i'll just end up making gifs from all the pitch perfect trailers and interviews ever before that happens, lol.

omw look at all those tags. yikes. i promise my next post is going to be fandom-centric instead of how scattered everything has been lately. :s

[ 18 ] » theiconquest mountains guild battle: answer me 1997 (1), the hour (3), bomb girls (1), emma (1), community (1), king arthur (2), once upon a time (1), new girl (1), homeland (1), the hunger games (1), batman returns (1), the hollow crown (1), the king's speech (1), lord of the rings (1)
[ 07 ] » turbo_lims: the fades (2), chuck (1), stardust (1), legend of the seeker (1), the avengers (1), the amazing spiderman (1)
[ 45 ] » miss a: don't need a man

[ 70 ] » TOTAL

01-05
06-10
11-15
16-20
21-25

26-30
31-35
36-40
41-45
46-50
51-55
56-60
61-65
66-70

resources | affiliates | watch
comments are appreciated.
please credit either ionizable or zenetic if using.

» tutorial 009; all i am is a body adrift in water, salt and sky

ionizable — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 17:16:05 GMT

» » »

A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for the Chapter One Sidequest: Colour Palettes at theiconquest.
» Program: Photoshop CS5.
» Difficulty: Easy.

Requested by zhaoxun! Sorry this took so long :')

Here's the original screencap we'll be working from, courtesy of homeofthenutty :)

While I was making this icon, I was working on getting it to match the third colour in the palette above (the light green).

I think I'd selected the colour I was going to work towards before picking out a cap, and then when I came across the cap of Harry in the field the colours already seemed to be halfway there. For some reason I thought it'd make my colouring job easier... but as you'll see, I still needed a ridiculous number of steps to get there. Oh well, lol.

» »

01. So first, I made about the most basic crop you could possibly make for this cap, lol. It's super dark, so I made a new auto curves layer and created two new points in RGB: (85, 67) to brighten up the shadows and (180, 173) to brighten everything else a little bit as well.

02. Alright, let's see if we can get some of those greens to reveal themselves before we start having to force them out: new vibrance layer, +100.

»

03. This texture by 3psy, set to screen 100%, adds just the tiniest hint of grunge and lights up the edges a little bit.

» »

04. I decided I wanted to get rid of some of the yellow tones, so I went hunting for a blue texture and found this one by ellaangelus. After flipping it horizontally (EDIT > TRANSFORM > FLIP HORIZONTALLY), I set it to soft light 60%.

»

05. Alright, let's introduce some greens in here with a colour fill layer (#7ccc63) set to soft light 100%.

»

06. This texture by ellaangelus does so much for lighting, and all you ever have to do is set it to soft light 100%. I ♥ it with every fiber of my iconmaking being ♥

»

07. Another one of my favourite textures, set to soft light 75% this time. This one's by sinking_theship, and it does glorious lighting and gradient things at the same time as getting me a step closer to the light green I'm working towards.

»

08. Next, I picked out this texture, obviously by tinebrella, because 1) just look at it, all of it. Why not use it and hope some of its perfection will rub off on my icon? and 2) It's green! (...Obviously I have a very picky process when picking out textures.)

»

09. Alright, what this icon is lacking right now is some depth, and to do that, my favourite method is to go back and duplicate the original base, drag it up to the top, gaussian blur it (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 2.0) and then set it to soft light. Usually the original base is pretty dark, too, which always helps to add some shadows.

»

10. The greens are getting a bit too... green... for where I need this icon to be, so by using a soft light pink colour fill layer (#d3a8a5) it gets brightened up a bit and there's a hint of warmth added too, to make it a little more yellow.

»

11. I decided I liked that effect and wanted to continue in that vein of lightening things up, so I went and copy merged all (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E), gaussian blurred it, and set it to screen 35% for a soft, bright effect.

»

12. Alright, let's get started on matching the colour in the palette. Make a fill layer with the colour to be matched, and set it to multiply 100%.

Well, that doesn't look like the colour we were aiming for, at all.

»

13. So take the same colour, and set it to screen 50%.

»

14. We're not done mucking it up yet! Let's reverse some of the effects of the multiply layer and brighten it a little more now by taking this texture by lessrest and setting it to soft light 47%.

»

15. Now let's try to bring the shadows back. Copy merge everything, gaussian blur it at 2.0 pixels, desaturate it (CTRL-SHIFT-U), then go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST (-10, +100). Set it to soft light 100% and voila! Some contrast! (But... not really.)

»

16. It's not enough, right? So let's go back and duplicate the base, drag it up to the top, and FILTER > OTHER > HIGH PASS (10.0), then set it to soft light 100%. This calms down and desaturates some of the intensely blurry yellows, and brings back some of the original sharpness and contrast of the base.

»

17. This texture, by lessrest, is going to be perfect to add some subtle little movement and lines. First, desaturate it, then decrease the brightness -100.

»

18. But if we were to set that to screen, it would be too overpowering, so let's go and decrease the brightness -50 and increase the contrast +100 before we finally set it to screen 100%.

»

19. Everything's a little too washed out still, so let's take a dark yellow (#606043) and set it to soft light 100%.

»

20. More! Copy merge everything, desaturate, then set it to soft light 100%.

»

21. Alright, we're going to try to get closer to the colour now, and we're going to use IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > MATCH COLOUR. But! we're not going to use the actual colour we want to match, since it'll make everything entirely too dark (similar to when we used multiply & screen fill layers before). So instead, open a new canvas and fill it with a similar, but lighter, colour.

Now we're going to use the match colour tool. Set the Source: to the canvas filled with the colour we're going to match, and make sure Layer: is set to Merged. Play around with the settings until you get a good result; luminance brightens/darkens (I used 80 in this case), colour intensity is similar to a specific vibrance (185), and fade affects the opacity of the fill (75).

»

22. And again, pump up the contrast!! Take a black to white gradient map and set it to soft light 100%. Ahhhhh, it's starting to look way better.

»

23. Sharpening time! FILTER > ARTISTIC > PAINT DAUBS > (1, 1), with a layer mask to mask out the parts that get too pixellated.

Ok like sometimes I wonder why I wait so long and always leave sharpening to the end because LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE. It's just... everything just gets clearer and looks less yucky and sdlkfj this is my favourite part of making an icon, when I sharpen it and everything looks much less crappier than it did before. (lol, idk)

» »

24. And this is the part where I thought the colouring was boring and this icon needed an extra oomph. So, copy merge everything, duplicate it, then flip the lower layer vertically to go along with those barely noticeable vertical lines running through the entire icon.

On the top layer, use the rectangular marquee tool on a fixed size setting (width 94 px, height 100 px) and create a new layer mask so the previously hidden flipped layer can be seen in bars.

