Firefly icons, kapow!
Jun. 20th, 2004 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabI made some Firefly icons, and then, by popular demand (where "popular" is ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nullsechs, a finer icon-maker than I will ever be), a tutorial, largely about erasing stuff.
These icons are free to good homes, please leave a comment and do credit me in your userpic keywords, 'cause that's just swell.
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Okay, so, this icon:
...as well as the rest of the icons in this set, mostly, were done in the following manner which has a lot to do with erasers. I love me an eraser, I do. I use PS7 and don't know how brushes/erasers work in PSP, but presumably someone does, and you could ask them.
SO. First.
I tipped the image till I liked the way it'd frame a square, then cropped it square using the Fixed Aspect Ratio cropper thingy:
You'll see that the cap cut off before the bottom of the square (you can see my purple background image underneath), but don't worry about that; it'll all come out in the wash. I resized it to 200x200, sharpened, and then zoomed way in with the blur tool (the little raindrop on the control panel) at 50% and smushed around to even out Jayne's skin tone, etc, before resizing. Then I resized again to 100x100 and sharpened again, then went to Edit --> Fade Sharpen and wiggled the fader till the image was the right degree of sharpness.
Duplicated three times, set the bottom two (above the base image, which I kept as it was) to Screen and the top one to Soft Light. Desaturated the Soft Light layer and threw in the following blue layer:
On Exclusion. I cranked up the contrast of the top screen layer (the one right below the blue layer) until I liked it, and THEN! The first stage of eraser fun began.
I have heaps of 100x100 texture brushes, downloaded from the likes ofcrumblingwalls, dtissagirl, sinecure and so forth. I never use them as brushes, but I use 'em all the goddamned time as ERASERS, to eke out some texture in my layered layers. (To do this, simply click the little eraser shape on the control panel, then go up to the brush drop-down menu and choose the brush shape you want the eraser to be).
At this stage, I set the erasers on a pretty low opacity (I'm fond of 23% or 31%, for no real reason), and slap 'em around until I reach a color and texture balance I like. I probably erased some of the soft-light layer, and some of the exclusion layer, maybe some of the screen layer too. I used different erasers on each so's they wouldn't "line up," you know. Then I merged. Ended up with this:
NOW, to add a second image, for color, texture, food and sport. Each of the icons in this set has a second image layered onto it, though you can't necessarily see 'em. Still, I like what they offer. For Jayne, I used this guy:
Who I pinched from Getty Images. I liked the gradient color in the back, and I liked the contrast of the solemn little preacher man against Jayne and his gun.
I duplicated my Jayne base a couple times, and duplicated the stock image a couple times too, just so's I could have them to use. I set one stock image on "color" mode above a Jayne, and then merged down, so I'd have at least one Jayne set to the same color scheme as the stock image -- that way when I erased bits of one or the other, the image underneath would be more...organic. Colorized by the stock image, Jayne looked like this:
I took one of the untouched copies of the stock image and put it on top of the colorized Jayne. Time to play with erasers again!
I erased some bits of the stock image, and then decided, though I wanted to bring Jayne up through the sky-colored background, I wanted the little preacher guy to still be visible. So I selected him with the polygonal lasso (a version of him that had been somewhat erased; I didn't want a fully opaque little guy) and pasted him on a new layer, like so:
Then I could use different eraser-brushes on the sky layer without worrying about losing the little guy, and could make sure Jayne came through loud and clear. Like so:
A few erasers later, I was ready to cut the image in half, because this icon set is about icons that are cut in half. So, I merged all the erased Jaynes and put that layer on top of a normal-colored Jayne I'd saved, then cut out the top corner of the erased Jayne, like so:
I thought Jayne's face was a little too smooth and bold, in comparison with the grungier look of the erased section, so I duplicated the face part, desaturated the duplicate and erased parts of the desaturated layer (with an eraser brush on a sub-100 opacity, as always). I also thought the little guy wasn't delineated enough, so I dragged up another little-cut-out-guy layer and set it atop Jayne with a white drop-shadow (Layer --> Style --> Drop Shadow) on screen. Got this:
Then I cut the two triangular sections down (using, again, everyone's favorite, the polygonal lasso tool) so's there'd be space between them, made a square of off-white to serve as a background. Like so:
I gave each triangle a purple stroke outline at 1px and a black drop shadow on Multiply, and then merged them down onto the white layer so I could play with Variations and tweak the color of the entire image so it'd be more uniform -- so that the colors of the top and bottom triangles weren't so different. Went to Image --> Adjust --> Variations and gave it, I think, one click more Green and one click Lighter, and got this:
Then, because I felt like the left side of the top triangle was a wee bit too dark, I used the polygonal lasso to select a couple rectangular shapes near the side of Jayne's face, layered 'em on in Screen mode, tweaked the opacities, and badda bing! Done!
Questions? Comments? Want to use one of 'em? Make a joyful noise here.
nullsechs, a finer icon-maker than I will ever be), a tutorial, largely about erasing stuff.These icons are free to good homes, please leave a comment and do credit me in your userpic keywords, 'cause that's just swell.
