bestof_icons results: top 11 icons from 2013

[neonspider]

According to the bestof_icons results my top 11 icons made in 2013 were, in order:




I'm thrilled at this result cause many of these were my own favorites from my 2013 icons too, and I think it's a very good sample to represent what I like to do with icons. I'm surprised and delighted that some of my more experimental icons were that well received (2 and 3 for example, especially 2 because seriously I never paint! I can't paint! It's just... not a thing that i do, usually, but I'd like to, so this is really encouraging).
I don't dislike any of these icons and that's saying a lot! The only thing that makes me alb sad is that there's only one icon here that was made during the last few months of the year, mostly these are from April-July, so maybe I did get worse like I thought I had, haha.  But overall I think this selection is very similar to what I had hoped it would be, and I'm extremely grateful and happy that other makers seem to appreciate me for what I am and not just some lucky exception icons that don't reflect my style as a whole. So, HUGE THANKS to everyone who voted! ♥

Also, make sure to check all the fantastic winner icons from everyone else here!!

What did you think about your results? Were you happy or disappointed? Did your top results reflect your style well, and if not, does this bother you? I'm very interested in hearing what kind of thoughts this awesome event has inspired in you!

Comments

[neonspider]

Aw, thank you!
Oh I'm surprised you didn't like your winner, I think your winner icon was amazing. I think I was the one to nominate it - I'm sorry that I nominated something you didn't want to win, that's definitely not what I wanted. I just really don't think that it's a 'mediocre' icon in any way, I think coloring as deep and vibrant as that is very difficult to make and makes the icon stand out in a big voting post. But I totally get that it's disheartening if the audience doesn't like our personal favorites, it happens to me a lot with individual sets, but that only makes me want to practise the things I want to be liked for even more - but then again, like you say, everyone has different preferences and that's not really something that we can affect.

I for one had a lot of trouble picking just 5 of your icons to the voting and even more trouble voting for just 10, so if your favorites didn't make it there it doesn't mean that people didn't like them! :>

[shameless666.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much, your comments always make me feel better!
It's not that I didn't like it at all, but I spend less than 5 minutes on that icon and thought it didn't deserve to be among others, that I spend hours on :D But I guess the other icons of mine wouldn't mind that :D
Anyway, I hope the next year will be different (if I'm still around) and I'll try to make icons, which will be liked by me and by others. I still can't find my own style, I think that vibrant coloring is not enough for me, but we'll see :)
And I think that there's no way people don't like your personal favourites, cuz I personally love every icon of yours - your amazing texture use and text work with that beautiful vibrant, but at the same time muted coloring (I can't even describe it :D)

[neonspider]

WHAT are you kidding or did you really did that in 5 minutes :O wow, I never would have guessed! But if that's the case then I definitely understand you not being happy with the win, of course it's natural to want all the hard work to be worth it. This is why it would be good to see the caps in votings like that, to be able to tell which icons have taken more effort than others; I would have definitely taken that into account!

Ohhh I definitely didn't mean to say that you should only make vibrant icons and nothing else, I think you have lots of different strengths so I'd encourage playing around with all of them - vibrant colors, lighting, contrast, blending, blocking, text, textures, everything!! :> or whatever you're inspired by, even if it's completely different from what you think anyone else likes; you never know. I think your icons are absolutely gorgeous, so, don't worry too much about this poll :>

LOL no seriously this happens to me quite a lot, hoping one icon to get positive attention and being 'wtf' when another much less carefully made one gets more compliments. But at the same time I don't want anyone to feel like they like the 'wrong' icons from me; anyone liking any icon at all is already sooo much better than nobody liking anything, so, the last thing I want to do is make people feel like there are restrictions on which of my icons they are allowed to like, or that I'm ungrateful, cause that's not true either. This is such a complicated thing, it's good to get to discuss it :)

[shameless666.livejournal.com]

Maybe not exactly 5, but it was pretty close. I remember I used a lot of Variations (which always helps me with the vibrant coloring, because I always get the colors I need and of course Vibrance, Levels and Contrast to get to that point. But it was pretty much nothing unusual.

Yeah, I know, but when I look at my icons and the only thing I see is vibrant colors :D I tried to play with text last year and most of the time I was quite happy with the text icons (others were completely failures of course) and I plan to stick with that, but lately I struggle very much with the text, maybe I need some new fonts, because this year I barely made text icons. Textures on the other hand are really tough for me and I really have to work on that :)