somein30 round 9

[neonspider]

Fandoms:
Prison Break [3]
Buffy the Vampire Slayer [2]
Doctor Who [2]
LOST [2]
Orphan Black [2]
Sherlock [2]
Carmilla, Farscape, Once Upon a Time, Suits, Supernatural [1 each]

Here's my set for round 9 at somein30! The challenge was to create a set of style coordinates that would determine the style used for each icon. I did extra hard mode with x = contrast, y = brightness, z = grittiness and/or shininess.

Why these axes? The point of the round was practising range, and I already keep changing styles for each set so much that it's hard to think of any technical dimension I don't already vary a lot. But I'm not that adventurous when it comes to the basics - brightness and contrast, and maybe lighting. Most of my icons are bright and contrasted, yet I love the results when more skilled makers combine brightness and contrast in various different ways, and I think mastering these techniques is probably among the most important iconing goals (along with image quality and sharpening), since if they're off, the icon can't be good, yet any combination of brightness/contrast can be used well, as long as the result looks intentional.

I almost lost my mind trying to tell if an icon is bright enough or contrasted enough to fit a placement, so I made the brightness axis measurable: I used the Average/Mean color filter in PS to see what the average color of each icon is, and I looked at the value of Brightness that the eyedropper tool gives for this color. I decided that for the bottom rows this value must be 0-33%, for the middle row 34-67% and for the top row 68-100%. I did achieve that (just barely!), you can see the mean colors under the cut. For the contrast I just used subjective judgement. For the last column I used bright highlights and dark shadows in each icon, in the first column the difference between highlights and shadows had to be minimal (whether it's bright shadows, dark highlights or all midtones). The middle column was a pain in the ass: either highlights or shadows are toned down, but not both (or in some cased both could be a little bit toned down, but not by much). This column gave me so much trouble cause every little thing I did seemed to either increase or decrease the contrast too much, but I settled somewhere that I think works??

I wanted brightness, contrast, lighting and grittiness be the main focus in this set so I left these a lot simpler than usual when it comes to text and composition. There's absolutely nothing effortless happening here though. Also I tried to do more muted colorings again just to balance out the neon in the previous set, but I kinda slipped towards more vibrancy in some of the shiny icons, oops :p

Anyway, hope you find something to like! Please share your thoughts if you do, any comment would make my day ♥ Feel free to use any of these. Hover for fandom!

	GRITTY/MATTE
				[01-03]
				[03-06]
				[07-09]

	SMOOTH/SHINY
				[10-12]
				[13-15]
				[16-18]

Mean color of each icon that I used to measure brightness:

Comments

[aravishermione]

Gorgeous set! I especially love icons 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, and 10 ♥

[neonspider]

Aw thanks!! Glad you like them :D

[tinebrella.livejournal.com]

I was about to turn off my pc and then I noticed this post in my friends feed and OH MY GOOOOOOOD YOU ARE CRAZYYYYYYYY \o/
THE EFFORT IN THIS! JESUS! THE MEAN COLOR SQUARES!
Please know the engineer in me appreciates the scientific approach you used here.
(a more coherent comment will come tomorrow, now the siren call of the sofa is too strong)

[tinebrella.livejournal.com]

Ok, so first of all: I really admire your take on this challenge, and technical challenges in general.
You always take the opportunity to really think about your icon-making process and to challenge yourself to both improve upon your style and to get out of your comfort zone.
I really like how meta you go about this kind of challenges and it's always interesting to read about your thoughts while planning your sets.

Your axes are great, I especially like the gritty/matte to smooth/shiny one. It was a clever choice to make it the z axis because imho it's easier to gradually go from bright to dark or from low contrast to high contrast, while it's harder to go from gritty/matte to smooth/shiny in more than 2 steps.

I'm going to repeat myself, but your mean color square method is a thing of beauty and you're brilliant. Congrats on your brain, as usual.

AND NOW, THE ICONS THEMSELVES.
Let me wax poetics about 8. Please let me. Because it's a masterpiece. I love the low contrast, I love the darkness, I love the background and I absolutely adore the subtle text. The font choice is spot on and it makes the icon look like a poster. The kind of icon that makes you wish you had made it.

Other favs (they're mostly from the matte/gritty square, but that's just because I'm very partial to matte/gritty icons): 3 (gorgeous cold coloring and interesting texture use), 4 (the texture work is exquisite and I envy the lovely green coloring, plus the text is perfection), 6 (oh the stark contrast between the peach background and the perfectly extracted black silhouette! oh the font choice!), 7 (very dramatic!), 10 (very beautiful lighting and very interesting composition!).

[neonspider]

Ahaha thank you so much!! I'm glad your science brain appreciates the square method — I just got suuuper frustrated, the more I looked at each icon the less I could tell if the brightness was anywhere near where it needed to be. It's easy enough for the low contrast icons, but anything with high contrast needs to have both shadows and highlights so when is the balance right for the placement?? But then I just had this stroke of questionable genius and I was like yeah I'll just use science xD which was also frustrating cause every time I changed something I needed to regenerate the square and check the brightness... Never again.

