☞ icon critique meme

[donghae]

《ICONCRITMEME》

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♠ reply to this post with your username and/or journal you post your icons at. along with that, post 5-12 icon samples, so everyone can give you some of their thoughts too.

♡ reply to people's ( even people that you aren't familiar with an outsider's perspective is good ) comments with critiques and opinions on their icons. anonymous comments are enabled and ip logging is disabled, if you feel you need to use that option.

♣ try to be polite, but at the same time honest. the purpose of this meme is to be helpful, so any wank will be deleted.

♢ pimp this out in your journal and/or icon community, etcetera.
<center><a href="YOUR THREAD URL HERE"><font size="6"><font color="#1ECABC"><font face="century gothic"><B><font color="#91DAD4">《</B></font>ICON<font color="#349D94">CRIT</font>MEME</font><B><font color="#91DAD4">》</B></font></font></font></a></center>

Comments

[stormcoming.livejournal.com]

stormcoming @ insovereign




I've only just begun to dabble in making anime icons, but if you'd like to comment on the ones I have up in the comm, feel free. ♥

[dickings]

Rizu's icons are SEXAY as always; my only concrit would be possibly doing a light smart sharpen when you're done because they seem a bit blurry with the airbush-style shading, and removing tones after you color. ): I always leave mine in as a base guideline for shading, but things always look much cleaner when there's no tones. o/

I absolutely adore your use of rich colors, especially how you never go overboard with brightness. (Though you just had to prove me wrong with using sea-green cyan in the first icon. XD It worls well though with the overall darkness.)

You always incorporate patterns beautifully in the background without behind overwhelming. They add a very nice, very subtle touch without bringing much attention forward.

Blah blah blah my only other gripe is text bubbles. Most of your icons don't have them anymore but icons always look cleaner when you remove speech bubbles. X3

ALL IN ALL: SEXY AS ALWAYS, TEACH ME YOUR RICH COLORING WAYS MASTER, DONCHA WISH YO ICONS WERE HAWT LIKE RIZU'S.

[stormcoming.livejournal.com]

Pff, you keep talking like that I'm gonna get a swelled head or somethin'. Sheesh~ ♥

I really should try removing tons... on the ones like the first icon it's kind of intimidating, but for whatever dumb reason it never occurred to me to fiddle around with that sort of technique on more clean line art ones... hmm...

And, oh, yes, speech bubbles. XD After that RP!S, I could never forget speech bubbles. I personally like to leave them be, usually, well- if they in any way go on to the lineart, rather than erase them and redraw it, since I'm not so hot in the redrawing portion, and I've just never minded them much. Ones like- *ho hum, hunts for examples* this (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v704/Raigekijin/Bleach%20Avatars%20II/Noitora159.png) and this (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v704/Raigekijin/Bleach%20Avatars%20II/Ulquiorra10-1.png) I make especially for the speech bubble content... and ones like this (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v704/Raigekijin/Kuroshitsuji%20Avatars/Joker11.png) or that (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v704/Raigekijin/Kuroshitsuji%20Avatars/Blanco04.png) I just don't mind the bubbles being there... but I guess that in the end is just going to boil down to user/maker pref. on the oh so highly debatable topic of speech bubble appropriateness... *snerk?*

ALL IN ALL: thank you for the sexy nice review, baby! I will get to reviewing others when I am operating on more than one hour of sleep... for the fail.

[dickings]

PFFFFFFFFFT Fane is there to pop it, if need be. ):

lawl well pen tool is your friend, as is a 5px brush and a pressure-sensitive tablet. :3 Pen tool makes everything easier anyways, especially on larger pieces.

Haha that secret was crazy. ): But I kinda get where they were coming from too. See, the first two? That's fine! They're meaningful and legible. I think the secret-maker was just raging about the bubbles because sometimes you leave them in, where it's too much redrawing and such, but you can't read the text in them or it's cut off.

The latter two? Are WONDERFUL ways to incorporate speech bubbles. Like, seriously. If you did that more often people wouldn't even know they were speech bubbles. It adds to the overall feeling of the icon and gives it a bit more depth, I really like both. :> Especially the Joker one; it adds a splash of my favorite color and really stands out/blends well with the other colors. *w*

...I only have four icons with speech bubbles and they're all tiny like this one ahahaha.

LOL oh god I need to... go to bed as well orz; Hello 6AM.

[stormcoming.livejournal.com]

PFFT YOURSELF STOP TALKING ICON LOGISTICS WITH ME AND GO TO BED, WOMAN!

[dickings]

LOL NO JUST TO SPITE YOU I'M STAYING AWAKE ALL DAY

[stormcoming.livejournal.com]

Goddamnit, Jamie!

[dickings]

:>

[jackalite.livejournal.com]

Your icons have improved a lot over the years I've known you... WHICH IS QUITE A FEW, TO SAY THE LEAST. Some art matches your new style, some don't, but overall they look really nice. I'm glad you started playing with textures, too, because they add another dimension to an otherwise flat square.

[stormcoming.livejournal.com]

Haha, yesh, it has been. Thiiiis is true, yes. I'm establishing this new style, so I gotta... work out where it works and where it don't.

Ee, glad you like the textures.

[candlejack.livejournal.com]

I think you'd benefit if you didn't use so many dark textures for backgrounds, because it gives a bad contrast with the usually bright colours you have. I think you colour very, very nicely (see, icon), but I think you could do better with a bit of less dark colours.

[stormcoming.livejournal.com]

Mm, dark backgrounds... I can see what you mean. I'll try out some brighter ones, and see if those mesh better!

[sirarie.livejournal.com]

HELLO HELLO.

your icons are hot and skycatcher already noted one of the things I wanted to mention - the speech bubbles, and so since they talked about that already I will just be a wimp and skip right over.

ANYWAYS. the main thing I notice about your icons is that the coloring is really rich, but often the lineart seems a little fuzzy to me, especially in/around the 'skin' area of said icons. idk why - I doubt it's the quality o your caps, but the first thing that pops to mind is that when you color lines, you color them pretty close to the color you're shading that area with - there aren't really any prime examples of that in the ones you've put up, but you can kind of see it in 1, 3, and 8. It could be that, or it could be the very minimalistic shading I see around some of the lines, like in 3 - I don't know why, but it just makes the lineart look fuzzy to me. Then again, I love the lineart in my icons to be sharp and contrasted and such SO it could just be a personal thing. But I thought I'd note it. >:

A-and number 7, 9, and 10 in those are seriously lovely. +_+ The unified color schemes in 7 and 10 make the icon work really nicely overall, and the contrasting colors in 9 do the same.

[stormcoming.livejournal.com]

HOWDY.

I thiiiink I know what you mean. I keep the shading pretty soft, usually, like you said, it's a pretty close color... I do have the habit of using a somewhat transparant screen layer over my lineart, to lighten the starkness of it. Lately, I've started making it more transparent in some of my newer icons, so hopefully that will cut down on the fuzziness of the look? Though, lol I'm afraid it may sometimes be the quality. The one thing that I cannot ever seem to do with any mastery is... clean scans, orz.

Thank you so much for the comment *__*