And uh this seemed like a good place to end this icon ◔_◔

Comments would be great, and if you have anything else you'd like to ask, feel free to continue to hit me up here! I'm still working through the last few tuts haha (─‿‿─)

» 020; i'm working on a drawing a straight line

ionizable — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 03:58:25 GMT

omg. so, well, it's been a really long time since i've made an icon post, but i've been making them sporadically here and there for various comms (hogwarts_elite, koreanelite, theiconquest, the7days, iconbattling, icon_talk, 21tvthrowdown, probably more that i've forgotten...) anyhow, i figured i'd just go ahead and post them here, and hopefully next time i won't wait so long to make a post, LOL. idk if you can really tell in the whole mess that is this post, but i've been trying all sorts of things recently & that's why everything everywhere looks so different haha

also! i've got a gif request post open, go ahead and check it out if there's a split second of a video that you want to get an icon-sized gif of. it's going to stay open for~~ever~~ an unspecified amount of time, but as long as it's open, you can go ahead and request as many as you'd like. at the bottom of this post are the ones for lazmy-- let me know if you need anything else! i ended up having to split everything up haha, i forgot how picky lj is with the number of frames. i've still got most of the .psds and caps for now, so changes/modifications are entirely possible :)

[ 12 ] » films: harry potter (9), the chronicles of narnia (1), snow white and the huntsman (2)
[ 30 ] » kpop: wonder girls (27), apink (2), snsd (1)
[ 07 ] » kdramas: dream high (1), answer me 1997 (2), history of a salaryman (2), equator man (2)
[ 22 ] » tv: game of thrones (8), nikita (3), chuck (3), the vampire diaries (1), damages (1), community (1), better off ted (1), raising hope (1), psych (1), shameless (1), party down (1)
[ 10 ] » gif requests for lazmy

[ 81 ] » TOTAL

01-04
05-08
09-12
13-16
17-20
21-24
25-28
29-32
33-36
37-40
41-44
45-48
49-52
53-56

» wg gifs
57-60
61-64
65-68
69-71

» gif reqs
(lazmy)
72-75
76-79
80-81

resources | affiliates | watch
comments are appreciated.
please credit either ionizable or zenetic if using.

» open gif request post!!

ionizable — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 04:53:23 GMT

hello, hello!

i don't have much time to go out searching for gifs/videos to make gif icons from anymore (lbr i am a combination of lazy AND a perfectionist once i get around to starting something, so i get burned out after trying to gif ALL the frames lmao). i still really enjoy making them nonetheless, so let's try this out!

if there are any videos you'd like to get some lj gif icons for, feel completely free to fill out the form below and i'll get them done asap C:

just a few rules:
- please keep video sources to youtube, or alternatively be able to provide me with a download link
- you can request as many gifs as you'd like. please fill out the form separately each time in your comment, even if it's for the same video
- my specialty is facial expressions, so if there are full body scenes i can try to get them gif'd but there are no guarantees that you'll like the result, lol
- try to be reasonable with the length of the segment you'd like gif'd! higher quality gifs come from small bits with a maximum length of a few seconds, any more than that and i'll either have to split it up (which i don't mind doing) and/or give you a relatively lq gif

this post will be open indefinitely,
so don't worry about being "too late" to request any gifs!

ionizable — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 00:40:20 GMT

» tutorial 008; i want a girl with uninterrupted prosperity

ionizable — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 01:25:38 GMT

» »

A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for War 1, Trial 2 at 21tvthrowdown.
» Program: Photoshop CS5.
» Difficulty: Easy-moderate.

Here's the original screencap of Nikita from 1x22. In this scene she was toughing it out through a few broken ribs iirc, so I wanted to try and do something with the expression of pain on her face.

» »

1. First I sized it down and thought I'd emphasize the difference between the darkness of her clothing, and the brightness of her face. At the same time I didn't want to include the bright spot on her forehead, so I left that part out. The result was an overwhelming amount of black, which I thought would leave me room for textures or text or... something, later down the road.

Then I lightened everything the heck up by making a new curves layer, hitting auto, then adding two points on the RGB grid: (93, 64) and (185, 173). They picked up all the blacks and lightened up the lights, to the point where everything's all yucky and pixellated now.

So to address that, we'll just copy merge (CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-E) everything, gaussian blur it (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN) at 2.0, and set it to luminosity. It's waaay too blurry for my purposes right now... so let's just make it invisible by clicking the little eye next to the layer and leave the pixellation for now.

»
»
»

2. We'll come back to that in a bit, but for now, let's get some colouring started without being distracted by the blurriness. Set a light green colour fill layer (#8bcf43) to soft light 100%, then a texture by happy_harper13 set to soft light 100%, and then a dark green (#042a08) set to screen 100%.

Gross.

»

3. Copy merge all layers, gaussian blur it at 2.0, and set it to soft light 65% to reintroduce some depth.

Still gross.

» »

4. Oh well, let's just keep going.

Dark pink (#c35959) set to soft light 100% to make it look warmer, then a vibrance +100 layer to pick up the yellows.

» » »

5. Now we're going to modify this texture by midnight_road by rotating it 90 clockwise (EDIT > TRANSFORM > ROTATE 90 DEGREES CW) and fiddling with its brightness/contrast (IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST) by dimming it -50 and upping the contrast +100. Then set it to soft light 100% for some more bursts of colour.

»

6. This texture (by ???) was set to screen 100%. It's probably been desaturated, blurred maybe, and brightness/contrast fiddled with?

Anyway the point of this texture is to mess a little more with the lighting.

» » »

7. Alright, at this point I could finally no longer ignore the pixellation, so before I deal with the washed-outness, remember that blurred luminosity layer way down at the bottom? Make it visible again. Go back up to the top and copy merge everything and set that layer to soft light 100%. Then go back and make the luminosity layer invisible again.

As I am writing this tutorial out it has occurred to me that obviously I like to do things the difficult way instead of just using a simple layer mask. Idk I would probably make this icon much differently now, but wateva wateva

»

8. Okay, more adjustment layers now to even out the whites. Vibrance +100, then levels (19, 0.69, 255) to make everything darker.

»
»

9. Now a light brown (#936237) set to soft light 100% to make everything a little warmer.

Finally, another auto curves layer with two RGB points: (45, 63) and (146, 170) to make everything darker still.

» »

10. This texture by midnight_road, set to soft light 100%, is going to add some colour movement.

At this point I gave up and used the blur and smudge tools to get rid of the pixellation and deepen it all into blacks.

»

11. Now a black to white vertical gradient fill layer, scale 150%, set to soft light 77%.

Finally, copy merge all. This is what we're going to start blocking with.

HOKAY, time for part two! As you can see, whatever I've got right now is a big terrible mess. There's too much black overpowering the icon, and she's squished way up at the top because whatever I'd pictured was going to happen to this icon didn't end up happening. So let's hide all that by blocking!!!

Let me just preface this section by admitting that I'm really uncomfortable with blocking. I have no idea how to do it without just hitting buttons and going with my gut, and I have no idea what mathematically constitutes a well balanced block icon in terms of ratio and spacing and all that stuff. So... yeah. A lot of this next part is going to be basically "and hit this button and move it there and leave it because it doesn't look all that bad." Which, uh, now that I am reading that sentence, looks an awful lot like how the rest of this tutorial went anyway.

»

12. Alright, so let's just create a new 100x100 canvas and drag the copy merged layer from before onto this nice new one. Duplicate it and hide one of the copies in case everything gets messed up.

Let's start with cropping the most interesting part of this icon: her face. I think I randomly dragged across a part with the marquee tool and cut it out and then positioned it sort of in the center, because that's where I... I don't know, thought the focal point was going to be.

»

13. Again! Since I cut her chin off last time I decided to focus on that and her mouth this time. I could say I moved it to the right because of the movement of her face and how it seemed natural... but lbr I had no idea what I was doing.

Then I duplicated that layer and dragged it below the other layers before moving it up to the top. Now it sorta seems like her chin is moving in a straight diagonal line? That doesn't make sense, does it?

»

14. I liked the colours going on the top left of the original icon, so I cropped that out and moved it down to the bottom to fill some space.

Then one more crop getting some of her face, moved under the other layers.

»

15. It's getting weird now, so I decided to just go all the way weird and duplicated the original layer and moved it to the bottom of the stack. But the colours don't flow that well imo, so I stretched it vertically (CTRL-T) to get the greens back.

»
»

16. Okay, just a few (...lol) colouring steps left to sort of make the blocks look like they weren't just randomly cut up and pasted together, and then this'll be done. First, copy merged everything and that's going to be our new "base."

Then take a dark pink (#c35959), set to soft light 100%, and duplicate the base, gaussian blur it at 2.0, and set it to soft light 100%.

»
»
»

17. Much better looking already, but the blacks are overpowering things again. So this texture (by ???) was set to screen 15%.