:: :: :: :: Okay, so, this icon:
...as well as the rest of the icons in this set, mostly, were done in the following manner which has a lot to do with erasers. I love me an eraser, I do. I use PS7 and don't know how brushes/erasers work in PSP, but presumably someone does, and you could ask them.
SO. First.
I tipped the image till I liked the way it'd frame a square, then cropped it square using the Fixed Aspect Ratio cropper thingy:
You'll see that the cap cut off before the bottom of the square (you can see my purple background image underneath), but don't worry about that; it'll all come out in the wash. I resized it to 200x200, sharpened, and then zoomed way in with the blur tool (the little raindrop on the control panel) at 50% and smushed around to even out Jayne's skin tone, etc, before resizing. Then I resized again to 100x100 and sharpened again, then went to Edit --> Fade Sharpen and wiggled the fader till the image was the right degree of sharpness.
Duplicated three times, set the bottom two (above the base image, which I kept as it was) to Screen and the top one to Soft Light. Desaturated the Soft Light layer and threw in the following blue layer:
On Exclusion. I cranked up the contrast of the top screen layer (the one right below the blue layer) until I liked it, and THEN! The first stage of eraser fun began.
I have heaps of 100x100 texture brushes, downloaded from the likes of
crumblingwalls, dtissagirl, sinecure and so forth. I never use them as brushes, but I use 'em all the goddamned time as ERASERS, to eke out some texture in my layered layers. (To do this, simply click the little eraser shape on the control panel, then go up to the brush drop-down menu and choose the brush shape you want the eraser to be). At this stage, I set the erasers on a pretty low opacity (I'm fond of 23% or 31%, for no real reason), and slap 'em around until I reach a color and texture balance I like. I probably erased some of the soft-light layer, and some of the exclusion layer, maybe some of the screen layer too. I used different erasers on each so's they wouldn't "line up," you know. Then I merged. Ended up with this:
NOW, to add a second image, for color, texture, food and sport. Each of the icons in this set has a second image layered onto it, though you can't necessarily see 'em. Still, I like what they offer. For Jayne, I used this guy:
Who I pinched from Getty Images. I liked the gradient color in the back, and I liked the contrast of the solemn little preacher man against Jayne and his gun.
I duplicated my Jayne base a couple times, and duplicated the stock image a couple times too, just so's I could have them to use. I set one stock image on "color" mode above a Jayne, and then merged down, so I'd have at least one Jayne set to the same color scheme as the stock image -- that way when I erased bits of one or the other, the image underneath would be more...organic. Colorized by the stock image, Jayne looked like this:
I took one of the untouched copies of the stock image and put it on top of the colorized Jayne. Time to play with erasers again!
I erased some bits of the stock image, and then decided, though I wanted to bring Jayne up through the sky-colored background, I wanted the little preacher guy to still be visible. So I selected him with the polygonal lasso (a version of him that had been somewhat erased; I didn't want a fully opaque little guy) and pasted him on a new layer, like so:
Then I could use different eraser-brushes on the sky layer without worrying about losing the little guy, and could make sure Jayne came through loud and clear. Like so:
A few erasers later, I was ready to cut the image in half, because this icon set is about icons that are cut in half. So, I merged all the erased Jaynes and put that layer on top of a normal-colored Jayne I'd saved, then cut out the top corner of the erased Jayne, like so:
I thought Jayne's face was a little too smooth and bold, in comparison with the grungier look of the erased section, so I duplicated the face part, desaturated the duplicate and erased parts of the desaturated layer (with an eraser brush on a sub-100 opacity, as always). I also thought the little guy wasn't delineated enough, so I dragged up another little-cut-out-guy layer and set it atop Jayne with a white drop-shadow (Layer --> Style --> Drop Shadow) on screen. Got this:
Then I cut the two triangular sections down (using, again, everyone's favorite, the polygonal lasso tool) so's there'd be space between them, made a square of off-white to serve as a background. Like so:
I gave each triangle a purple stroke outline at 1px and a black drop shadow on Multiply, and then merged them down onto the white layer so I could play with Variations and tweak the color of the entire image so it'd be more uniform -- so that the colors of the top and bottom triangles weren't so different. Went to Image --> Adjust --> Variations and gave it, I think, one click more Green and one click Lighter, and got this:
Then, because I felt like the left side of the top triangle was a wee bit too dark, I used the polygonal lasso to select a couple rectangular shapes near the side of Jayne's face, layered 'em on in Screen mode, tweaked the opacities, and badda bing! Done!
Questions? Comments? Want to use one of 'em? Make a joyful noise here.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-06-21 12:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-21 12:19 am (UTC)I'm so glad you like them. Thanks for telling me!
no subject
Date: 2004-06-21 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-21 12:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-21 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-21 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-21 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-21 08:18 am (UTC)May I please filch Mal & Jayne? SO BEAUTIFUL.
Your skill with the icons continues to astound me.
mmmmmmm
no subject
Date: 2004-06-21 11:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-21 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-22 09:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-27 10:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-27 04:34 am (UTC)