abyss_valkyrie

What's the best icon tutorial you've seen? One you keep coming back to and look at and try to get better at? asked by tinny 

I do make most of my icons using a trial and error method but when I first started trying to make animated icons, I used YT and LJ tutorials for reference a lot. For blending too, I tried following some good ones but I couldn't really follow along because my brain melts when I see layer masks and other cool features being used,lol.

THIS tutorial by aurora_amethyst has been on my list to try and I did but like I said,I'm not good at using a lot of features,so I couldn't use the tutorial a 100%, though I did like 90% of it. Also the choice of screencap probably made it different too. But I learned how to use gradient maps so that's pretty awesome!
Here's what I got. I wanted to adjust the face colouring using selective colour but I kind of wanted to keep the original result here. I'll give it a go another time and see where I get to!:D



For a few others that I like:

THIS falling petals tutorial on LJ is absolutely one of my favourites.

THIS very pretty colouring tutorial where I mainly started learning to use selective colour from (but still can't get the pretty effect mei_ling7 did) is another favourite of mine.

For blocking and blending I do check in on THIS tutorial a lot because I cannot get these effects a 100% and the example icons are just so beautiful!

The December posting meme is open for questions HERE, I'd love to answer questions, fandom and non-fandom related questions.

What do your first and most recent fandoms have in common? asked by solo 


My first fandom was Harry Potter and fandom-wise I'd say it's 'The Untamed'. Well, those are two very different fandoms, indeed! :D But once I started thinking,wow, there's quite a lot of things I'd say are common.

But I think one common factor is that they're heavily fantasy based. Magic, spells, duels are the obvious ones.

Going a little deeper, there's a separation system- 4 houses in Harry Potter, the 5 great clans in The Untamed.
The main character - Harry in HP, Wei Wuxian in The Untamed-is dark-haired.

They are also orphans and are taken in by others. Both the 'mother figure' role that they should have gotten love and affection from pretty much hated them.
Both stories have traitors who were like best friends ( Peter Pettigrew in Harry Potter & Jin Guangyao in The Untamed) whose actions led to those very friends to die.

On a brighter side- TRIOS! The golden trio of Harry, Hermione and Ron are one of my absolute favourites in any fandom. In The Untamed we have Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli-The Yunmeng trio. Though the ends of each trio are vastly different, both have a special place in my heart. Have 2 pics!


Sooooo, yeah, that was quite a bit of analysis for my brain. Keep the questions coming, guys over here. Ask me twice even, if you like!:D