Icon Recommendations

[hsapiens.livejournal.com]

I'm starting a series of recommendations of makers whose work I admire. I've collected icons from >50 makers, thus the series. Let me know how frequently you want to see them, please? I don't know know how often I'll do them but I'd like a feel for how often would be too often.

I recently nominated a bunch of icon makers over at magicawards so I'm kicking off the recs with several of the makers whose work I ran out of time for nominating and a couple who are new-to-me.



winterfish, Icon Tag: I've long admired winterfish's icons; she made many of my favorite SG-1 icons. She has a lovely sense of humor, her images are crisp, and she uses natural, warm colors that I adore but what makes her work stand out for me is the diversity in her icons. She features characters of color alongside the usual suspects found in everybody else's icons. I like that her icons are good AND inclusive.






janie_tangerine at rockin_graphix: Fellow Misha/Castiel fan whose way with words on icons makes me laugh. Whenever there's a Supernatural episode with lots of wordy jokes, I eagerly await her post because I KNOW I'm going to be snagging a ton of icons. She's made quite a few Misha icons that are my tried and true friends.





txduck, Icon Tag: Interesting crops and puns! Txduck's work is a departure from my usual love of color, color, and more color. Her icons' muted colors have a tranquility about them. I envy her cropping skills. Her icons look like no others' icons.






tle_lovie69 at trueasthenight: I discovered this maker when somebody else nominated her at magicawards. The color, composition, use of textures...everything grabs me and makes me wish I made icons like these. So much pretty!





adina_mpj at sick_muse_icons: Another new-to-me maker whose work I "met" at magicawards. An amazing use of color and composition, the icons are just plain old preeeeetty.






Obviously, I did not make these icons. If you wish to use them, please be certain to visit the maker to let her know and be certain to credit as she wishes.

Comments

[txduck.livejournal.com]

Thank You! I am VERY flattered to be included among such talented artists. There are some really beautiful icons here.

Although I am definitely more comfortable working in my own style, I have been making attempts lately at upping the color/boldness of some of my icons... which I've got to say makes me appreciate even more the artists that can do it ... and do it well (you are included in there BTW ;) cause its not an easy thing to do. But I love post like this... I find them very inspiring :)

[hsapiens.livejournal.com]

I dithered about including some of your more recent colorful icons because I DID notice that you're experimenting with brighter colors. But I really liked these icons as examples of your cropping that makes me so envious of your skill or they were puns that I love. Besides both the THORoughly Awesome and the Sheldon icons have brighter, more saturated colors.

I'm glad that you enjoy these type of posts. I've been intending to do them for MONTHS and would get sucked into the latest episode or the help_japan fund raiser or something else super-exciting. Happily compiling icons for nominating coincided with needing to lay off PS for a while due to tendon issues and thus I finally took the opportunity to do it!

♥

[txduck.livejournal.com]

" I DID notice that you're experimenting with brighter colors"

haven't got there yet, but I'm working on it ;) Speaking of experimenting, hubby got me a drawing tablet for an anniversary gift last week (yay)and was bundled with a version of PS. I've never really had a chance to learn PS, so now I just need to figure where everything is and the best way to use it. Do you know of (or have made) any good icon tutorials to get me headed in the right direction?

[hsapiens.livejournal.com]

Happy Belated Anniversary! *throws confetti*

There's a tablet that comes bundled with PS? Must be a pricey tablet! I have a smaller tablet but I've never used it as it requires using the wireless mouse that came with it and the mouse itself is too small for my hand; it feels weird.

I used the tutorials at awmpdotnet to learn how to use PS's tools. She wrote them years ago for PS7 so they wouldn't cover the newer tools but it helped me conquer the confusing welter of tools and settings.

Once you're comfortable with the interface, I cannot recommend highly enough ohfreckle's tutorials (ownthesunshine/coffeeforcloser). She goes into the why of choosing her tools and settings rather than just listing settings. If you ever have any questions, please feel free to ask me. I might not know but if I do I'm more than happy to help you transition into PS.

Good luck with transitioning. When I got my Apple laptop I downloaded GIMP since I could afford starting over on PS and I could not figure it out. Gave it up and decided to just make graphics on the Windoze desktop.

ETA: I forgot to mention good_tutorial, which often has just what it's named, good tutorials. And if you have some areas in particular you want to learn about (like selective coloring which is PS-specific, let me know and I'll try to hook you up with some specific tutorials).

[txduck.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank You... I'll check those out :)

There's a tablet that comes bundled with PS?"

LOL... well I'm sure its a very light version, but it will give me jumping off place if I ever find the money for a full (freakishly expensive) version ;)Right now I'm just kinda figuring out the basics... what tools it has, or doesn't, compared to Corel. I think in the end I'd like to use the program I use now and am comfortable with in conjunction with adobe... to try and get the best out of both.