Remember that midnight_road texture from before that gave great yellow/green lines? Bring it back and set it to soft light 100%.

Also bring back that happy_harper13 texture for some overall lighting at soft light 100%.

»

18. At this point I wanted to sharpen the icon, but before I could do that, I had to blur the lines between the blocks with the blur tool at around 20% or else they'd get oversharpened. Then I could sharpen (FILTER > ARTISTIC > PAINT DAUBS > 1, 1).

»

19. Final colours coming up! Green (#558713) set to soft light 100%.

» »

20. The edges of one of the blocks was still too sharp for my liking, so I blurred that.

Finally, reddish brown (#8d4b2e) set to soft light 100% for some more warmth. And tada!

Comments would be great, and if you have anything else you'd like to ask, feel free to hit me up here! I'm sloooooowly, but steadily making my way through the rest of these tutorials ahha :)

» textures 001; things start splitting at the seams and now

ionizable — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 03:27:01 GMT

i figured my crappy vacation pics might as well be put to some use LOL ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶

i dunno haha, i'm super dissatisfied with the last few icons i've made, but i don't want the last 20 posts in this comm to just be tutorials. IDK IDK just take these instead. this is my first texture set so i hope people out there won't find them completely useless ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ .rar ] [ .zip ]

resources | affiliates | watch
comments are appreciated.
please credit either ionizable or zenetic if using.

» tutorial 007; i drank the wine of youth, and ended up in a coma

ionizable — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 16:31:45 GMT

Phew, I needed a quick break from spamming my own comm with tutorials lol. The next post is going to be an icon post or bust, I promise, but for now: sorry for the wait, jsfunction, and here you are! :)

» »

A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for War 1, Trial 1 at 21tvthrowdown.
» Program: Photoshop CS5. Vibrance is used a lot (a lot a lot), but a hue/saturation layer should be able to replace it though.
» Difficulty: Easy.

Here's the original screencap of Michael from Nikita 1x22, courtesy of the now defunct disparue.org :(

As you can see, there's a lot of great movement happening in this image already, so I wanted to sort of make a nice simple icon emphasizing that motion. Which... was actually a lot harder than I'd expected the first time I tried, so I scrapped the first version and tried again with some healthy (?) texture vomit mixed in, in order to get what I eventually ended up with, lol.

»

1. Alright, the first thing I did was crop the original image (nothing special there), and then make a new curves layer. After hitting auto, I still wanted to brighten it up a lot, so I created two new points on RGB: 59, 32 and 189, 153. Both of these points raise the contrast, but not too harshly.

»

2. It's really grossly coloured right now, so let's fix that: new vibrance layer, +100 (or hue/saturation +35).

Okay, well, that didn't do as much as I had hoped. So let's force a bit of colour everywhere: new fill layer, red (#bc2020), set to soft light 100%.

» » »

3. It's super gross right now, but it's about to get grosser: take this texture by lumsx, gaussian blur it at 1.5 (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 1.5), and set to screen 100% to add some rough light blobs. We'll cover this up in a bit.

But first! More grossness of colour. Make a new gradient map layer, and click on the third preset (black and white). Instead of white, though, we're going to replace that with red (#ff0000).

» »

4. Now that we have sufficiently ruined this icon, let's try to salvage it by slapping on ten million and one textures and adjustment layers, yay. First, this texture, by youcallitwinter, set to soft light 100% to add some faint light blobs everywhere.

And now for the magic of auto levels!!! Under RGB, change the settings to: 0, 0.81, 255 to really light everything up.

» » »

5. This texture, by sinking_theship, set to screen 75% for some more light, since the blacks are starting to get waaay too black and heavy-looking.

I decided that the reddish pink of his neck was getting a little out of hand, and instead of going back and masking the texture layer that caused it (because I am lazy and would rather just cover up my mistakes than fix them), I decided to just try to make the entire icon a little more red so it wouldn't look as jarring. So I took this texture, by youcallitwinter, since it was conveniently red in the right spots and added a white blob to the part of his neck which was too red, and set it to soft light 75% for some more colour everywhere.

» » »

6. I really like this texture by spud66cat; it's got great lines and has the approximate sense of movement I originally wanted to add to this icon, anyway. So let's take it and make some changes to fit this icon.

I didn't want to start turning the icon yellow, so first, desaturate the texture (CTRL-SHIFT-U).

But now you can see that the shades of grey are all too similar to each other and also all too light! I already know I want to add this texture on under soft light, but at this rate you won't be able to distinguish the lines and the icon will get too washed out. To fix that, let's go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST and max the contrast (+100) and lower the brightness (-40). Then, finally, apply soft light 100%.

» » » »

7. Alright, more texture work! I took this one, also by spud66cat, because of the lighting and colour possibilities. I wanted to light the top half of the icon, so flip the texture vertically (EDIT > TRANSFORM > FLIP VERTICAL).

If you look at the direction of the light in the icon right now, specifically around his face and neck, you can see it's kind of going downwards to the left. So let's motion blur the texture to capitalize on that (FILTER > BLUR > MOTION BLUR). I can't recall what my exact settings were, but I basically made the angle somewhere between 70-80 degrees and the distance roughly 25-30 pixels or so.

The small lines of light going on are still a bit too defined for my taste, so I quickly gaussian blurred at 1.5 just to smooth everything out before setting it to screen 82%.

»

8. Not done with the last texture yet! I eventually noticed that the light blob over the top of his head was way too strong, so I grabbed a layer mask and a large very soft brush going over it, to get rid of that pretty quickly.

» » » »

9. More light blobs!! After desaturating this texture by happy_harper13, it was set to soft light 100%. This made the icon too dark in the corners for my tastes, so I masked out the corners using a large soft brush again.

»

10. Now it's time to go back and undo some of the hot mess I just made everywhere. Duplicating the base, from waaaay back down right at the bottom, I dragged it up and gaussian blurred it at 2.0 before setting it to soft light 100%. What this does is 1) adds some depth back into the shadows, and 2) adds some normalcy back to the insane colours I somehow managed to add.

»

11. Another levels layer to further bring out the blacks (0, 0.87, 255) and then a curves layer (auto, then under RGB two new points: 58, 64 and 165, 179) to increase the contrast a little more.

» »

12. Time to start on my finishing touches! Sharpen the icon while simultaneously increasing the contrast some more by copy merging all the layers (CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-E), then going to FILTER > OTHER > HIGH PASS > 10.0 and setting it to soft light 100%.

Then jack up the vibrance (+100) or saturation (+25) to really go crazy with the colours that're there, since the whole icon looks crazy by now anyway.

» » »

13. This texture, by lyckaa, desaturated and with the brightness -150 and contrast +100, then again contrast +50, adds a nice great bit of grunginess after being set to screen 50%.

»

14. The contrast got washed out again :( So let's make yet another auto levels layer to even out the contrast.

While we're at it, let's hit up another vibrance layer (+50), or saturation +15. Yay now there is a ton of contrast and a ton of colour and a ton of messiness!!

»

15. Almost done! Copy merge all to sharpen the icon (FILTER > ARTISTIC > PAINT DAUBS > 1, 1). Now normally I would go and mask out the parts that are too sharp, but in this case I figure the waaaaay oversharpness kinda works since the contrast and colours are also super heavy-handed right now.

» » »

16. Last finishing touch! This texture by rebel, which pretty much is perfect in terms of movement and pixellation to match the sharpness and colours we've got going on in the icon right now, set to screen 100% and nudged over a bit to give a sharp 1px line around certain sides (I don't really remember if I did this intentionally or accidentally though tbh). Anyway, I found parts of the texture overall to be distracting/overwhelming, so with a small light brush I masked those parts out.

And that is how this mess of an icon came to be!

