rpanons | Found the token ace

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anons who draw their own icons or take icon commissions, do you have any advice? more than once i have resized something to 100x100 and realized it looked like shit in such a small format. basically how do i keep things looking fresh and interesting, in general? i feel like i can spot a bad icon and obviously know what makes it bad, but while i can spot a good one... i'm not as sure what makes it good

also, assuming i'm sticking to the basic set of 15 icons, what expressions do you generally include

a good list of fifteen is linked in the resources post

thanks, i haven't been around here for a while so i've sort of forgotten... a lot

Stay relatively simple and crop somewhat closer to the face than you'd like to get a cleaner image at 100x100. Really consider what kind of facial expressions your character makes; being able to express that in a few lines can make for a more clear end image.

That also applies to the 15 end images. The resources give a good general list but some characters list more towards one range of emotions than another, so you might want to sub in another kind of 'happy' or 'grumpy' or whatever works. I also gauge what icons I want to make off of recent threads, and keep making new ones every so often to refresh what I've got and purge the shit icons I made when the journal was still new and I didn't have as good a handle on the character.

thank you! i'm so used to doing the whole "step back and look at it from far away" thing with traditional art... the exact same principle applies here, i'm just being kind of a doofus

boy do i! i draw the icon at whatever size (usually 800x800) then paste the entire layer-flattened thing into a 100x100 canvas and ctrl-T until it looks like a good crop. it's just awful when you resize the entire canvas to icon size, unless you've got a crazy good eye for this stuff you will always have a bad crop.

i also usually use a circular gradient quick mask begun at where ever the light source would be, inverse the selection, ctrl-J to duplicate it, and set that new layer on color dodge or color dodge (add) at about 60% opacity or whatever looks best. it helps faces stand out. but don't make it TOO strong or you run the risk of recreating that god-awful trend from a couple years back of having white floating blobs on your icons. (also let me know if that was too photoshop-jargon for you, i'm not sure what level of expertise you're at, and i can simply that if needed)

this was EXACTLY the kind of advice i'd hoped for actually

thanks!!

you're welcome! best of luck and happy drawing!

1) if you find you lose definition once an icon has been resized down to 100x100, don't be afraid to redraw bits of it at the smaller size. no matter what size I drew my art at, or how clear my lineart was, I always find SOME part of the icon will look blurry or non distinct once I size down. here's what I do: zoom in very, very close (normally to around 300%), grab the Pencil tool, and start recolouring individual pixels, or stroking over my lines in a low opacity (around 40%) depending on what the icon needs. it's surprising how a slight change to just a few pixels can sharpen your icon and make the facial expression more readable. it takes some practice, but you'll get good at it. constantly zoom out back to 100% to check how things are looking, and do all your adjustments on a new layer.

2) icons will often need sharpening, but have you noticed that when you Sharpen and icon, you'll get a light ghostly line around all the edges? you may want to use Sharpen to make your lines crisper, but you ALSO want to keep your colours lovely and flat. assuming you're working in flat color, make a new layer and set the opacity to "darker color", then colour over the pixels that got lightened. it will make your icons look a hell of a lot better, I promise. (the principle is still the same if you work in a style other than flat color, it's just more fiddly).

3) when using Transform to resize your art to fit within a 100x100 canvas, try and leave at least a few pixels "bleed" at the edges. what I mean is, don't let the outer edge of the art sit flush within the edges of the canvas. why? because photoshop does this annoying thing where if you resize an image sometimes it'll lighten the pixels at the very edge of the image. if you DO get this, you can easily color correct it using the same technique from point 2, but it's easier to just avoid it entirely.

i just found a trick to make photoshop knock that shit off, re 3! it turns out that's a setting that's useful for photos, but not at all for art.

in preferences, go to general, and on the "image interpolation" drop down, select "bicubic smoother". i THINK that was it. i stopped having that obnoxious aura if i had to resize something right to the edge, it's beautiful.

3 can be corrected by duplicating the layer (or copy paste all layers)

the lighter pixels are at 50% opacity

Re: #1 you can show two of the same window at once, one at %100, one as zoomed in at once. I'm not on my computer right now but I'll give you the path to follow to make it so when I am. Helps save time between zooming in and out when you can see the changes in real time to the small version as you're working on the zoomed in one.

Found the token ace

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