There are lots of icon challenge communities in this fair world that is LiveJournal. They are varied, and they've caught my eye before. In fact, I even underwent one once.

A few days ago, I was poking around in them. Most are for 100 or 50 icons, but there was one theme I thought was neat: an alphabet challenge. As you can probably guess, it's where you pick a theme and make 26 icons from it - one for each letter of the alphabet.

I grabbed caps from the movie Anastasia, my Photoshop, and in a few days they were done. Whether or not I'll do more sets based on more movies is yet to be seen, but I did quite enjoy these.

Nearly all have text, only one is a quote from the movie (points to whoever spots it!), all can be used by fans of the movie and fans of icons with animated characters in them. Also, I cheated a bit with X - there aren't that many iconable X words, so I decided to just go with a word that started with "ex". Much easier!

Credit is appreciated but not necessary. What IS necessary is that you comment with what you took. You may not modify these in any way.

( There's a rumor in St. Petersburg! )

feeling: accomplished
listening to: it's crazy but it's true I only wanna be with you

I come bearing icons!

While posting icons in a set of 100+ is ridiculously satisfying, at the moment I don't have the patience to hoard a big set long enough to build up that many icons.

Therefore, I will be posting this big set in installments. Which, I suppose, makes it less of a set and more of a series.

You CAN use these without crediting (though I love credit, it makes me happy!). You CAN link this post to your friends. You CAN'T take any without commenting with which. You CAN'T modify these in any way.

Yes, I will be doing a whole slew of musicians. No, you can't request someone - at least, not yet. I got my images from the lovely gallery on Last FM.

Below the cut are 20 Fiona Apple icons. Here are three teasers:


( I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine. )

Coming Soon:
Regina Spektor
P.J. Harvey
Tori Amos
& many more!

feeling: satisfied
listening to: lindsay lohan - I live for the day

Hey, ducklings.

Our downtime is officially over - if you spot a broken image or link, please tell me (preferably in a comment on this post) or another designer and we'll get on it.

I lost the iconing bug for a while, but it has returned! I have oodles of images saved for bases, and a bunch of plans for icons.

Behind the cut is a poll, and a list of icon-y things I'm currently working on.

( Too tired for a clever quote! )

location: United States, Virginia, Fredericksburg
feeling: drained
listening to: crickets and cicadas

I recently (as in today) learned how to do those neat bubble/light textures that I've seen all over the place. The result is that I now have a new desktop, and I also have textures for you guys!

There are only 12, I basically just cropped spots from my desktop.

If you'd like to see more colors or color combinations other than rainbow, feel free to include them in your comments!

These can be used as flat-out icons, or you can use them in your icon-making process. Credit is appreciated but not necessary. What is necessary is that you comment with what you take!

( Read more... )

The bases & icons are still partially down - we are working hard to bring back everything ASAP! Thank you for your patience.

I haven't forgotten about you, lovelies! I have lots of icon & base ideas, so expect to hear from me again soon!

location: United States, Virginia, Fredericksburg
feeling: blah
listening to: Project Runway

We are having technical difficulties, and as a result, all icons and bases will be inaccessible. We still have everything on our computers, so no need to worry - however, your browsing will have to wait until we get everything sorted and back online.

A designer will post again with updates when we have them. I thank everyone in advance for their patience.

feeling: frustrated

Yes, it's been a while since anything new has been posted. No, nobody's dead - our lovely designers (myself included!) have been busy with various things. Yes, I know we had planned downtime. No, nothing actually went down. Yes, it will happen in the future.

Now that I've updated you, I'm getting to the fun part: it's time for a great big post of base ideas. I've found a few new base image sources, and plan to do a ton of random bases and post them in sets. You oldies might remember the last time I did that!

While I have a bunch of ideas of my own, you're welcome to add some. Want to see something in a base that you have yet to see here? Comment and tell me! Want to see a base of something that's been done already, but you love it so much, you want it to be done again? Comment and tell me!

There's no limit to what you can ask for, though I probably won't make everything into bases.

Please, no requests for bases of celebrities. Working with stock photography only, here.

Now go on! Comment!

PS: Yes, I'm still working on the icon meme.

location: United States, Virginia, Fredericksburg
feeling: energetic
listening to: I just want to sparkle for a moment

Just an FYI about some downtime we've scheduled for our main OI image host.

