These are all so great, and they represent your style too, which is awesome :D I'll always be in love with #9 ♥

You know what I think about my winning one, haha. Good to see from the comments here that I'm not the only one who's a bit unhappy with my winning icon. My top ten is also weird, and not many icons from the end of the year got nominated, so I share your meh feeling about that. But your last posts were amazing so I'll say again that you definitely didn't get worse!

Oh thank you!! 9 was one of the earliest icon here, haha, but that was the time when i had just discovered a few new coloring techniques which I still use, so, good to know they work for you :> (I'm alb bothered by the bright purple shadows especially on her face, and that the whites of her eyes are actually pink, which is kinda creepy, but maybe that's just nitpicking x) )

tbh I only had one icon post from the end of the year, the rest of my icons were just randoms posted at watchnicon and capchallenge so I totally get that people wouldn't know to search those places when hunting for nominations :D also obviously in summer I had more time and inspiration to make icons, so I think I'm fine with most of my winners and nominations being oldish. I'm more surprised about your nominations being oldish though cause imo your latest posts were brilliant. But at least your second to winner icon was new and a really good representation of the things I think you're really stellar at, I really would have liked it to get the first place.

Yes part of the reason why I made this post was cause I think it's good to give people a place to express their icon feels. I have them and think it's ok for everyone to have them, positive or negative, so maybe getting to express it and seeing everyone elses reactions can be good, especially if the results were disappointing. though now I feel almost guilty for getting such a satisfying result personally!

Yeah that's totally nitpicking ;) I had to look extra closely to see what you were talking about. I'll admit that I usually layer mask pretty much everything over the eyes since I was traumatised by a tutorial that mentioned yellowish eyes and how ugly they looked, but most of the time I don't notice such things in other people's icons (and apparently not in my own icons either because Tink in my icon here has one blue eye and one pink eye O.o also green hair, hahaha, I fail actually I noticed the green hair ages ago but I still like the icon :P)

Aw, thanks! Yeah... Here is my top 11 (most of them are ties tbh)


I don't hate any of them, in face I like them, but I've made much better icons technically-wise. 3 and 4 are so over-topazed it hurts, 7 is blurry and weird, 9 has this weird light blob over the text, and 11 made me so proud when I made it, but that was a year ago :D

But you totally deserve a satisfying result! I think we're all impressed by your work, I know I am. Motivation issues aside I know I still have a long way to go to get ~there. I still need to find a proper style, and be more consistent, creative and patient when I make graphics. Maybe this year, if I feel like making graphics often enough. The goal should be to not post icons I don't like :)

Oh but that's such a colorful and gorgeous selection. I get what you mean that there possibly could have been even better choices in your newest posts but at the same time I'm in love with most of these too! the Topaz on 4 looks actually pretty excellent to me, I mean, it's not like this most plastic-looking icon ever which was in my top 20 results too, wtflmao. Besides who cares about topaz when the coloring is as stellar as in 4 (I'm pretty sure I even voted for it, all I thought was all the color porn, I'm easy like that, give me vibrant cyans and yellows and I'm sold :D). My other faves of these are of course 2, 5 and 6, I think 5 and 6 were even nominated by me, and 10 is incredible too, and the rest are awesome but I would have picked something newer, probably all from the newest post tbh, and would have liked to see your default place in the top10 for sure (I hadn't noticed the eye colors either and the lime colored hair is actually really cool!).

But I have absolutely no clue why you seem to think I'm any 'further' than you?!? :O I totally look up to your icons! They have none of the quality issues my icons have! And also I think you definitely have a style, or a set of things that make your work distinctive. The curse about styles though is that in 2012 I agonized over not having one. Like, I desperately wanted to develop one. And then it just hit me in December that year and I noticed that I really liked making ~vintagey/pastelly icons, and as a result, almost all my 2013 icons look the same cause I can't give up using the same coloring methods :p so, I went from no style to too much of the same style. You should enjoy the phase where your icons are distinctively yours, yet varied!! :)

I think my comment was marked as spam because of the icons :/

well that wasn't very nice of the spam filter, thanks for letting me know! :D