Icons!

[mhalachai]

Icons! I entered two contests recently and we'll see how I do. I'm sure I'll be crushed if no one likes my icons. Because I'm a feedback hor.

Now: Seven are from my HP:PS series. There will be more. I just had to go to bed last night. And the last... well, there's an HP tie too (Jason Isaacs rox my world)

	Baby Harry I'm still not sure about the font on this one. I need a way to make font of a single colour stand out across a wide range of background... I'll figure it out. Anyway, this was too creepy to pass up.
	Harry will not be your sacrifice Harry from PS.
	Weasley Witches Molly and Ginny, witches extraordinare
	Neville's shiny plot device Same problem as Baby Harry on the font. I may go back and do something to this, because I really dig the icon otherwise.
	Ron and Harry friends to the end Friends until the bitter end.
	Snape is not nice No matter what anyone says, this is not a nice man.
	Harry's Immortality My fave. (I also misspelled Immortality last night... missing an R. Sigh)
	Arr! James T. Hook From Peter Pan. Jason Issacs is the best pirate EVAR. I will have a whole PP series once I get HP:PS and CoS out of the way.

Comments

[sabriel-0405.livejournal.com]

Your icons are marvelous! I am trying to come up with orders but most of what I want isn't out there yet. And I agree with you, coming up with the right Anita characters is hard. I like your Anita icon but I still see her so brilliantly as Faith. But she isn't a bad fit. She has the attitude!

[mhalachaiswords.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

most of what I want isn't out there yet.
? You mean in your head? Or in the world? Maybe I'm just a bit stunned from work. Yes, blame it on that.

[sabriel-0405.livejournal.com]

In the world. After seeing Serenity, I want icons from the movie but since the movie won't be released until late September, I'll have to wait a while.

[semirose.livejournal.com]

Nice! hee, the two HP icon making contests I always enter are hp_stillness and hp_chorus. Of course that's cause they are affiliated with a community I belong to, but they're still fun. I really like hp_chorus.

Er, maybe you could try outlining the font to get it to stand out. Like I did on the top of this icon.

[mhalachaiswords.livejournal.com]

I tried the outlining. It looked dumb, but that might have been the font I was using. I'll try it when I get home.

Hmm. May have to join those. Thanks!

[semirose.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I always have issues making the outlines look right. It's hard choosing the right font/font colour/outline colour combination.

[mhalachaiswords.livejournal.com]

Testify.

There are a variety of ways you can go about making the text legible over changeable bgs.

[hardlyfatal.livejournal.com]

There's the obvious text effects: drop shadow, stroke, outer glow, inner glow. Drop shadow can be effective when you put it on 0 or 1 or 2 px size and distance. Anything larger and it looks crude and clumsy. Outer glow I like on pale text to give it a vague look, but it's only good on a dark bg and not in every circumstance.

Inner glow only really works if the text is on a dark bg, and you have to keep it small for it to look interesting and not just pale yellow (experiment with px size and opacity). On really large text, it can make it look frosted, a really cool effect (see image) (http://cinnamongrrl.popullus.net/art/title_art_bl.jpg). In this, the original text was the muted greyish-purple of the border-- I used stroke, drop shadow, outer glow (at low opac.) and inner glow to enhance it.

Stroke: ah, stroke. How it saves my ass. Unless you text is fairly large, it won't look good set to "inside" or "center" positions, only on "outside". Try to pick a colour from the image itself, as plain white or black can be too stark and clash if there's no correspondence. It's usually best at 1px in size, though on rare occasions, 2px will work. Experiment with different blending modes, as sometimes multiply or colour burn or overlay will give you a subtler look. Here, (http://cinnamongrrl.popullus.net/art/FaithGlorfindel_yahoo.jpg) I used just a sliver of bright blue to distinguish the black from the bg.

And in that vein: also play around with the opacity, sometimes just 50% or even only 25% will give you want you want to distinguish the text without looking clumsy or heavy-handed. You can switch the modes: try color burn, color dodge, overlay, and difference. All produce interesting effects. I often find myself putting a text layer into overlay and duping it several times to build up the contrast between the text and the bg, then giving it a tiny bit of text effect to enhance the text outline.

When all else fails, don't discount the feasibility of simply duping the layer, switching the colour to white or black, dragging it under the original text layer, and offsetting it over and down 1 or 2 px. That sometimes works better than drop shadow, even if you set DS to 0px size and distance. I did that for this (http://cinnamongrrl.popullus.net/art/dog_logo.jpg).

Hope this helps!

Forgot to add...

[hardlyfatal.livejournal.com]

... that the font also matters a lot, too. Sometimes, you'll have to decide what's more important: how it looks (using a "pretty" font) or what it's saying (using a plainer, but legible font).

Play around with font size, with tracking and kerning, with bolding and italicizing. Try mixing fonts: I like using Arial for the main text bits, then using Arial Black in small caps for the word(s) that I want to emphasize (see this post's icon for an example).

Those bitmap fonts like Belmongo and Grudblitter can be a godsend, too, but they're HARD to use because they look shitty with effects, and work best without anti-aliasing-- best to create a contrasting strip or square of colour on a new layer, then put the bitmap-font text over that. Like I did here and here .

Granted, that's not bp text (just plain Arial) but you get the idea.

[calanor.livejournal.com]

what program are you using???

[mhalachaiswords.livejournal.com]

Photoshop 7