Guardian Icons

[kurosakiami01]

I've never ever done Icons before. Look at what Guardian has made me do.

These are certainly not the best, but as I am taking screencaps as I rewatch the show I decided I might as well *shrugs.* They are only cropped and resized -- I'm not too ambitious as I'm barely starting :P

(I'd certainly not turn down pointers!)

These are from Ep 1 & 2!

Samples:

        

All 10 icons

            

            

    

 

Comments

[mekare]

Nice! I love Guo Changchang with that burst of colour and Yunlan looking atShen Wei. <3
timetobegin has some useful tutorials for icon making and mods several icon communities.

[trobadora]

Ooh, I love the Zhu Hong ones. :D

[tinny]

Yessss, new iconmakers!

I especially like Guo behind the flowers, great composition! and ZYL pointing, hee. :D

I'm taking you by your word and giving you iconmaking pointers, if that's all right?

I see you already do well on cropping and aspect ratio. Some of them are a tiny bit dark, but otherwise the light/dark balance and contrast looks nice.

So I'm thinking a base preparation and lighting guide would be interesting to you? How about this one:

https://pure-flames.livejournal.com/1908.html

[rheasilvia]

Guardian is such an enabler! I really like these - especially the one of Guo, which is such a lovely pop of color, and also the first time I've seen this particular image as an icon. And heee, the return of Mark Stewart! :-) Great Work! :-)

[abyss_valkyrie]

I really like the crop in 3! And 1 is so cute!

[extrapenguin]

Like everyone else, I love Guo Changcheng behind the flowers, and the crop of Zhao Yunlan choosing you!

In the realm of icon pointers, here are a few GIMP tutorials on things I find useful, though Photoshop has similar functionality:
Color toning via curves: the basics
Luminosity masks: how to make things only affect the dark bits/midtones/bright bits of the image (ex make the brights all washed out!)
How to make direct sunlight images have less dark shadows & midtones
Illustration of layer masks + how to make foreground things "pop" (and of course intro to layer masks, if that's new to you)

I find that while sometimes direct crops work, other times one has to adjust the brightness/contrast/etc, or do some editing to make the background less attention grabbing. (For a case in point, see my current icon. There's a Yunlan in the foreground at 100% opacity, isolated with a layer mask, and beneath that one sepia-toned original image layer and one layer that looks like this, both at 20% opacity, above the original image. All just to make the background less attention-grabbing, in color contrast and presence of edges.)

ETA: If you wish to try your hand at making more icons, there's an icon battle for Guardian (1. everyone makes one icon per episode, 2. look at the pretty icons) currently going on, with plenty of time to go for even the first round (eps 1-10).

[fashes]

Snagged Zhao Yunlan pointing. Feels like he's pointing at something important. That comes thru with the framing.