Comments would be faaaabulous, and if you have anything else you'd like to ask, feel free to (please!) hit me up here! :)

» tutorial 006; you turn a cocooned shell into a butterfly

ionizable — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 04:14:35 GMT

There are three parts to this tutorial, since two icons were made out of the same prep work. The first icon was requested by liesmiths, and the second one was requested by zhaoxun! :)

» » » » or

A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for my first attempt at the main quest of chapter one at theiconquest.
» Program: Photoshop CS5. Vibrance is used, but it can be replaced with a hue/saturation layer.
» Difficulty: Easy-moderate!

To get to the different parts of this post:
[ 01 ] Initial prep work.
[ 02 ] Continuing to the wizard icon (this is the one that was requested by liesmiths).
[ 03 ] Continuing to the bard icon (this is the one that was requested by zhaoxun).

Here's the original image of Sohee we'll be working with. A ton of the fantaken pictures from their first Seoul concert have really great lighting and silhouettes everywhere, and this one just instantly grabbed me the moment I saw it.

» »

#01 Initial prep work

This is how both icons started out; it's basically just like making a base for the next two final icons.

»

1. The very first step is, as always, opening a new canvas. This time the dimensions are 900x900 and it's just a simple center crop. There's a small watermark off to the left, so I took a small, light brush and just quickly smudged it away. This is now the base I'll be working with.

» »

2. Looking at it, there's a lot of sharpness and contrast around the edges of her sides, so to get rid of that, I duplicated the base (CTRL-J), gaussian blurred it (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 2.0), and set it to screen 58% so that it softly brightens up the background and her edges without overwhelming the icon, since it's pretty bright as it is right now.

One last step before we start colouring: a new curves layer. After hitting auto, two new points were created: 69, 78 and 180, 55. These two points pump up the bright spots and keep the dark spots well contrasted at the same time.

»

3. This texture by ellaangelus on soft light 70% works as a great lighting and colouring gradient, and plays up the blues really nicely.

» »

4. By now you can see that the difference in light in the background is creating a bit of a line. Let's emphasize that by dragging this texture, again by ellaangelus, over to the canvas. Then apply a small gaussian blur (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 3.0) and set it to colour burn 20%.

(In case you're wondering, the difference between blurring it before you bring it to your canvas and blurring it after it's already on your canvas is that the latter will blur the texture on one of its sides, leaving a faint transparency, whereas the former will blur the contents of the texture but leave it a solidly filled 100x100. In this case I chose to blur it after dragging it onto my canvas because I wanted to soften the lighting around the edges and give it a, erm, bendy feel?)

» »

5. Last part! New vibrance layer, +100, but if you don't have that then a hue/saturation layer set to +50 but slightly masked over the parts that get too blue should be fine as well.

It's still looking a bit flat to me, so I copy merged all (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E), gaussian blur at 2.0, and set it to soft light 100%. This makes the colours and contrast pop, while softening the impact of her edges without blurring them too much.

Voila!

» »

#02 The first icon

This is the one that was requested by liesmiths, continuing right where we left off above :)

» »

1. First things first, copy merge all from before to get the "base" that we'll be working on in this part. Now create a new 200x200 canvas and drag the base onto there. Resize it down to 100x100 and now you have a great little centered square of a tiny icon. (Oh, uh, btw, I spent most of my time on this icon zoomed in to 200-300% or so, because everything is so small.)

If you're unsure how to position it exactly in the center, hit CTRL-T and up at the bar at the top with all the options to type numbers in? On the left-hand side, where it says X and Y, input 50 px and 50 px. There! Nicely centered.

Now we're just going to add a nice little glow around it. Double click on the layer to get to the layer effects menu, and click on "Outer Glow." Change the blend mode to Screen if it isn't already, set the opacity to 77%, and for the colour pick the dominant shade in the icon (in this case it was a qt indigo shade, #5358b9). Under the elements heading, make sure the technique is "softer," spread 9%, and size 16 px. Here's a capture of my settings.

» »

2. Alright, now duplicate this layer four times. Yup. Hide them all, except for the one right down at the very bottom. Hide the glowy effect for now so the next step's a bit easier to see (click on the eye next to "effects" under the layer name). We're going to crop this version, and right now I can't even remember why I thought it'd be a good idea. Anyway. Go to the rectangular marquee tool and cut part of the right side off. I... really don't know why I did this :|

Whatever whatever! Drag it down to the bottom right hand corner and shift it over to the left a few more pixels.

Okay! And now it's time to quickly colour it. Go to variations (IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > VARIATIONS) and make sure the slider is halfway between fine and coarse. Click on yellow three times, then red three times.

Now we can put the glow back on! Change the colour to whatever's standing out in this version of the icon; in this case, it'll be an orange-y red (#ea422d).

» »

3. Now for the next corner! Go up to the next layer and drag it down to the bottom right corner. Same for the top left corner. It's hard to explain how I decided to position them, but it involved a lot of moving and shifting around as I decided if the shift in pixels looked better one way or another. Just a ton of experimentation, lol.

For the bottom right corner: variations again, making sure to click on original to reset the last time you were here before you start clicking anything else!!!, click on cyan 3 times and blue 3 times. Adjust the colour in the glow again, this time to bright cyan (#63d9ce).

Same thing for the top left corner: red 3 times, yellow 6 times, glow colour yellow #dac12d.

» »

4. Now for the last corner, top right! This one crops part of the left side out. For the variations, I hit green 3 times and yellow 3 times. Then for the glow, I used a bright green (#315b729).

Finally, go ahead and make the last top layer (the original centered purple one) visible.

»

5. Alright, let's go all the down to the bottom left corner layer again (red), duplicate it, and drag it down so it's the very bottom layer. Hide the glow on this one and start shifting it up and over to the left. There's no need to change the colouring on this one since it seems to transition fairly nicely between orange and red, thanks to the glow from those two, so the only change we're going to make is change the normal opacity of this layer to 75% so it doesn't steal any thunder from the corner icons.

»

6. Go ahead and duplicate that layer one more time and move it down between the red and blue corners. This time we'll go and change the colouring a bit to make a little more purpley, so in variations just click cyan and blue each twice.

»

7. Okay, now duplicate the top right green layer. Drag it down to the very bottom and get rid of the glow effect, then move it so it's positioned in between the blue and the green. For image variations: cyan and blue, twice each. Make sure the opacity is set to 75%, we don't want it to be brighter or as eye-catching as the corners.

»

8. ALMOST DONE!! Duplicate green again, get rid of the glow, drag it down to the bottom, and move it in between orange and green. To make it yellow: red 3 times, yellow 6 times. Phew! As you can see, it's hardly a difficult process, but I was having a hard time trying to remember how many times I clicked on what for variations as I was writing this up lol.

Anyway there's really only two special (?) things I did here, which was a helluva lot of duplication and moving around, and the outer glow which emphasized the vividness of all the colours everywhere.

Pretty simple tbh, and if you had any trouble following along it's probably just because I don't know how to string words together into coherent sentences. Feel free to let me know if you need me to clarify anything, this part of the tutorial really used a lot of words and not very many / tiny tiny tiny pictures, so I'm actually sorta expecting all of you who're reading this to be very confused right now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

» »

#03 The second icon

Here's how to get to the one that was requested by zhaoxun! Super super easy, it's really just a bit of rotation and text work.

»

1. Take the results from part #01 and copy merged all. Duplicate that and rotate it counterclockwise 90 degrees (EDIT > TRANSFORM > ROTATE 90 CCW), and then flip it vertically (EDIT > TRANSFORM > FLIP VERTICAL). This is going to make a nice gradient bar at the bottom of the icon.

» »

2. Go back to the first copy merged and duplicate that, then drag it up to the top. Now just push it up a few pixels. That's it.

