Icons by neonspider

18 June 2016 @ 05:48 pm

Made using Photoshop Cs5
Not directly translatable
Honestly kinda hard/exhausting to make cause it has 10000+ layers (or it feels like that anyway :p) and as usual there's lots of masking

My second Ask the Maker tutorial! This one is for

ohcaptain who wanted to know about this Captain America icon I made for the Random character challenge round 6. I'm pretty happy with this icon so I'm happy to provide a tut :)

( How to make an extra bright color split icon )

sweet jesus this turned LONG. Sorry about that!! This icon just had so many layers both before and afterd scaling down to icon size. :p
I hope there was something useful here! I'm not surprised if something was unclear - in that case please ask and I'll clarify as well as I can :)

Tags: type: tutorial

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neonspider

16 June 2016 @ 06:48 pm

Tutorial 12 - Rose up close

Made using Photoshop Cs5
Not directly translatable, I think
Not difficult but takes effort (AKA lots of masking!)

The first of my Ask the Maker 2016 tutorials! I made this icon for watchnicon in summer 2014, and it's so not my favorite out of my icons and it was a total shock for me when it won my 2014 bestof_icons poll, but since

dixon is wonderful and asked so nicely, how could I refuse! :)

( One method to illustrated look... )

FINISHED! Like I said I'm not a fan of this icon, but hopefully this tutorial provided at least some tips for someone! :)
If you need more details on some part, or if you have other questions about it, please ask :>

Tags: type: tutorial

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neonspider

22 February 2016 @ 06:30 pm

Tutorial 11 - Isaac

Made using Photoshop Cs5
Not translatable
Not super difficult but longish

The lovely

library_of_sex asked for a tutorial on this icon. I'm not sure why, but how could I say no? So here we go, I tried to make this less rambly than usual but that wasn't gonna happen tbh.

Note: All of my tutorials are meant to provide a look into my process, techniques and reasons behind them, NOT to provide a way for anyone to copy an icon exactly, so please don't do that for any icon you intend to publish at least! Doing that just to practise is fine ofc. Instead, I'd be very happy to see what other kinds of icons this tutorial or any of my others could inspire :) (this part was not directed at Kim btw, I know you wouldn't do that! just a general message)

( this is 90% just gradient maps and textures )

Tags: type: tutorial

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neonspider

25 July 2013 @ 11:46 pm

Tutorial 10 - Vintage Winchesters

reebeecaa asked for a tutorial for this vintage-styled SPN icon, so here it is :>

Made using Photoshop CS5.
Difficulty: intermediate (or maybe easy but long!)
Translatable: not directly

Er, this tutorial is one big WTF. I'm honestly a bit weirded out by my process here. This icon was made during one of my inspiration droughts, which is when I just take random steps hoping they will lead to something good, lol. If anything, this is a tutorial on how to really screw an icon up and then salvage what can be salvaged :D

( Random process is random )

And if you have other tutorial requests/general questions for me, my Ask the Maker thread is open!

Tags: type: tutorial

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neonspider

17 July 2013 @ 09:26 pm

Tutorial 9 - Pastelly GOT

This one is for

erinae who asked about this icon at my Ask the Maker thread :)

Difficulty: Quite easy if you're comfortable with masking
Translatable: as always, to programs with gradient maps :p

This type of technique will work best on caps that have something interesting going on in the background, and hopefully some details you can give a pretty color in the characters themselves (such as Margaery's dress).

( This is actually how I color a lot of the time )

Aaaannd we're done! Hope this was helpful! :> Just ask if some part wasn't clear, I explained some steps maybe a bit too hastily to avoid rambliness.

Tags: type: tutorial

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neonspider

16 July 2013 @ 05:12 pm

Tutorial 8 - Textured Dean

fangss asked for a tutorial for this textured mess of an icon, so here we go :D seriously I don't even know what this icon is. It was a total experiment! So the short version of this tutorial would be 'try random shape textures on random settings and see what happens'.

