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[Showcase] anna makes things

Aquacorde

Aquacorde

♫ following where my arrow goes ♫
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    hi I'm Anna I do graphic manipulation sometimes and photography and other things? i most likely wont post a ton until i really get in the mood to play with things. i will make this good later probably

    GRAPHICS NONSENSE // 2015
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    IPHONE PHOTOGRAPHY // FEB - JUNE 2015
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    IPHONE PHOTOGRAPHY // JULY ONWARD 2015
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    TRADITIONAL ICONS // 2011 - 2014
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    130x130 & UP // 2014
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    TAGS & THINGS // 2010 - 2014
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    thanks for lookin :D
     
    I'm liking the 130 X 130s. Especially the bnw sableye and the Seviper but they all look pretty clean. You should work on depth and focal points in your tags though. I don't know much on photography so can't give much criticism on the photos but they look pretty good especially taken from a phone. If you ever want some help with photo shop work just let me know. I'll be glad to help
     
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    Hey Anna, you've got a bunch of cool stuff here :-]

    The latest photographs you've posted (the ones from July and onwards) are pleasing to the eye, and your cat pictures in particular are very nice! As for your icons, I like the fact that there's variety in your cropping. Placement is very important and you definitely understand that. Because your positioning was varied, the icon collection as a whole left an impact. Image variety also helped as well; it shows that you're flexible in that department ;-]
    (Kudos to you for linking sources, by the way. )
    And before I forget, I've got to mention this icon:
    [PokeCommunity.com] anna makes things

    Sometimes I see that people are reluctant to make daring crops like these, mainly because it's a pretty widespread myth that you need to fit the entire image/most of the image in an icon. This is ANCIENT and I have to roll my eyes every time this is insisted on. Cutting off a seemingly crucial feature of the subject, such as the eyes, isn't that big of a deal. There isn't a certain "set of details" that should be included in each icon/crop; that is deemed by the editor, and ultimately they get to decide what is "important" and should be kept.

    Hmm, looks like I went on a bit of a rant there. But yeah, congratulations for seeing through that, lmao. The icon is gorgeous, and it's undoubtedly my favorite of the bunch.

    Not going to say much about signatures/tags because Fatal covered it, really, but you match backgrounds with images well, and that's always a good thing.
    Can't wait for when you "make this good" later on, but I think better wording would be "make this better", because it already is good ;-]
     
    THIS photo is amazing. Mainly because I love cats, but yeah. No that's not the only reason, I do love the way the focus is captured. But I think an issue with this photo too is the slight loss of focus on the focal. I like the displacement of the focal too, so that it's not in the center, but I think it would look a little better pushed a little further to the left, obeying the rule of thirds more closely. This photo does that better. But I enjoyed looking at them, and you have some insanely photogenic friends (and cats) *o*

    Your icons and tags are lovely, but some are really quite plain, and could do with a little better utilisation of the empty space, and others lack depth and/or focus.
    Starting with this one, I do think that the depth here is subtle yet capturing, and I consider this your strongest piece. Yet there are improvements to be had. For a start the focus could be stronger, with a little more lighting adjustment you could really hammer home the focus, and the flow could be better, but it is there. I also think that the text in this case doesn't really add to the piece but takes away from it. The font too is a little unreadable and as such I think the piece would look better without it.

    This piece is a bit plain and lacks depth and flow, but I do like the way the focus being darker draws your attention. The background being white-washed as such works out to draw your attention to the darker focus, so good job there, that's a really nice effect.

    This is a really nice image, but as a tag it's a bit chaotic. There's so much brightness and so many focals I don't know what to focus on, and the effects in the image are unfortunately lost. There is also a lack of depth rendering the image quite flat. For a picture with such a dramatic change in distance between foreground, focus and background a lot of blurring could be used to really draw out that distance. What really flattens the image for me is the effect in the bottom right-hand corner.

    Empty space. Whilst there are pieces that work like this, this isn't one of them. Right now it looks half finished, which is a shame because your lighting and blurring have made quite a good bit of depth here. I would suggest to you to go back and add to this piece if you have time at some point, I'd like to see it built upon.

