What is your Icon style/method?

[Abnegation]

When you make icons, do you often do a similar method each time? I think that everyone has their own way of approaching making icons. And it tells a little something about the artist and how they deal with their work.

For me, I start by selecting my stock, then by sharpening, dodging and burning, I work on making it the best quality possible. From there I start with some blurring and again, more sharpening, to bring out my focal points. And then, lastly, it's all about colour baby. Depending on my icon, I usually have a set style though, if you look through my icons, I generally work with my contrasted dark style, which I do less, and it also takes more work, then my other style which works best with a lot of colours and contrast, where by I simply pop reds, purples and obscure colours like that, you can refer to my signature for that style!

So, what ways do you guys approach icons? Do you have a particular style?

 

[Comic Tragedy]

I don't like the idea of an icon style. It all seems to confining to me. One of the great things about icons to me is that I can create and interchange them to fit my mood, my resources at the time or what 'style' looks best. I might be odd in that way, but I can spam a certain style over and over in my tags but I refuse to do so in icons.

(then again the icons I make never see the light of day on the internet)

 

[Thomas]

Color is really important for me, but the stock is probably number one when making an icon for me. Having a good stock is all about the options that you have. Once I've found something that I think I can work with, I start with making multiple versions of the same image cropped in different ways. I will do about 5 to 7 of these depending on the image. I choose my favorite out of all of those, and then I will work on coloring the icon (whether that would be using transparent textures or just manual coloring it and then setting an overlay). From then I will add more textures if I see fit and then finally add the text and sharpen as needed.