Icon Critique plz.

[spectacled-one.livejournal.com]

I recently obtained a copy of photoshop 7. And just started to make Icons.  With the lack of Link Icons I decided to choose a manga scan of him as my first project.

 

Theres how it turned out. I didn't really use a tutorial. I managed to get by using what little knowledge of photoshop a friend gave me. So what do you think? Is it good? If I get a little better and Icon post might show up here in the future.

Comments

[zackichan.livejournal.com]

yes I think it's okay ^^

[vixen-shtorat.livejournal.com]

It looks fine. It's a pretty simple icon with relatively average colors. Coloring looks neat. :/

I don't have photoshop (expensiiive) so I use GIMP or GIMPshop but a lot of the tools are the same. I usually make wallpaper, not icons, but here are the three things that really helped me learn to make better papers:

1. Layers will make your life easier -- i.e. background is 1 layer, lines is another layer, and the colors as a third layer. It makes the image look cleaner when you convert it to its final format.

2. Play with the bright/contrast and color tools until you know them like the back of your hand -- sometimes using the actual colors makes the image dull, so when I'm done, I change the settings to make the image more interesting.

3. Play around with the different brush tools -- at first I was like "psh all I need is the round circle" and then I realized other brushes and messing with the settings on those brushes made my life way easier.


Hehe, okay, those are an amateur's hints to how to get better quicker :) The only other thing I do is resize in MS Paint.. You can't do much with it, but damn, Paint makes it easy to resize things!