This is sort of heavy on the breast-age/chest-age content, isn't it?
I don't know why you are worried about your icon making abilities Oh, I don't think I'm horrible. Thankfully, they are lots of icons out there that I totally hate and it makes me feel like I'm in the middle of the pack than just the speshul class. ;-) Seriously, I am in a rut. They're all fairly tightly cropped busts. Or, I was in a rut. I've been given some excellent pointers and I've started working on them. I made most of these before the discussions, though, so I admit a few make me cringe.
I DO make the eyes the central focus; you're exactly right. That's what most intrigues me and if an icon doesn't turn out with good "eye-age" then I delete it. That has, in turn, limited me in my composition and led to my issues with oversharpening.
(thats what I do..try to find ways to make you look at the whole thing..well most of the time) Hmm...I think that's something I noticed in terms of "wow, look at the cool stuff I can see going on in the background; wish mine were like that!" Ha!
and once again I love the clarity of your icons....I still haven't quite figured out how to do that yet..you have crispness but also a softness to them..guh..I want to get that I don't think this is as difficult as you think. First off, I've always LIKED your clarity. I also like your use of the only slightly out of focus background to add depth.
I think you've got as much clarity as you're typically going to get because you icon scenes whereas I'm getting in closer. That allows for more detail. Seriously, look at the scene in #18. The lack of detail makes me want to tear my hair out but I just love that scene and it's an angle I haven't seen before, so...
How do I get the clarity I do? Absolutely it starts with your cap. Looking above, #7 was the highest quality cap and the resulting icon has a lot of rich detail. #10 and #11, though, were caps made from the show feed rather than DVDs and they lack a lot of the detail. pax89 is brilliant at adapting her style to the cap and I hope some day to be able to do the same.
I don't think I do anything different from standard base prep. I use the blunt force of "sharpen" and then spend a lot of time smoothing and erasing the signs of oversharpening. If I knew more about Photoshop, I could probably save myself a lot of time by using unsharpen. I have never grokked that tool. I play with sliders until the image looks okay but I am a control freak and I'd rather control it precisely using my jerry-rigged scheme. If you ever want me to explain how I got a particular image sharpened or whatever, please feel free to ask.
Thanks for the feedback. I hadn't ever thought of making the eye travel around the icon. Maybe that'll help me break out of the head & shoulders rut! *smooches*
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I don't know why you are worried about your icon making abilities
Oh, I don't think I'm horrible. Thankfully, they are lots of icons out there that I totally hate and it makes me feel like I'm in the middle of the pack than just the speshul class. ;-) Seriously, I am in a rut. They're all fairly tightly cropped busts. Or, I was in a rut. I've been given some excellent pointers and I've started working on them. I made most of these before the discussions, though, so I admit a few make me cringe.
I DO make the eyes the central focus; you're exactly right. That's what most intrigues me and if an icon doesn't turn out with good "eye-age" then I delete it. That has, in turn, limited me in my composition and led to my issues with oversharpening.
(thats what I do..try to find ways to make you look at the whole thing..well most of the time)
Hmm...I think that's something I noticed in terms of "wow, look at the cool stuff I can see going on in the background; wish mine were like that!" Ha!
and once again I love the clarity of your icons....I still haven't quite figured out how to do that yet..you have crispness but also a softness to them..guh..I want to get that
I don't think this is as difficult as you think. First off, I've always LIKED your clarity. I also like your use of the only slightly out of focus background to add depth.
I think you've got as much clarity as you're typically going to get because you icon scenes whereas I'm getting in closer. That allows for more detail. Seriously, look at the scene in #18. The lack of detail makes me want to tear my hair out but I just love that scene and it's an angle I haven't seen before, so...
How do I get the clarity I do? Absolutely it starts with your cap. Looking above, #7 was the highest quality cap and the resulting icon has a lot of rich detail. #10 and #11, though, were caps made from the show feed rather than DVDs and they lack a lot of the detail.
I don't think I do anything different from standard base prep. I use the blunt force of "sharpen" and then spend a lot of time smoothing and erasing the signs of oversharpening. If I knew more about Photoshop, I could probably save myself a lot of time by using unsharpen. I have never grokked that tool. I play with sliders until the image looks okay but I am a control freak and I'd rather control it precisely using my jerry-rigged scheme. If you ever want me to explain how I got a particular image sharpened or whatever, please feel free to ask.
Thanks for the feedback. I hadn't ever thought of making the eye travel around the icon. Maybe that'll help me break out of the head & shoulders rut! *smooches*