would you ever be willing to do a short tutorial on how you edit your icons? i love yours and I can never quite get the ones I try to make right...
Ahh, sure!!
For this tutorial, I’m going to assume that you’re using some version of Photoshop and already know the basics of cropping, layers, etc. If you need any clarification on that, send me a message! :)
Anyway, here’s my process for getting from here to here:
And using Rena Rouge because she was beautiful in Sapotis and I was going to make icons of her anyway!
(Side note: there are some parts of icon making I have a lot of trouble with, like cropping and adding extra decorations like stars and hearts, so I can’t really talk about those ^^)
First, starting out with the screencap, higher resolution always helps! Icons for Tumblr don’t have a reason to be larger than 300x300, but when you’re only working with a small section of, say, a 480p screenshot, there’s a good chance you’ll be sizing up rather than down!
So starting with the screenshot, I crop it in a square and cut it down to 280x280.
Then, I erase the background around Rena with a hard eraser brush set on 100% hardness. (x)
I cut out all my icons manually like this rather than using magic wand or quick selection! It’s a bit of a hassle, especially working with just a trackpad, but I’ve found that it gives you much more solid, clear lines on icons. There’s no white “halo” around the character that might happen when you’re resizing.
(On a side note, I’ve heard that the pen tool is good for this too, although I haven’t gotten the hang of that yet.)
Anyway, this is what I consider the major thing that makes my icons look "good” ish. You don’t have to do it to get a nice icon, but if you’d like to try it out, here are some tips I’ve gathered!
Left bracket and right bracket keys make the brush bigger and smaller, saving time.
On parts where the cut is straight, you can draw a straight line with the eraser by clicking a start point, holding down shift, then clicking an end point. This saves effort!
To remove the “halo” around the character, cut into the character a little bit! This removes borders (like on Rena’s ears here) and makes the icon look clearer overall.
When you’re done, you can make a layer underneath in fuschia or another bright color to see if there are places you’ve missed.
Cutting out Rena took about three minutes btw :P
Next, I pick some color in the photo (here, some gray from Rena’s hair) and make it the background in a layer underneath Rena’s cutout. This just helps me visualize the next part: coloring!
I like to do pretty different colorings depending on how I’m feeling and I go quite overboard on them :P But here’s what I did this time, in case you’re wondering ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
+ curves layer to increase brightness
+ selective color layers that make the icon more reddish and Rena’s lips a brighter pink
+ another curves layer, also brightening+ selective color to make the white of Rena’s ears darker
+ channel mixer trick to take the bluish purple out of the background
+ increase saturation (in the vibrance layer)
+ a dark gray layer set on exclusion at 62% that puts soft grayish filter over everything
Aaand that’s pretty much it for coloring! Then, I turn all the coloring layers off and use the gradient tool (by pressing G), and make several new gradients with colors in the picture.
For example, a gray-to-gray and red-to-red!
With a gradient selected on a blank layer under Rena, I draw lines across the icon (often diagonally!) to get something that looks alright.
Finally, I move Rena around a bit:
And that’s about it! *confetti*
This tutorial turned into quite the rant haha, but I hope it helped you out somewhere in there! Good luck on your icon-making adventures! ^-^
Hi there! i saw one of your edits of your favorite overwatch characters and I noticed that you listed Sombra's real name as Olivia something?? I was just wondering where that came from, since I checked the hero website and it still says her name is unknown. Thanks!
yo it’s cool! it comes from zarya’s comic searching!