Then go duplicate the copy merged again, bring it up to the top of your layer stack, and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise. Take a rectangular marquee tool, with the style set to fixed size (100 px by 95 px, up at the bar at the top), and layer mask out the majority of the icon except for a single bar at the top.

But it's a bit harsh, so apply the layer mask to the top-most layer (right click on the layer mask, apply layer mask) and gaussian blur just a tiny, tiny little bit (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 0.5).

»

3. Text time! TW Cen MT, 8 pt, #ac4694 (grabbed from her arm, I think), tracking 160, vertical compression 99%, horizontal compression 91%, and anti-alias set to strong. Here's a capture of my character box.

Double click the text layer to get to the layer options menu so you can make the text pop just the tiniest little amount. Under drop shadow, put the blend mode to normal, the colour a little off-white (a little blue, #d0d5e4), opacity 75%, angle 151 degrees, distance 2 px, spread 0% and size 0 px. Here's a cap of my settings.

I decided to just simply position my text over her face because 1) you couldn't see any details in her face anyway, and 2) I wanted all of the focus to be on THE MOST HEARTBREAKINGLY FUNNY MOMENT OF THEIR CONCERT ;~; I hate how she feels like she can't cry in front of her fans omg okay /end fangirling

»

4. New text layer now, TW Cen MT 9 pt, #54238e (from her shirt, I think), tracking 100, vertical expansion 130%, horizontal expansion 101%, italicized, and the anti-alias is still strong. Here's a capture of my character box.

This time the drop shadow is pure white set to normal, opacity 48%, still 151 degrees, distance 1 px, spread 80%, and size 1 px. Here's a cap of my settings.

» »

5. Finally, this texture by ellaangelus, inversed and set to screen 38% for a light washed out effect all over the entire icon. AND YAY THAT (FINALLY) CONCLUDES THIS LONGASS POST.

Comments would be faaaabulous, and if you have anything else you'd like to ask, feel free to (please!) hit me up here! :)

» tutorial 005; a lion still has claws

ionizable — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 22:21:50 GMT

Requested by spiderlin!

» »

A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for my first attempt at the main quest of chapter one at theiconquest.
» Program: Photoshop CS5. Vibrance is used, but it can be more or less replaced with a hue/saturation layer.
» Difficulty: Moderate.

Here's the original image of Sunye from their Wonder Party album jacket photos. This was their most perfect official shoot, omg ♥ Anyway, as you can see, the lighting and colouring was already out of this world, so I didn't do too much colouring-wise :(

»

1. I wanted to do a close crop on her face, so I opened a new 500x500 canvas, and dragged the image onto it. The dots are a bit distracting, so I duplicated the layer in case I made a mistake and started smudging the second layer with a large, roughly 60-80% opacity brush. I didn't want to get too close to her face/hair, so there are still a few blobs in that area left.

» » »

2. At this point I realized it'd be easier to just paint over the white light blobs on a new layer, than to smudge everything and risk messing up her details. So I quickly just took the eyedropper tool at each spot and painted over them with a midsized 60% brush. Finally, I copy merged everything (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E). It's still messy, and ordinarily I would smudge the blobs to make them smoother, but I figure it adds a bit of interest in the background right now and we can always come back or copy-merged and smudge it out if it doesn't work later on.

» »

3. So now for some colouring! First, an auto curves layer, and then add these two points to RGB: 73, 43 and 153, 139. The first point dims down the contrast, and then the second point picks up the brightness in the background. Then this texture by capelle set to soft light 100% just lights everything up nicely.

» »

4. More colouring via textures! This texture by midnight_road was gaussian blurred (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 13.0) and then dragged over to my icon and set to soft light 100%. This adds a bit of colour and soft lighting simultaneously.

» »

5. Another one by midnight_road, gaussian blurred again at 13.0 (CTRL-F), dragged over, and set to soft light 100%. And yay, now the blobs that I hadn't smudged out earlier are settling down a bit, especially if i go and add two light white blobs at 20% to the texture.

» »

6. One more texture to hide the blobs? For the life of me though, I can't find the original. I assume I did a similar gaussian blur, maybe inversed something, or stretched it out, or something? If you recognize it, let me know! Anyway, this was set to soft light, 30%.

Then to brighten everything up, another auto curves layer with one point added to RGB: 86, 60.

» » »

7. Inversed this texture by mm3butterfly, then gaussian blurred again (CTRL-F) and set to soft light 10% for a tiny, tiny amount of brightening in the center of the icon.

»

8. But where did the bluuuuuues go? Soft light this fill layer (#3c5fe1), 100%.

»

9. Sharpening time (FILTER > ARTISTIC > PAINT DAUBS > 1, 1)! And then I went around with a light light light opacity black brush around the too-sharp edges on a layer mask on a copy merged layer (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E).

» » »

10. Texture (by happy_harper13) inversed, set to soft light 35% for some quick lighting again!

It's still a little heavy-looking, so I copy merged all (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E) and went to variations (IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > VARIATIONS) and lightened it twice.

» » »

11. Duplicated the previous layer, then desaturated it (CTRL-SHIFT-U), gaussian blurred it at 2.0, then went back to image variations and darkened it twice. Finally, this layer was set to soft light 100% to add some depth to the shadows.

»

12. First an auto curves layer plus two new points in RGB: 41, 70 and 159, 179 to darken it up even more. Then vibrance! +100. (+10 hue/saturation should be a sufficient replacement.)

» »

13. It's getting really yucky in the background around her neck area though, so I took a midsized white brush at 60% and painted some blobs on the dark spots, gaussian blurred it until it faded a bit, and then set it to soft light 100%. And finally, a levels layer: 36, 1.22, 255! This darkens both the shadows and the neutrals.

» » »

14. Okay, final touches from here on out. First, copy merge all, and then we'll be working with this the rest of the time. New fill layer, black, with a layer mask. Taking the elliptical marquee tool (hold down on the marquee tool until the options drop down), go to style: fixed size and input 94 px by 94 px, click and center the selection, and then fill the layer mask with black.

Then take the polygonal lasso tool (hold down on the lasso tool until the options drop down) and make four points: bottom left, then go diagonally up to the right, over to the right some more, down to the bottom, and then close the selection. Fill the selected area with black in the layer mask, and don't worry about the remnants of the circle that you can still see just yet.

»

15. Go back to the copy merged layer that was made down there, duplicate it, and drag it up to the top. Flip it around (EDIT > TRANSFORM > ROTATE 180) and fill the layer mask with black. Then take the elliptical marquee tool again, select the same circle, and fill that with white. It's okay if it doesn't line up perfectly; it can be nudged one or two pixels to the side or up or down if you need.

» »

16. Almost done! Duplicate the original copy merged layer again, drag it up to the top, flip it horizontally (EDIT > TRANSFORM > FLIP HORIZONTAL) and create a new layer mask. Fill it with black, then use the elliptical marquee tool with a 88 px by 88 px fixed size and fill it with white. There's what you have so far.

17. Now go down to where the layer mask is clipped to the layer -- the little paperclip between them? Click that so it disappears, and now if you move the layer you can move it around without the layer mask moving as well. Transform (CTRL-T) and go up to the top bar, where the little triangle is and the degrees come afterwards: put in -20. One or two bits irritated me, so then I nudged it right 2 pixels and up 1. Now it's done! Tada!

So yes, in summary: basically I did nothing special with the colouring other than take advantage of how luminous and touched up she already was (actually lol now that i'm comparing the before and after, half of my colouring steps were pretty useless whoops!), and the composition was just a bit of messing around with layer masks and shapes. I didn't go too in-depth into the techniques that were used, but I'd be more than happy to clarify if you need specification, just let me know. :)

Comments would be faaaabulous, and if you have anything else you'd like to ask, feel free to (please!) hit me up here! :)

» tutorial 004; he was in the habit of taking things for granted

ionizable — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 16:41:05 GMT

Aaaand this one was also requested by vincibility (blame her for the deluge of posts, not me!)