Aww I'm so glad you like the Ben one, he is my baby so I always try to make his icons good so that I'll feel like using them myself :) Thanks for the lovely comment, I'm super burned out right now so your appreciation makes me think it was at least a little bit worth it.

[violateraindrop]

I always have a hard time commenting on these somein30 posts because I always just think "WOW!" and yours is no exception. Wow! ;)
These are so impressive and you made a science out of it! I love your icons, your style(s), and here are perfect examples for a lot of them. I really like all the close crops. I also love the compositions, especially on 4, 10, and 11. The texture use on the gritty icons is awesome, too <3

[neonspider]

Ah I totally feel you, I feel like most of the time I just the same thing about every icon! Commenting is super hard, but it's the thought that counts.
Thanks sooo much for the lovely comment though, I'm so glad you liked them! Especially the close crops, since that has definitely never been one of my strengths.

[emiels.livejournal.com]

Oh man I love your scientific approach to brightness :D Now I wish I'd done that, instead of just using the 'ye that looks about right' method in my sets...

But that aside, those are some lovely icons! Honestly hard to pick favorites, but it's gotta be 10 & 17, maybe with a little bit character bias because it's always great to see icons of the best boy Moriarty ♥

[neonspider]

Thanks so much!! No I'm VERY happy that you didn't torture yourself with this insanity, most of the time going with your gut is probably better anyway, I just entered this abyss of self questioning and needed sicence to pull me out of it :D

JIM IS THE BEST. <3

[abyss-valkyrie.livejournal.com]

OOHH!!How cool!I love that you used those colours to compare the brightness and they worked!:D
It's so much fun to see a different style from the same maker. The muted colouring is amazing!Love 1,3,4,6 and 8!The crops in 1 and 5 are great!
I love the level work in 12. 14 is really cute. That dark red with the character being visible in 16-wow,what an awesome effect!

[neonspider]

Aww thanks so much for the lovely comment! ♥
I need to keep switching styles, iconing would just get super boring for me otherwise. I realize it means that I'll never be the best at anything in particular, but honestly I'd rather just have fun.
Aw thanks for having so many favorites!! Hee, 14 might not be cute if you knew the characters, but always trust it on me to shamelessly romanticize creepy ships, icons are no expection :D

[alexia_drake]

Great icons, my faves are: 5, 9, 11, 13, 15 and 18.

[neonspider]

Thank you so much!! :D

[n-iinza.livejournal.com]

Omg, I love that you made two sets! They both look absolutely great, although I think my fave would be the gritty one.
The close crops, especially on 1 and 4 are so great. I love the creativity of 7 and the blending of 9. The gritty textures work really well and don't block the subjects at all!
From the shiny set, I love EVERYTHING about 11, the composition of 12 and the lighting in 15 and 17!

[neonspider]

Aw thank you so much for the lovely comment!! :D

[kitamikeita.livejournal.com]

Wow so many wonderful icons! In general I really like how all the colorings turned out. And my overall favorite grid is the gritty/matte one.

As for my individual favorites: 1 (love the crop and the shade of pastel lilac), 5 (maybe my overall favorite; I love the crop, warm tone, contrast and the general feeling), 6 (so simple yet so pretty and interesting), 15 (lovely warm reddish lighting and contrast) :D

Also you were very clever to find a way to measure brightness (I might have tried it too for the saturation, but not too strictly lol).

[neonspider]

Thank you so much for the lovely comment :)

[agirlahaunt.livejournal.com]

these are beautiful! love the texture use on 7, 3, & 4!

[neonspider]

Thank you so much! It's always hard for me to tell how much grunge is too much grunge lol so I'm glad you liked the texture use on those :D

[sietepecados]

Awesome sets! I love the crop on 1, 2 and 4, also light and coloring on 13, 16 and 17 loos great. I also really like the composition on 12 :)

[neonspider]

Aw thank you so much!! :)

[tinny]

Omg you *measured* them? :DDD That's some dedication!

I love your shiny/matte split. And I never really thought about how different dark icons look when they're low-contrast to light icons. I feel like I need to do something like that again, it's such a great tool to discover and practice less-used styles. I love 3 and 7, 13, 14, and 18. (Scorpy! <3) Of these, I feel like only 14 really looks like your style - like I would have recognized it as yours in a line-up. That alone proves how much you went out of your comfort zone with this set.

Amazing! <3

[neonspider]

Thank you so much! :D
Yep, everything is super out of my comfort zone (even 14 definitely would be matte if I did things outside of a grid), so I'm super happy that you liked them, thanks a lot!! I need to icon Scorpy more, and Farscape in general.