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[Jul. 26th, 2008|08:11 pm] |
1. I started watching Stargate Atlantis on Wednesday and I'm up to episode 6. I started watching it because ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) harbourlight somehow convinced me to. Episode 1/2 was fantastic, but I haven't been nearly as impressed with the others. I have, however, been inspired to make icons by it (see: 5)
2. I finally finished off life on Mars. The finale was amazing! I can't wait for season 3! I told my family about how they say "those damn bastards!" a lot in their hilarious English accent and so now we've started saying it randomly just as a fun inside joke that, honestly, I think I'm the only one who really understands :P
3. I had an awesome day at work yesterday, possibly my best yet. All of my customers were really friendly and I got really ahead of my daily schedule that I ended up doing quite a bit of the work that the person whose shift was after mine would have to do. It was also my first shift with Christine, who it turns out is awesome!
Unfortnately the day before yesterday was probably the worst I've had yet. I was working with the guy who I was supposed to be replacing when I came along three months ago (he's looking for work and is sticking around for a little bit until he can find it) and he was bugging me about liking TV and was asking me a million questions about my life and stuff and then telling me what I thought about things were wrong and... ugh, it was infuriating. Also it was probably the least I've done of my daily routine in the last couple of months.
4. ( walls )
5. ( icons )
6. Is sxc.hu loading for you guys, because it's not for me :( I'm desperate to get some scenery stocks for an awesome wall I've got in the making (better than the two in 4, I promise!) So feel incredibly free to share your awesome scenery stocks with me if you want to <3
7. I'm about to watch The Tudors, which will continue (and finish) my recent English TV obsession. I just found out that it has the girl from Burn Notice in it, which is awesome! Everything seems to be pushing me towards watching Tudors at the moment. |
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| 10 new Horrible icons (and one old one) |
[Jul. 21st, 2008|04:02 pm] |
there are a few here I really like and a few that I liked when I was making them, but not so much anymore.
1.  2. 
3.  I really like this one.
4.  5.  I love the lighting here.
6.  my personal favourite.
7.  I don't do enough with saturation anymore.
8.  9.  I love the crop.
10.  11.  I still like this, but I prefer some of the others :) |
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[Jul. 19th, 2008|01:58 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | drankmywar, harbourlight, letsey_x, meivocis, miz_thang88, mouthfullofdust, nightcomes, resources, schmiss, tihana, tutorials | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | drained | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Doctor Horrible | ] |
I'm composing a list of tutorials and textures for harbourlight to look at, because she's getting back into arting and she needs a couple of tips/textures/tutorials to get a kick-start and I figured this might be something that other people may want to see.
letsey_x - this is the best tutorial you'll ever read. You have to read it about 20 times to get the full impact, though. It has never failed to inspire me.
schmiss - here and here
I don't like these icons particularly, and the tutorials are a bit all of the place, but schmiss is someone you definitely want to learn from when it comes to colouring/texturing.
meivocis - is brilliant and uses textures in a way previously unknown to mankind. I'm not entirely sure how realiable these tutorials are, but if nothing else they'll make you think differently about iconing.
one
two
three
oh, and I can't believe this but I just noticed she relocated to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) infectedframe, I think I prefer the icons over at iconfilth though. I'm not sure... perhaps I just need to re-adjust.
nightcomes - is just rediculous with close-cropping and skintone colouring. In the tutorial here, I think the blacks are a bit too black, but... whatever. :D
I was (and still am) completely in love with this old orangey colouring style. It had a tendancy to get too bright, though. I actually forgot about this tutorial, so I can't wait to check it out for myself :D
miz_thang88 - works wonders with colouring, light splodges and text and these are a general idea of how she does it :D
one
two
three
four
tihana - does absolutely absurd things with colouring. Just ridiculous. She posted a .psd here which I actually have yet to look at myself (although it's bound to be mind-boggling)
drankmywar - uses saturation and contrast like nobodys business. I don't particularly like the icon this is a tutorial for, but it gives you some interesting insight into what's going on in that brilliant noggin' of hers
mouthfullofdust has been making absolutely amazing icons for yonks and yonks, but she hasn't made a tutorial (that I can find) but her icons are most definitely worth checking out for inspiration.
and finally, my colouring/iconing tips:
DISCLAIMER: 99% of this was stolen from other people and you'll find it in the tutorials above, but I think is worth repeating because they're tips that I actually use
-don't be afraid to use masks. If one effect makes one part of the piece look awesome but another terrible, just mask away the terrible.
-a high-passed layer with a large radius set on soft light makes for a good substitute to a regular layer on soft light and makes light splodges less noticeable and intense
-make your art big, blend it onto a new layer and then resize it down so that it doesn't end up being grainy or oversharpened
-don't worry if your text is readable, just use it to emphasize the colourscheme or mood of the piece
-use a brightness/contrast layer at the end of the piece to make it brighter and more contrasty, because photoshop makes stuff look brighter than it is for some reason...
-taking away the reds from an icon can make it look surprisingly classier. Just use selectice colouring to add cyan, or subtract magenta and and a bit of yellow. Be sure to compensate and add reds into the yellows. And while you're there add a little white to your blacks, just to make them less intense. Obviously you don't HAVE to do either of these things, but I find it makes icons feel classier.
texture-finding places: (for a couple of these you'll have to backtrack a bit to find the good stuff, but there is most definitely awesomeness in all of these) ... (probably :P)
elli
soaked
dearest
backstage_art
77words
disclosure
ewanism
hgx
ownthesunshine
wash_when_dirty
zinzibar
freshmakers is a better version of texturise but sometimes awesome texturemakers fall through the cracks so I watch both just in case.
or hey, why not check out my textures? |
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| okay now, time for sleep |
[Jul. 18th, 2008|01:41 am] |
 I needed a new Ugly Betty icon and this was the best I could do on an empty brain. |
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| guh |
[Jul. 18th, 2008|12:57 am] |
 best scene ever! Go watch it right now! Why? Because if you don't -to quote Neil Patrick Harris- "you're gonna die" :D |
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| **** |
[Jul. 18th, 2008|12:07 am] |
 Holy frick, this routine knocked my flippin' socks off. Amazing amazing amazing.