» »

A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for War 1, Trial 1 at 21tvthrowdown.
» Program: Photoshop CS5. Vibrance is used, but it's not necessary at all.
» Difficulty: Moderate.

Here's the original cap of Nikita from episode 1x18, courtesy of the now defunct disparue.org, RIP :(

» »

1. New 100x100 canvas, resized to 1300x1300, and positioned so she's in the center. Then after creating a layer mask, I took a large black brush at 100% and got rid of the general background. If it gets too near her then it's no big deal, I usually just switch to a smaller white brush at a lower opacity and go over the parts of her that've started disappearing. It's a very rough job, especially around the hair. To make up for that, I just used the eyedropper tool and picked the colour of the background in between her hair strands, and made a new colour fill layer with that shade (in this case, #63666f) and dragged it down below.

» »

2. New curves layer, first set to "auto," but I want to work on the contrast even more, so under RGB I created two new points with the following settings: 94, 94 and 181, 163. This ups the bright spots (second point) without brightening the dark spots too much (first point). Finally, a new vibrance layer, +100 (or hue/saturation with +5 hue and +45 saturation).

» »

3. Now for a circle shape! Because I want to eventually hide the parts of her that are all cut off and missing everywhere, by excluding everything that's not in the circle. That comes a little later though, so for now! A new fill layer in white, with a layer mask filled in black.

Then I took the elliptical marquee tool (hold down on the marquee tool until you get the list of options). Under the style drop-down menu at the toolbar on top, I went to fixed size and put in 78 px by 78 px and selected a circle area in the center of the icon. In the layer mask, I filled the selected area with white.

Then I put in a 70 px by 70 px fixed size with the marquee tool, clicked again inside the circle from before, and filled that part of the layer mask with black. Voila! Now there's a hollow white circular shape in the center of the icon.

»

14. This texture by universaldogma on screen 100% adds a gradient effect, for some lighting.

»

15. Some more lighting, this time by putting this texture by happy_harper13 on soft light 100%.

»

16. Okay, final lighting texture, by happy_harper13 and set to soft light 50% so there's a bit of light but not overwhelmingly so.

» » »

17. Okay, a tiny little bit of darkening via fill layers: #dab89d, colour burn 50% to colour the graininess in the blacks, and #34692d, soft light 35% to deepen the shadows.

» » »

18. The blues are starting to get a bit washed out now, so I took this texture by happy_harper13 and set it to colour burn, 100%. I still wanted it to overall be blue instead of green though, so I took a layer mask and brushed over the parts that I wanted to go back to blueish.

»

19. Finally, making the blues even richer with a fill layer (#5a79a4) set to soft light 100%.

» » »

10. Okay, by now I've started to get irritated with the way she got all cut off on the left side, and the way her arm pokes out the right side, AND the way there's a pixellated set of lines at the top and to the right. So I took a smudge tool and went around the edges of the circle, inside the circle where her shoulder cuts off, and then around the edges of the icon.

Then because I thought I was finished, I copy merged everything and sharpened the new layer to add definition to her face (FILTER > ARTISTIC > PAINT DAUBS > 1, 1). Too sharp in some areas, so with a layer mask I went over the parts I wanted to be less defined.

Finally, I wanted to brighten it right up, so I made a new levels layer with the following settings on RGB: 2, 1.28, 230. This lightens everything up and increases the contrast on the bright spots at the same time.

»

11. Okay but then I decided it was too boring as is, so I took this texture (and I have no idea who made it? Or what I did to it? (I probably took someone's texture, desaturated it, stretched parts of it out, rotated it, messed with the brightness/contrast... maybe a whole bunch of other stuff?? Or a combination of the above? If anyone recognizes it, let me know!) And then finally, I set it to screen 61% to get those nice shape-y blobs.

»

12. This texture by sinking_theship is great. I love divisive textures, and setting this one to colour burn 100% really makes everything vivid and great. Plus the line down the middle emphasizes the shape of the light blobs from the last step.

»

13. Two small steps to make the colours pop a bit more! First, a new curves layer, with two new points: 64, 59 and 169, 156. This makes the bright spots a lot brighter without losing much contrast in the dark spots. Then a vibrance layer, +30 (or hue/saturation +5? It's a really tiny step, probably skippable lol).

»

14. And the final steps in my ~composition, now! Copy merged everything (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E), and duplicated that. Then on the bottom layer, I flipped it horizontally (EDIT > TRANSFORM > FLIP HORIZONTAL). On the top layer, fill the layer mask with black so you can see the flipped version underneath, and then take the 70x70 marquee tool from before and fill in a circle with white. That's a lot of words to basically just say that the only visible part I want to see from the top, normal layer is the area inside the circle, and everything else is the flipped part from outside. I don't know how to say it any clearer than that ;~;

»

15. Last last last step, I promise. This texture, by aquatilitis, set to screen 100%. By sheer chance it coincided with the circle and rectangular blobby shapes I'd made earlier LOL. Plus it hides the fact that the line between blue and green outside and inside the circle don't quite perfectly match up. It ALSO hides the small pixelly circle of blue around the bottom left part of the circle. Yay for textures and things that hide the stuff you don't want people to see!

Comments would be faaaabulous, and if you have anything else you'd like to ask, feel free to (please!) hit me up here! :)

» tutorial 003; even the best fall down sometimes

ionizable — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 19:16:00 GMT

As requested by vincibility! ♥

» »

A few notes, before we start:
» This icon was originally posted here, for Round 07 at inspired20in20.
» Program: Photoshop CS5, but almost everything should be transferable (I think?) as long as your program has curves.
» Difficulty: Super easy.

Here's the original image, but I forget where it's from lol. As you can see, it's already a stunning image to begin with, so I didn't really have to do much colouring-wise haha.

» »

1. I started off with a new 100x100 canvas, resized it to 300x300, and then dragged the image over to the canvas. Then I used the eyedropper tool to grab a colour from the background and made a new fill layer with that colour and dragged it below the image. Finally, I copy merged everything (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E) and took a light opacity soft brush and smudged the background so it was seamlessly smooth.

»

2. Alright, now for the text! The lyrics were from Love and Some Verses, by Iron and Wine. All of the font was a simple black DaunPenh, centered and with anti-alias set to strong.

Here's a breakdown of my text, by line:

(1) LOVE
(2) IS A DRESS
(3) THAT YOU
(4) MADE LONG /
(5) TO HIDE
(6) YOUR KNEES
(7) LOVE
(8) TO SAY THIS

(1) Size 41 pt, line spacing 14 pt, tracking -60.
(2) Size 17 pt, line spacing 10 pt, tracking 20.
(3) Size 18 pt, line spacing 11 pt, tracking 0.
(4) Size 13 pt, line spacing 8 pt, tracking 20.
(5) Size 21 pt, line spacing 13 pt, tracking 30.
(6) Size 14 pt, line spacing 9 pt, tracking 30.
(7) Size 41 pt, line spacing 22 pt, tracking -60.
(8) Size 14 pt, line spacing 8 pt, tracking 30.

The basic explanation for this is that I wanted the text to be a rectangular block the same width as her. I messed with the size of certain words in order to emphasize them, and then adjusted the line spacing and tracking accordingly to fit the words into the same width and with roughly the same distance between each line.

Then I duplicated the layer and right-click rasterized it so it could be blurred (FILTER > BLUR > BLUR).

