nemesisrose @ 2005-03-29T17:00:00

2005-03-29T16:01:18Z

MOVING ON
Why is it that the only appropriate song I can think of for this occasion is by Good Charlotte? Anyway, moving on... (hah, moving on, get it?)

selfishlywarm
selfishlywarm
selfishlywarm

Go there and await my instructions.

icons!

2004-12-30T18:57:48Z

If you take one, then please comment (and credit). If you don't take one, then comment anyway. I like comments.

Teaser:

01. 02. 03.
04. 05. 06.
07. 08. 09.

Text:
01. "Remember to breathe" (Dashboard Confessional - Remember To Breathe)
02. "Superman flew the Jews out of Egypt" (Friends 7.10 - TOW the Holiday Armadillo)
03. "puella quam amo est pulcher" (It's Latin - it means, literally, "the girl whom I love is very beautiful". Also the title of a Bright Eyes song, yes)
04. "David Schwimmer." (It being his name and all)
05. "If you could see the lover in me" (Starsailor - Love Is Here.. I'm not entirely sure why, actually, but rest assured there was a good reason at the time.. possibly..)
06. "You're so beautiful" (Dashboard Confessional - So Beautiful)
07. "Still the only one" (Lifehouse - Only One)
08. "Remember to breathe" (Dashboard Confessional - Rembember To Breathe.. yes, I know I used the same lyrics twice. Shut up!)
09. "LeBlanc Matt" (I can't remember why I wrote it backwards, actually)

Resources: To be honest, I have no idea whose brushes and other fun stuff I used, so I'm going to take some guesses and go for inxsomniax, teh_indy, calixa and crumblingwalls.

(x-posted to friends_icons)

icons! get your icons!

2004-10-21T15:06:06Z

I'm ill and I have too much homework and coursework. Therefore, I make icons. (The logic's there - you have to really want to see it). They're ugly and pseudo-grunge, but let's look past that. Yeah.

If you take then comment & credit or I cry (do you want to see me cry? Is that what you want?).

Teasers:

01. 02. 03.
04. 05. 06.
07.

The text on 1, 2, 3, 5 & 7 is from the show itself, 4 is from my brain (:o) and 6 is from Dashboard Confessional's 'The Brilliant Dance'.

THE END!

nemesisrose @ 2004-10-10T08:16:00

2004-10-10T16:02:48Z

The Meaning Of Life
(or, how I made this icon)

The short version:
Mash up loads of brushes and hope for the best.

The long version:
01. Find a picture (really?). Because I am quite possibly the most predictable person ever, I picked this one of Matthew Perry (remember, children: smoking's okay if you look really hot while you're doing it).

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02. Open Photoshop (I am the master of stating the obvious, y'know). Crop the image. Everyone has their own way of doing this, so obviously, I have mine. My method, now I come to think of it, isn't technically cropping (I've been living a lie!) - but this what I do, and you can copy this if you like.

I open a 100x100 document (since that's icon size and all..) and paste my picture as a new layer. The picture's enormous, so I press CTRL+T, which is free transform. Then, holding the SHIFT button (which constrains the proportions and means that your icon doesn't look freaky), I drag the corner handle inwards, making the picture smaller. Then you can move it around a bit until it's in a nice position. Et voila!

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03. SHARPEN! If you've resized an image, always sharpen. Sometimes more than once (go wild!). I sharpened this one once; see how much.. sharper.. it looks (funny, that..)? Filter/Sharpen/Sharpen.

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04. Make the picture black & white. You can either do this by desaturating it or by using the channel mixer - I picked the latter, because you keep more of the detail like that. So, go to Image/Adjustments/Channel Mixer, press the 'Monochrome' checkbox and press 'OK'.

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05. Duplicate the layer & set it to 'soft light'. Sharpen that layer. It should look something like this (okay, so it doesn't make that much of a difference).

Then, press CTRL + SHIFT + E or go to Layer/Merge Visible to merge those two layers (I never like flattening the image, for some reason. Don't ask.)

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06. Exclusion layer! I always stick an exclusion layer in somewhere in my icons - it doesn't feel proper not to. Make a new layer and flood fill it with #013460. Then change the layer blending option to exclusion (really? Is that why it's called an exclusion layer?). So, now he looks nice and pinky-blue (and, let's face it, who wouldn't want to?).

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07. Obviously, we're not going to leave it like that (well, we could. But we won't.). Instead, let's add a texture. This one's from
this (utterly fantastic) website. Paste it as a new layer, and set it to 'Overlay' at 100%. Delightfully yellow, isn't he?

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08. I've never liked yellow, so I decided to remedy the banana-like appearance of the icon so far by creating a new layer and putting a gradient from #835C6E to #4D728C on it. Set it to 'color' (blast these American spellings!).