A lot of our images will be inaccessible for a little while. The downtime should start sometime between now and this weekend, and will be back ASAP. That just means you won't be able to see many of our old icons and bases, but no worries, it won't last!

You asked for purple icons, so I give you: 40 purple icons!

20 are for free20in20, hence the table. The other 20 are just pretty images I found.

Images all from Shutterstock. They are all vector illustration image thingies, a kind of image I haven't had the pleasure to work with before, but really enjoyed.

For those of you that didn't want purple and were really pulling for another color, I will likely be doing more sets of vector art, so stay tuned!

The only rule for taking things is: You MUST comment and tell me what you took. Credit is appreciated, but not necessary. Textless icons are NOT bases.

( Purple is a color. Or is it a colour? )

feeling: happy

I have a new obsession - 20 in 20 challenges. You do 20 icons in 20 days. Some have set themes (like icons20in20 and random20in20), and some are free-for-all (like free20in20).

I just joined the next round in free20in20, so I have 20 icons with no set theme that I'll be making in June. (I also joined icons20in20, but have already decided what theme I want to use for those.)

So, I finally thought of a theme - sort of. I'm going to make them colour-based - a set of purple, or red, or green icons. But there are lots of colors! Which do I do? I ask you guys!

( Vote! )

feeling: optimistic

There's an icon from the batch of interest meme icons that I posted that I accidentally made too big - 102x102px. I just realized this, and fixed it, so for anyone that snagged the too big version, here it is, at the proper size:



In other news, I've gone back to working on the interest meme, so if you don't have comment notification emails enabled and you're on the fourth or fifth page of comments, go check if you have an icon. If you don't, expect one soon. And yes, when I finish, I'll post the results.

I've been watching Gossip Girl season two, so I'm inclined to end the entry thus:
xoxo,
Icon Girl

feeling: full
listening to: dead until dark audiobook

It's time again for Remember When! Heehee, I rhymed. Okay, so there's no such thing as "Remember When" here, but maybe there should be! I am feeling silly and excited because in 24 hours I will be about to see Wicked, the musical.

HOWEVER, there is an actual point to this post. Remember when... (see! there it is!) jiatra hosted designer challenges, and OIDC3 was all about textless image representations of single words?

Well, I was looking in old OI posts and remember how crazy fun that was, and wanted to try it again, on my own. (Though you never know when another designer might get inspired and join in!)

( It goes something like this... )

feeling: silly
listening to: That Time - Regina Spektor

I've noticed that I start out a lot of my prolouges in icon posts with "So" or "Okay". I think it's because of how I talk in real life, so it kind of gets released in text.

SO, (see, there it is!) I'm going to make an effort to use different words, at least until I forget that I was making an effort and revert into my previous habits.

Beneath the cut are 62 Firefly icons. They have no text, but they are still icons, so you cannot modify them in any way! That's what you cannot do. What you absolutely MUST do is comment with what you took, by filename or description.

There's lots of Kaylee in here, mostly because she's pretty much my favourite character and she's also really expressive and fun to icon. I tried to include everyone in this set, but there's a real lack of Wash, Book, and Simon. I'm sorry! It's just how it turned out. However, there's one exception to this: there aren't a lot of River icons simply because I did those one hundred River icons a while back.

This is also my first foray into things like selective colouring, exclusion layers, and other things like that. I did my research (i.e., tons of tutorials about alternative colouring, as I've now deemed it), and tried a bunch of different techniques, and finally found something that looked good.

So if you don't like weird colouring in icons, you may not like these, but personally, I'm really pleased with how they turned out.

Some teasers:


( SHINY! )

feeling: chipper

OI's fifth birthday!

For some unknown reason, LJ doesn't show when the community was made in the userinfo like it used to; so I went in the archives around May of previous years and finally pinpointed the date. But I just looked at the userinfo and the information is there, just in a different place! And in very small text! Oops.

Some stats:
Comments received: 64,468
Entries: 835
Tags: 800
Most used tag: Ariel's bases, 111 uses
Designers: 9
Members: 3,650
Watchers: 3,037 (if you just watch and don't join, you're missing things posted here!)