» »

3. But boo! It's covering her everywhere. So, I created a layer mask and took a smallish sized 60% opacity brush to get rid of the parts that cover her. Finally, I set it to soft light 100%. It's so faint though! So then I duplicated it five times and then I had a slightly softer version of what I started out with, ~tada~

» »

4. This texture by vividtruth was inversed, and then set to screen 100%.

» »

5. Now some simple colouring! New fill layer (#4882aa) set to soft light 100%, and then a new curves layer with the following settings, with the asterisks indicating new curve points:

RED
0, 3 (more blues in the shadows)
255, 249 (make the bright spots redder)

GREEN
0, 24 (more magentas in the shadows)
255, 254 (brighter bright spots?)

BLUE
3, 0 (blues get bluer)
*61, 91 (un-blue the shadows)
*199, 181 (bright blues)

»

6. This texture, by midnight_road, set to soft light 100%.

»

7. Texture by ellaangelus, set to soft light 75%.

»

8. Then I duplicated the base, dragged it way up to the top, gaussian blurred (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 2.0), set to soft light 100%.

9. And finally, I used the sharpen tool on her eyes and parts of her hair.

So yes, that's all. Haha this one was short! :o If you'd like more on the text or lighting specifically, feel free to ask, but it's all pretty straightforward; most of the work was done either by textures and that one curves layer, or just messing around with size/tracking/line spacing.

Comments would be faaaabulous, and if you have anything else you'd like to ask, feel free to (please!) hit me up here! :)

» tutorial 002; like a slow fire burn

ionizable — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 16:19:06 GMT

Okay, so this is only my second time ever writing a tutorial, so please bear with me. This time around I'm going to try to make the layout a little clearer, and as you can see, for once I am being super srs and using proper capitalization and everything. Because that's how thankful I am for actually having had people ask me questions, hehe!

Alright, this first one was requested by the ever fabulous vincibility ♥

» »

A few notes, before we start:
» This was made for the colour palette sidequest at theiconquest. Sooooooo that is why you will see a lot of useless steps in this tutorial as I tried to figure out how to end up with that specified shade of yucky murky blue. Also, along the way you will see many points at which the icon looked infinitely better. Oh well!
» This icon was originally posted here.
» Program: Photoshop CS5. Vibrance is used, but you can replace that with saturation.
» Difficulty: Easy.

Here's the original cap of Maggie, episode 1x03 of The Newsroom, courtesy of grande_caps.

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1. The first thing I did was open up a new 100x100 canvas and resize it to 800x800. Then I dragged the cap onto the canvas and used a combination of the smudge tool, clone stamp, and a background fill layer of a similar colour in order to extend the background. At this step I prefer to leave it as large as possible, and once I'm satisfied I resize the whole canvas back down to 100x100. Once it's smaller I can take a better look at what else I need to smudge/clone/etc. Finally, I copy merged the layers (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E) and there was my flattened base.

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2. New curves adjustment layer, hit "auto" and voila. Then a new vibrance layer, jacked up to +100 (or +35 saturation on a hue/saturation layer, although the results are slightly different).

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3. Two selective colouring layers:

I wanted to really bring out the blues and yellows simultaneously, so the settings on the first layer were:

YELLOWS 0, -2, +100
CYANS -42, +32, -100

And for the second layer:

YELLOWS 0, +100, +100

But her face is getting a little dark and yucky now, so on the layer mask I brushed over her face until it went back to a semi-normal colour.

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4. Texture time! This texture (by ellaangelus is one of my favs, I literally use it in almost every single icon (oops?) on soft light 100%. But her hair gets grainy and washed out and bleh, so on the layer mask I brushed over it until it went back to normal.

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5. Another one of my favs, also by ellaangelus and set to soft light 100%. Again with the washed out hair though! Same deal with the layer mask again.

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6. So now I want the overall icon to get darker and closer to my intended dark blue, but also I want her hair to get a little bit more vibrant. Let's start with the hair by using another selective colouring layer:

YELLOWS -53, +14, +100, -29
GREENS -100, +100, +100

And then a dark green (#576333) colour fill, set to soft light 100%, to darken up the image.

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7. There are some annoying smudges of colour behind her head, along the shadow, so I took out the smudge tool and quickly just smudged them away. Now that I'm looking at it again I would probably go back and smudge away even more yellow behind her head, but oh well whatever I'll leave it for now lol

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8. Okay in case you can't tell by now, I really like ellaangelus' textures. Anyway, I inversed it (CTRL-I), then rotated it 180 degrees (EDIT > TRANSFORM > ROTATE 180) and then finally I set it to screen 65% so there's a bit more lighting, but it doesn't overpower what's already there. Beeeeeeertiful.

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9. Time to do some colouring! I took the colour from the palette that I'm supposed to be working towards (#445959) and made three fill layers: multiply 49%, screen 46%, and soft light 44%. Yuck, right? But I've grown to love this technique, which I can't even remember who to credit for anymore (sorry sorry! ㅠ_ㅠ) because you get to go around and play with exactly how you want a specific colour to be expressed in your icon. And it's a great set-up for the rest of your icon, too.

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10. But the fact remains that among other things, it's looking really flat and dark and ridiculously low-contrast right now. So copy merged (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E), gaussian blur (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 2.0), and then up the brightness on that one layer (IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST > +80 BRIGHTNESS). Finally, set it to soft light 100%.

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11. Now for some more colouring, to get to that original dark blue! First, a colour balance layer with the following settings, in order to mute the blues a little:

MIDTONES +16, +8, -12

Then a selective colouring layer for the yellows on her hair:

YELLOWS -55, +17, +100

And then since I didn't like what it did to her face, I masked that out.

Finally, another vibrance layer, set to +40 (I knowwww, I was trying to mute the colours, but you can't take away my need for vibrance. This sidequest and I had some serious issues tbh) or a hue/saturation set to +15 for similar but not identical results. If I had used hue/saturation here, I would have masked out the brightness on her face.

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12. Okay, this next step is probably the most complicated thing about this tutorial, and that's... not saying anything at all, really. Haha okay whatever yay match colour tool!

First, I opened up a new 100x100 canvas and filled it with the dark blue I wanted to match, and saved that as a .png file. Then I went and opened up that new .png. Next, I copy merged (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E) and went to the match colour tool (IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > MATCH COLOUR...) and under the drop-down menu for source, I went and found that sample .png from a list of the images I had open.

Under the default settings, it sort of just looks like I slapped it on with a colour overlay. I don't want that, though, so I'll play around with the settings instead. The settings I used were probably:

LUMINANCE 115 (for a bit of brightness)
COLOR INTENSITY 200 (lol I can't help it)
FADE 25 (this is basically the opacity of the colour overlay, if that makes any sense?)

In any case, those settings are fairly close enough to what I actually used.

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13. This is really embarrassing, you can't even see any difference in what I just did. Oh well, this is what happened anyway:

Colour balance: MIDTONES +12 +12 -5

Selective colour:

YELLOWS 0, 0, +100
GREENS 0, +100, -100, 0

And then mask out the effect on her face.

Selective colour:

YELLOWS 0, -10, -34

And this time I only want this to reach her face, so I filled the layer mask with black and used a white brush over her face. Her face is still really gross but w/e I gave up at this point and left her looking sickly and green oh well!

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14. Copy merge, gaussian blur 2.0 again, and this time set it to soft light 25%.