EDIT:  for those of us who don't want to have our eyes burned out by my crazy usage of red. |
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| holy monkies! |
[Jul. 17th, 2008|06:36 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | doctor horrible, doctor who, drankmywar, games, icons, letsey_x, lost, mouthfullofdust, sytycd, the office, tihana | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | good | ] |
| [ | music |
| | So You Think You Can Dance - 4x14 - Top 12 Perform | ] |
1. letsey_x friended me which is just... :o ... I have no words for the awesome. I wish I knew what inspired this seemingly random friending, but hey, I ain't complaining. Hello letsey_x!
Now all I need is mouthfullofdust and tihana watching me and my icon idol collection will be complete! MWAHAHA!
...
*looks around shiftily*
2. I watched Doctor Horrible. I liked act 1, I didn't love it. Act 2 however... made me jump for joy! It was so damn incredible! And it gave me hope for the future of Dollhouse, too. I have been really scared for a while now that Joss had lost his edge, but this gave me hope! :D Now all I need is act 3 and for the caps for 2 and 3 to be up at inadream_caps
3. Dad bought a wii out of the blue which was awesome and brought forth such hilarious phrases as: "I'm gonna wii like I've never wii-ed before" and "I can't wait to get home and wii, I'm gonna wii like crazy :D". *chuckles at the potential for mis-interpretation*
He also got 'Wii Fit' with it and I've been playing it all day, I love it. For a while now I've been intending to head off to the gym, but this is WAY better :D
4. I'm currently watching Wenesday's episode of sytycd and ( here are some of my thoughts )
5. We had a really... uhh... "interesting" ant infestation a couple of days ago. They were all over the floor, just wandering around aimlessly. And when I say all over the floor I mean all over the floor, you could barely step without killing a handful of them. It was like they had a crazy ant party and they were all drunk :P Oh and THEN they disappeared even quicker than they arrived! Crazyness!
6. My mp3 is broken. It's incredibly sad, because I've got about 2 weeks worth of Hamish and Andy podcasts I'm desperate to catch up on, I've got pieces from the Doctor Who soundtrack I'm desperate to listen to and of course the new Doctor Horrible songs. :(
Of course I can listen to them on my computer, but then what am I gonna do when I'm walking to and from work or catching the bus? And then when will I find the time to watch my shows?
7. icons!
 this scene is so awesome, my icon doesn't do it justice I don't think. I was trying to go for something sly and cool, but it just ended up very flat and boring. That thing happened again where it looked awesome in Photoshop and then rubbish outside of it.
 this one I think is pretty cool. I don't think it deserved to win at iconstant, though. So I'm not broken up about that.
 I made this for my battle at icon_battle with lime_and_salt. I like it. It's bright, it's colourful. I just wish I knew which scene it was from...
 this reminds me a LOT of  by drankmywar. Except hers is better. |
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| i'm gonna kill you... nah, I'm just joshin' ya |
[Jul. 15th, 2008|12:23 am] |
First things first, come over and join icon_battle. It's gonna be totally awesome and I intend to spend a lot of time over there so you may as well join me :D
I ended up making Lily Cole icons. I hate most of them, there are a couple I don't mind and there's one I love. I'm not gonna tell you which is which, I want you to guess for yourself :P
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| absolutely horrible |
[Jul. 13th, 2008|11:54 pm] |
Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.
Two more days! And if you haven't heard, it's gonna be an hour and fifteen minutes long (so says Kristen of E!)
EDIT: and if my friendsfriends list is correct, you guys get a frakload of fanfic delivered to your flist |
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| friends friends |
[Jul. 13th, 2008|11:18 pm] |
Ooh! Guys, check out nargynargy if you haven't already. There are some awesomely coloured SN promo recreations over there. :D
Thank goodness for my friendsfriends list, or I wouldn't have found him/her (there aren't any gender indications at all on their lj, don't blame me for not looking :P) |
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[Jul. 13th, 2008|10:14 pm] |
okay, so there isn't quite as much Stam as I indicated there would be yesterday. Or McGowan for that matter. I guess you can never predict where the inspiration is going to hit from.
 Can you believe it? Toccarra was in VOGUE! That's crazyness! She looked amazing, though :D
 I've been watching Life on Mars. I don't really like it, but I'm gonna stick with it. I just finished the 3rd episode.
 Aoki! <3
 this is possibly the only black and white icon I will ever make. Denise Richards is so stunningly beautiful (absolute 100% perfection as far as I'm concerned), but I don't have nearly enough photos of her.
 This is my favourite photograph ever. I love how the photographers can ugly up Ricci as much as they want, because no matter what they do she still looks flawless. :D
 I made the latest challenge at icon_crack in order to amend subjecting you to  . It's not quite as awesome as I'd like, I think it just needs a bit more blues and contrast.
Tomorrow I intend to make about a million Doctor Who icons for icon_crack in hopes that I can get DW out of my system (at the very least temporarily), but I think we've all just learned you never know what I'm gonna icon next. Not even I do! :o |
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cynical
bouncy