Some of you have been here since day one, some of you are brand new, and most of you fall somewhere in between. I just wanted to take a moment to say: you guys rock.

And A Quiz...
What's your favourite icon set ever posted here?

feeling: pleased
listening to: the AC wooshing

How do I participate?
1. Choose one topic that you want to see bases of.
1a. Concepts (like "memory") won't work as well as more literal things (like "whales").
2. Comment with it.

Will you finish this / get to my comment?
I make no promises! However, I will try.

How do I see the bases you made of my topic?
I will reply to your comment with them.

Will there be a big post at the end?
Yes.

Do you have any other news?
I now have a Twitter page. It'll have icon project updates, among other things. Feel free to add me (or.. follow me, I think it's called there?).

Is there any interest in a Disney Princesses mood theme?
You tell me.

feeling: hot
listening to: the sound of silence

Okay, so I have a boatload (literally! you could fill a boat with them!) of icon tutorials to try out. But.. the thing is, I lack subjects. Of course, I have some things I can get subjects from, but I thought I'd make a post for all of it to go in one place.

The results will, hopefully, end up being a boatload (literally! you could fill a boat with them!) of totally random icons based on tutorials I used.

Now, you're probably wondering, What should I suggest? There was the time you suggested actors, the time you suggested fandoms, the time you suggested movies.. well, this is basically the "miscellaneous" section. Want an icon about books? Ask! Want an icon with some lyrics by Some Band? Ask! (Better yet, provide the exact lyrics, or the song.) Want an icon of some musician? Ask! What about icons of Shakespeare quotes? Ask!

If there's anything you want to see that you haven't suggested elsewhere, this is the place. Not sure if it fits here? Comment anyway! I won't bite you.

Disclaimer: I have the right to not make any icons about topics that don't turn my crank. Be forewarned.

feeling: mellow
listening to: take me on! take on me!

As promised, 45 textless lyric icons of Tori Amos's lyrics. These are all from "Little Earthquakes"*.

You do not need to be a Tori fan to enjoy or use these icons. As stated, there's no actual text, nor did I use pictures of Tori. These are simply icons of pretty pictures. They will probably have more significance for those who recognize the lines the pictures are based on, but still can be appreciated, used, and enjoyed by anyone.

Credit is appreciated but not necessary, and you MUST comment and tell me what you took.

* = I have the Piano Collection, and I used all the songs on the first disc in this series. So along with the regular Little Earthquake tracks, there's also Upside Down, Flying Dutchman, Take to the Sky, and Sweet Dreams.

Teasers:


( Excuse me but can I be you for a while? )

feeling: productive

Okay, so I found this really neat icon challenge community called iepisode. The challenge is to icon an entire season of a TV show, and make at least three icons per episode.

Now, you can only make one claim at a time, and I have a bunch of shows I'd like to try this with, so.. here's a poll!

Whichever gets the most votes will be my first claim, then once I finish the first claim, I'll go on to the one with the second-most votes, and so on and so forth.

( What's this? A poll? What a shocking and rare occurance! )

I feel as if I should make myself a poll icon, for when I post polls.

Also, my Current Big Project is: Textless Tori Amos lyric icons. Stay tuned for those! I'll be posting by album.

feeling: relaxed
listening to: we got spirit - bring it on

Okay, so I found this neat texture and a great site for high quality scans and decided to make some icons.

An example:


Do you want an icon like this with your very own celebrity? Look no further! Simply request a celebrity of your choice in a comment, and I'll see what I can do.

There is no limit to the celebrities you can request, but keep in mind that the more popular and well-known the celebrity is, the more likely I'll be able to find good pictures of them.

Ready? Suggest away!

feeling: anxious

Okay, so I entered random20in20's current round: British Actresses, and claimed Keira Knightley. I made 20 icons of her, and here they are, along with a poll. (The poll is not about the icons! It's about something else entirely. So vote!)

Credit is appreciated but not necessary, what IS necessary is that you comment and tell me what you took. Do NOT modify these! Textless icons != bases.

( Keira Knightley has no good quotes to put in this cut text but DAMN she is hot. )

feeling: awake

Okay, so I have a new pet project: fangirl icons. They look like this:


And they can be based on anything. Suggest something, and get your own!

( List So Far )

feeling: contemplative