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15. Last steps! Copy merged, sharpen (my preferred method is FILTER > ARTISTIC > PAINT DAUBS > 1, 1), and then mask over the parts that are too sharp. Finally, her whole general facial-hair-everything region was still bugging me, so I copy merged again and smudged a tiny area around her sideburns. And then I called it a day and ran away from this stupidly difficult sidequest >:(

So yay! I hope this tutorial was helpful, even if the only thing you learned was that I can't do muted colours to save my life ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Comments would be faaaabulous, and if you have anything else you'd like to ask, feel free to (please!) hit me up here! :)

ask the maker!

ionizable — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 21:05:53 GMT

Ask The Maker || My Thread

hey y'all, pretend like you want to know how i made my stuff and ask me so my thread isn't really sad and empty. please? :'(

» 019; our hearts are strong, and our hearts are kind

ionizable — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 01:38:18 GMT

[ 05 ] » legend of the seeker
[ 05 ] » the newsroom
[ 04 ] » harry potter
[ 01 ] » snow white & the huntsman

[ 15 ] » TOTAL

i'll be updating this post with my five attempts for the colour palette sidequest, so eventually there'll be 25 icons in here. C:

» hero
» rogue

theiconquest ch. one, sidequest (colour palettes)

» hero

» rogue

resources | affiliates | watch
comments are appreciated.
please credit either ionizable or zenetic if using.

» 018; wishing on a star (a star above the clouds)

ionizable — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 06:15:45 GMT

recently i've been experimenting with more overt texture usage and some occasional grunginess, but wg's recent comeback got me feeling all those super nostalgic feels, and then hq pics from their concert came out and sldfjsldkjf so many feeeeeeeeels. i figured i'd do some nice, throwback vibrant colouring as a result, since that's what suits them too anyway.

i was stumped by the "adventure" theme at first, but lbr that's what their career has amounted to these days: an up-and-down, topsy-turvy, inconsistent and anxious roller coaster. right now they're back on a high, but there's no telling what continent they'll be on, six months from now. the past three years have felt like an adventure to me, just as a fan, and i'm sure that's NOTHING compared to how they feel.

so. tl;dr ALWAYS AND FOREVER A WONDERFUL, I'LL BE

p.s. click on the spoiler tags at the bottom to get to my huge, wordy, disgustingly verbose feelings on each and every single icon. or don't, there's not much worth reading, it's just a bunch of wonder girls fangirling and stuff tbh

[ 25 ] » wonder girls for theiconquest, challenge 01

[ 25 ] » TOTAL


rogue | bard | hero | rogue | hero

wizard | hero | rogue | bard | wizard

wizard | bard | wizard | hero | bard

bard | wizard | hero | hero | hero

rogue | rogue | wizard | rogue | bard

01. very, very simple, just a gif from their like money mv. if it looks lq that's because it is, b/w gifs surprisingly hit the limit much faster than coloured ones. so i had to cut down on the frames by a LOT and optimized the fuq outta this one

02. okay, SO WHAT IF I USED LYRICS. because a) my heart broke just a little the first time i read the translated lyrics to girlfriend bc um, i may or may not have done those things / felt that exact same way once or twice or maybe a few more times before, and b) my heart broke a lot once i found out that yeeun wrote that song based on some loser who only went out with her for two months and got a new girlfriend real quickly soon afterwards. YOU DESERVE A BETTER MAN, YEEUN. YOU REALLY DO ;~;

03. i like how it looks like she's running in her business power suit, instead of just dancing her balls off on stage. that is all.

04. keke lim's so qt ♥

05. i legitimately dislike this icon a lot, but sunye is the best and i can't believe i've only made three icons of her in this whole batch!?!?

06. inspired by this set of gifs. oh, sohee. what ever happened to your acting dreams, anyway?

07. i needed more green up in here, so i made a green icon of lim being blurry and pretty in their wonder party jacket photos.

08. 우리 cute simple princess mandoo face ♥ i figure the look of this icon matches her bare, makeup-free face, so. yeah.

09. BREAK MY HEART AND STOMP ON IT, YOU TWO. ;~; ;~; ;~; i love how hard lim is gripping yoobin in that moment, not to mention how quickly yoobin opened her arms for lim to cry into. also that lim went straight towards yoobin, too. never mind that 7000 fans are singing and shouting and telling you not to cry, that you do belong in the group, and that they love you. you do you, bb lim, you do you

10. i also legitimately dislike this one, as well. i didn't even want to label it as a wizard icon tbh

11. ummm so yesterday i rediscovered image > variations and this bright, negative-spacey animanga-inspired icon came out of it. i felt a little bit cheap after i used it, though, so no more from here on out haha

12. ;~; ;~; ;~; you can cry, sohee! you can cry! it's okay, i know you said before that you'd never let any of your fans see you cry, but you don't have to be so stoic all the time ♥

13. idk, i still think the composition is a little bit off in this one :S

14. i get such a warrior queen vibe from yeeun sometimes, especially when she's strutting her stuff on stage and her hair is blowing every which way and she's just belting it out effortlessly~

15. i've been listening to a lot of deceptively cheerful music, when really they're talking about really serious, depressing things (dia frampton, i am talking about you). so this icon was borne out of that; the fact that lim's been part of the group for a few years now and she STILL doesn't know if she deserves to receive a fan tribute at their concert just kills me. darlin, whenever you cry, my heart feels like it's being ripped in two

16. more convoluted than my normal text work, idk. i actually used sohee as a texture in this LOL. i was going to blend them but sohee turned into a better texture than subject so IDK LOL

17. omg sunye why so beautiful slkdfjsdf I LOVE YOU. PLEASE KEEP YOUR HAIR LIKE THIS OR THE WAY IT IS RIGHT NOW, ALL BROWN-Y AND NOT TOO SHORT. AND PLEASE NEVER EVER EVER WEAR THE WIG YOU WORE IN LIKE MONEY EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER EVER EVER AGAIN. PLEASE.

18. kekeke i'm not sure what i enjoyed more, yeeun as a flawless tinkerbell, sunye as a perfect cute gorgeous alice, yoobin as snow white (!!!), sohee as red riding hood, or LIM. AS. HARRY. POTTER. i forgive you for stanning selena gomez, justin bieber, twilight, and all those other little teenybopper things, lim. dressing up as harry potter has redeemed you.

19. sohee always has the best ending poses tbh. i posted this over at anon_icon because i made it so quickly that i was SURE there was something else that could be done to it, but ppl told me to leave it alone, so... i did. tada i have now outed myself (eek)!

20. this picture was super grainy when i got it, plus she was all squished off in the corner because the fan taking pictures was yoobin-biased, but i needed to icon her as alice. for science, of course.

21. oh man, i hadn't even read that article on omona about the disagreement between males and females over what the s-line actually is before i made this icon, but trust me to go for the boobs-back-butt line like a dude, and not the arch of the back like most other women lmao

22. the three things most important to sunye ♥ i was going to stick in perseverance, too, but that's a little long for an icon :S also i was hesitant about putting this in rogue, but it still looks a little unfinished to me and yet nothing i do to it makes it look any better. so for now i am going to shove it into the rogue category because i still feel like it is more subtle/simple than i would have liked.

23. one of my friends made a comment that it looks like they're in love with each other when i posted it on my twitter LOL but uh that is not what i was going for at all?! also sohee and yeeun seem like they are not that close idky. then again sohee doesn't seem like she is close to anyone anymore. bb girl why do you hurt :( she did have a rill good grasp on the kind of scents yeeun would prefer when she went candle shopping in star life theater though, and she did pick something up for yeeun, so i'm sure there's nothing wrong between the two of them. and i love sohee for her reticence anyway so idk where i'm going with this anymore, it's late and i'm tired

24. er, yes. not much pastel-y-ness going on in here, except for this icon and like one or two others. i can't help it if i still like deep, heavy colours!

25. MASTERPIECE IMO. it might be a stretch to call 'girlfriend' a hit since it was never released as a standalone single, but for an individual song just randomly off their single it had pretty good online sales and IT DEMONSTRATES YEEUN'S BUDDING SONGSTRESSNESS. and also all the wonderfuls love it. so therefore i am calling it a ~beloved hit~ and nothing anyone can do will stop me hoho

aaand bonus! some larger 200x200 versions

resources | affiliates | watch
comments are appreciated.
please credit either ionizable or zenetic if using.