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09. I now feel that getting rid of all of the yellow was a rash judgement (if only all rash judgements were so easy to fix..), so I group the gradient layer with the texture below. How do you do that? Well, make sure that layers palette is visible (Windows/Layers) and, holding down ALT on your keyboard, hover your mouse over the dividing line between the two layers, and click. Your layers palette should be something along these lines:

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10. We could stop there - but we aren't going to. (don't cry!) Instead, we're going to duplicate what should be our bottom layer - the black and white picture of Matthew (remember when we merged the normal layer and the soft light layer at the start? Yeah, that one..) and drag (on the layers palette) our new duplicate layer above all the others.

(To duplicate, right click on the layer and select (cryptically) 'duplicate layer'. Then, to drag it to the top of the layers palette, you do.. exactly that. Set that layer to 'hard light' and the whole picture will become nice and contrast-y.)


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11. Hm. It's a bit boring, isn't it? Does anyone else miss the bright yellow colours? I do! So let's bring some of them back! Use another texture from here (actually, it's just a section of the same texture), set the layer to ‘Multiply’ at 51% opacity, and tada!

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12. Now we're going to go brush crazy! Ahem. I'm not going to tell you exactly what brushes I used, because I don't want anyone to produce a carbon copy of this icon (that would suck). I'll point you towards the wonderful calixa, whose brushes I used pretty much exclusively on this icon. I applied all of my brushes in #FDF4D0, which is a nice yellow-y colour (this is a particularly yellow icon). Plus a few black and white ones for variation.

If you're stuck, here are a few of the brushes I used (probably. Can't actually remember.). Oh, and a new layer for each brush means less heartache (and ugly blobs).

So, to conclude, mutilate your base with lots of lovely brushes - don't be shy! I didn't actually change any of the blending modes of any of these in my icon, but experiment and see what you come up with! Soft light and screen are good for lighter brushes, while hard light and overlay can benefit darker ones. Oh, and if you've got a white or black layer, screen and multiply won't affect 'em at all. So don't bother.

And remember - calixa! calixa! calixa!

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13. Still on the topic of brushes, actually (I'll shut up about them soon). Here's a tip - brushes (unless you make them yourself) are not specifically designed for your picture (what a shocker!). So you might have to change them around a bit so that they don't cover up important bits (for the love of all that is holy, don't stick a whopping great paint splatter over the main focus of the icon. Seriously.) - try going to Edit/Transform/Flip Horizontal, or Flip Vertical, or any of the over flipping options.

Layer masks can also help - press the 'layer mask' button (look at the picture below - obviously there isn't a big fat red circle around the actual button) and then use some grungy brushes in black to make some bits of the brush invisible and make it generally.. nicer (I need a thesaurus). If you're using PSP and you're trying to translate this tutorial, then I'm not sure if you can use layer masks. Just use the eraser and hope.

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14. Um, so, anyway. Back to the icon (remember that?). Here's what mine looks like with brushes.

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15. Now we need some text to finish it off! I hate text, I really do. Seriously. I'm muttering under my breath about it as we speak (..type.. whatever..). I picked some Bright Eyes lyrics because that's what I was listening to as I made the icon. I used the lasso tool to make a rectangular selection in #FDF4D0 (my main brush colour), and then I used the layer masking technique described above to erase some of it and make it blend into the icon more, as so (bottom right corner - see it?).

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16. I used Times New Roman for the text because it's quite a nice font really. Deep down. I wrote "you said you'd be my" in Times New Roman (obviously), 6pt, and in small caps, with thetracking (letter spacing) set to 0. Then, on a separate text layer, I wrote "dream", again, in 6pt small caps Times New Roman - this time, with the tracking at 1000 (because it's only a little word and I had space to fill).

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17. To finish off, I needed a border (don't we all?). I used another of calixa's brushes in black (normal blending mode) and used that layer masking technique to erase some of it because it was too much. Then, on a new layer, I put a simple #F8EFC6 border on, using the line tool.

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And we're done! See, that didn't take (very) long, did it? Let me know if you learn anything from this (hey, it could happen!) and happy iconning! Someone should make that a real word.

THE END

I have renewed respect for everyone who's ever written a tutorial. It's harder than it looks.

brushes!

2004-09-30T17:54:39Z

I made 100x100 icon brushes!! (Although, it has just occured to me that probably no one reading this journal will know what brushes are or want to use them.. but never mind. They kept me occupied, which is all that matters.)

~~They are yours to fill or burst, to break or bury, or wear as jewellery - whichever you prefer.~~

(preview behind the cut)
.ABR BRUSHES FOR PHOTOSHOP USERS
IMAGE PACK FOR ~~SAD FOOLS~~ PSP USERS

And, remember.

1. ALWAYS use them on a new layer.
2. Almost always change the layer blending options.
3. Tell me if you're taking any.

...

I really should get an icon journal, shouldn't I?

Friends Only.

2004-05-31T11:50:45Z

FRIENDS ONLY.
It isn't that I want to control who reads this - rather who doesn't. Comment & I promise to add you. (Unless I really don't like you.)