    Lastly this piece I just want to say is an example of text really obscuring the piece overall.

    Text is extremely difficult, and I've learnt that too over the years, and often I spend a while trying to fit text onto my pieces, before actually giving up and leaving it without. But I would definitely suggest choosing more subtle fonts with less flair to them, because those are much harder to work with. I love your icons, you've certainly got those down to a 'T' and your photography is well on its way to looking amazing. It already looks great (with the help of many a photogenic person or animal). Loving the gallery, it's about time you starting another one here Anna!
     
    about tags - most tags i've made are with the intend to add css and text, actually! so the reason for leaving all the space is for like, an semi-translucent overlay and a bunch of standard signature info. :) i mean, i could probably do more with them? and maybe add the css back in someday in here haha but it all broke when PC devs changed how our css works here :P


    icons i'm always a little worried that i don't actually have a style? like, i used to be able to tell who made what just by the style of icon around here a few years ago. i mean, using such a huge variety of source images does nothing for having a standard style either. i just kind of run with what i wanna do at the moment? but i'm happy that variety is something y'all like.

    as for cropping, i like... know the general artistic rules and such and the fact that interesting cropping makes a piece a lot of the time, but i still have a hard time ignoring the big picture. that's an issue just in my life in general ahaha i can't seem to pinpoint what's important all the time. so i'm glad you like what i do :D

    photography is really my newest thingy thing. i've never really had anything to take decent photos with on a whim, but the iphone 6 camera is pretty good for what it is. the ones with filters and like, actual editing have gone through instagram at some point or another and i'm sure i was a bit overzealous as well as it not the best control method for editing ahaha. i downloaded fotor the other day- all i've done with it so far is collages but i'm excited to play with that as well. now that i have like, a point to photo editing i'm definitely going to do more of it and work on that medium~

    thank you guys <3
     
    Anna said:
    icons i'm always a little worried that i don't actually have a style? like, i used to be able to tell who made what just by the style of icon around here a few years ago. i mean, using such a huge variety of source images does nothing for having a standard style either. i just kind of run with what i wanna do at the moment? but i'm happy that variety is something y'all like.
    Click to expand...

    Ah yeah I get what you mean, icon style can be hard to pinpoint and develop. I feel like that's mainly because the canvas size is smaller, which means there are going to be certain things everyone does (i.e. a focus on coloring and cropping). So for any icon maker to establish a style, they'd have to mess around with new techniques and make their avatars "more unique" first, by going outside the norm. For example, here's a list of icon features that I don't see around too often:
    - Text
    - Texture Usage
    - Lighting
    - Special coloring styles (monocolor, vintage, saturated, pastel, low contrast, high contrast, etc)
    - Frames (AND I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT BORDERS, CREATIVE FRAMES > BORDERS)
    - Complex Composition (i.e. using multiple images, duplicating)

    Right now, I have to agree that you've got the usual icon-making style going on (y'know, the one with an emphasis on cropping and coloring), but that's not a bad thing at all! I wouldn't tell anyone to change this or do things differently unless they wanted to. But since you ARE looking to do that, maybe try out some of the stuff I mentioned above and see where that gets you in terms of creating your own style :-]
     
    so, fotor, right- my preferred aspect ratio has always been 1:1 so there are these. full size @link

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    and then i made icons? well, played with cropping is what i did lol i think the last one is the best?

    [PokeCommunity.com] anna makes things
    [PokeCommunity.com] anna makes things
    [PokeCommunity.com] anna makes things


    also i drew a thing again! for wopc. done in sketchbook in pencil and threw some filters on it to clean it up which seemed to work alright

    [PokeCommunity.com] anna makes things


    AND THEN did a lot more digital stuff with it than usual like? actual coloring and editing and going over lines and that is not a thing to do with a trackpad o lord i need to go find my tablet next time lmao and maybe i'll actually figure out how to do things properly

    [PokeCommunity.com] anna makes things


    so that was my week i guess
     
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