Difficulty: intermediate
Translatable: to programs with gradient maps (&vibrance but it's not necessary)

( I'm trying to make my atm tuts less rambly than usual so that someone will actually want to read them but we'll see :p )
So yeah looks like I have a thread at Ask The Maker, so if someone wants to request a tut for another icon, it's open. I save all my psds from ever since I started iconing cause I'm one of those people who never ever throw anything away :p so anything goes!

Ask The Maker 5.0 || My Thread

Tags: type: tutorial

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neonspider

25 June 2013 @ 07:20 pm

Tutorial 7 - Grungy Sam

spartapuss asked for a tutorial of vintage style and particularly this Supernatural icon, so I thought why not :D it's very simple (to make), didn't take very many steps or layers. Some parts of this process may seem a bit random but it should be easy enough to follow, I hope!

Made with Photoshop, not translatable (uses vibrance, selective coloring & gradient maps).

Wow, I sure know how to ramble about the simplest things, but if you're not interested in the theory/thought processes behind this, just read the bolded parts and that should be enough to be able to follow the steps :)

( Sam tutorial )

Hope this was any helpful!! Please ask if this leaves any questions :)

Tags: type: tutorial

Current Mood:

accomplished

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neonspider

30 March 2013 @ 12:41 am

Tutorial 6 - I'm not quitting

This tutorial is the first part of my

farscape_20in20 Round 25 mini big bang project. It only earns me half the points, so expect to see another tut OR some FS graphics soon! :>

I picked this icon mostly cause it was my winning one from the previous round. In case there will be another tutorial happening, I'm still open to ideas about which Farscape icon it could be for!

Difficulty: Intermediate? idek it just has a lot of steps :p
Translatable: not really I'm afraid, uses Gradient maps and Vibrance (and also some Topaz but that step is not necessary at all)

( Was I wrong? You're no longer the Crichton I knew? )

I hope this was clear and easy to follow, but if not, please ask any questions that come to your mind! :)

Tags: type: tutorial

Current Mood:

busy

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neonspider

06 October 2012 @ 08:41 pm

Tutorials 4 & 5: complex Harry, simple Athena

These are just two quickies, much shorther than my usual tutorials cause the icons had very few layers.

sheekap requested a tutorial for these two so here they are :> Yes, the rest of my Ask the Maker tuts are still on the way, I just wanted to make these first kind of as an easy way to get me to write them again.

Tutorial #4:

----------------------------->

Difficulty: Intermediate
Translatable: to programs with Gradient Maps

( Tutorial 4 )

Tutorial #5:

----------------------------->

Difficulty: Easy-ish
Translatability: to programs with Gradient Maps

( Tutorial 5 )

Please ask if something was unclear. There were a couple of parts that weren't easy to explain so I'm not at all surprised if you have questions. Hopefully this was of some use to someone too :)

Tags: type: tutorial

Current Music: Lily Allen - Not Fair

Current Mood:

energetic

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neonspider

07 September 2012 @ 04:39 pm

Tutorial 3: pink/yellow GoT

Trying to catch up on my tutorial stack again :D This is the second icon pointblankdarcy requested a tutorial for at Ask The Maker, so here we go! This is a bit more tricky than the previous one, and it contains one step where I’ve for some reason merged two layers so I’m not quite sure how I did what I did there, but it’s minor so what we do here is much like the original result.

Difficulty: To be able to follow this, you need to know your way around PS with the basic things like how to copy layers, make layer masks and change the blend modes. Takes patience and requires masking so I'd say intermediate?
Translatability: Yes, I think so

----------------------------->

(as a remake of this: it's not the same but close enough I hope!)

( It takes ridiculously many layers to get there. Just a fair warning :p )

Anyway I know this is really long and confusing so please ask if something isn't clear. I'd hate to have written all this just to have you stuck on some step without me knowing, ok? :)

Tags: type: tutorial

Current Music: Miley Cyrus - Permanent December

Current Mood:

good

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