1. I have an icon of Sweets. Sweeeeeeeets! He is my current main character crush. I am SO IN LOVE. I believe Sweets/Jehnt OTP is true facts.

2. You know what I love about SGA fandom? There is fic for like, everything. I mean, you think there's fic for everything in HP. You THINK that. And then you read an SGA/House crossover in which Rodney is like, a (Very Pricey) Mistress of Pain for House*, and you realize that Dobby/Hagrid/Giant Squid has just nothing on SGA fic.

3. Related to #2 -- I want to read an AU SGA fic wherein Rodney has been de-aged or maybe is just younger (you know, all super-pretty and gaunt like in Pin, or w/e that weird incest robot/statue movie was) and is a rentboy, and John comes along and, idk, rents him, or tries to rescue him, or both, or something, and there is slow relationship-building (Rodney is mentally scarred! John feels guilty about liking him so much!) and then hot sex. I've not seen this fic, but I bet it's out there somewhere, just waiting for me to come and read it.

4. Related to #1 -- the Sweets icon was entered at bones_stillness and didn't win, which I rather expected (most people seem to hate Sweets), but inexplicably this icon placed second:



So that was awkward because I had thought that icon was SO TERRIBLE that I was embarrassed to even enter it. Like. It's not well-made. And it's not even funny. There's that huge weird gap before the last word and there's no background and the text is a weird color. I'd wanted to have it say "And then Dr. Zack Addy sang about forensic anthropology," because that would be both funnier and less potentially confusing, but it didn't fit. The whole icon is an example of "good concept, inept execution." I'm not used to having such epic fail with icons I make. So I felt weird that people voted for it because IMO like almost all the other icons were better.

5. I haven't cut my toenails in a long time. I've been holding out because usually I cut them too short and then my toes look weird and fat. But I'm unsure what the proper/most attractive length for toenails even IS. It's a problem.

*I did not make this up. It exists. It is, I believe, actually part of a series.

So, today I noticed that people are (or were, before I forgot to pay my webserver/hosting bill, lol*) hotlinking icons from my website. I thought I should be angry but all I could think was "sweet, somebody wants to steal my stuff!"

*So I forgot to pay it for so long that they deleted my website. Apparently I have to pay $100 by Saturday to get it back intact... but the joke is on them because when I got that email I still had FTP access and was able to back up all my stuff. And now when they open it up for anyone to buy, I can just buy it again and re-upload shit. Win! (And if somebody else SURPRISINGLY gets there before I do... I can still get something nifty like jehnt.com, which I don't currently own because... I like the longer one. It has words people know how to spell.)

eta: of the past 14 posts I've made, 10 start with the word "so." fyi.

So, I've been seeing people's icon posts lately and decided I should post some icons to try to get constructive criticism. It would be greatly appreciated since I haven't been participating in icontests/lims lately (my time is taken up by schoolwork!) and thus feel like I'm losing perspective on what might be good/bad about my icons. Also I just wanted to post them somewhere before I get my website back online and have the time to post them at iconzero.

arranged chronologically newest to oldest:



( a few more plus a question )

I'm sorry for the spam if you have this journal and iconzero friended... but I have to show off this wallpaper I made:

prince caspian wallpaper of awesome!



pretty pretty pretty!

There is, of course, other stuff posted over there, but this is the pièce de résistance. Everything else was just thrown together because I was playing with my ridiculous new screencaps, whereas this had a purpose.

So, I've been sort of making icons off and on lately, so in two weeks when I have winter break there will likely be zillions of icon posts... but this is some of what I did today:



Deeeeeeeean. I don't even watch Supernatural anymore, but whatever. And the return of the blocky white font! I have a love/hate relationship with it. I think it works on that icon, but most of the time I use it as a crutch (see below).



lol, most useless icons ever. Exploding console + drinking. Oh god, why do I even bother? Rhetorical question. I do it for the pretty.

My icon for lantis_lims this week:



Three icons got voted out this week. My icon was the fourth-worst. Not gonna lie: I was disappointed. I love this icon. It wasn't supposed to look anything like this -- the background was supposed to be vibrant turquoise and it was supposed to have a pop art feel -- but somewhere along the way my muses were like "oh, yes, that's all well and good, but what's actually supposed to happen here is that the beautiful Rachel is supposed to emerge, glowing, from this wacky hot pink floral fog." It was difficult for me to achieve that look (trying to get her hair to fade into the background properly = a bitch), but I was overwhelmingly satisfied with the end result. I think that my complete adoration of this icon is what made it so shocking to get so many negative votes.

However, a strike in my favor: what all the critics disliked about the icon was exactly what I liked about it, so I know it looks like how I meant it to. This is comforting in a strange way.

I also really like the icons I entered at super_icontest last week, and I can't wait for the results from voting to go up so that I can FINALLY HAVE SUPERNATURAL ICONS.

I'm pretty sure this is the coolest icon I've ever made:



BWAHAHHAHAHHA. ohmygod.

Alright, guys. I'm tired of going to icon_tutorial and seeing lame tutorials and lame answers that tell you what to do without telling you why you're doing it or explaining how it might vary from icon to icon and image to image. Most of the good tutorials for basic skills that I used four years ago are long since gone. Most of the new tutorials for basic skills that I see are overly specific, for instance geared to screencaps from one show but difficult to use for others with wildly different color palettes (e.g., compare Supernatural caps to Veronica Mars caps) or just describing one thing in detail and skimming over everything else, which makes it hard for beginners to make anything that's truly decent. I've seen no end of icons in which there are intermediate/advanced techniques being used but which utterly fail because the crop is boring, the image quality is dodgy, or they don't know how to anti-alias text.

So I was thinking I should make one. My aim would be for this tutorial to be the most extensive guide to iconmaking on LJ (that I've seen, at any rate), taking you through the process of selecting an image and coming up with an idea all the way to posting and advertising your icons (if that's what you choose to do), so that it could be basically a huge crash-course on the icon-making process itself rather than just how to produce a specific look or effect. If this tutorial gets written like how it is in my head, by the end of it you should know your program and tools well enough to be able to make nice-looking icons in any style you want (with a little bit of effort, of course).

( More details, including a request for help from PSP and GIMP users and a possible table of contents. )

( In case you want to know what specifically brought this on. )

Endnotes:
1. This makes me sound hugely egotistical, like I'm saying "oh, I'm such a fabulous iconmaker that I can teach everyone else!" That's not what I'm saying. I mean, I think I'm pretty good, but we all know that we're not exactly objective when it comes to judging our own icons.
2. Obviously this is not going to be finished this week. This post is so long because I intend to use it as my own reference on what I'm planning to do... I just thought maybe some people would be interested and want to offer help/encouragement/their potential future readership.

1. My fandom aspiration is to be helenish, who is lord and protector of all things funny.

2. I've been reading a number of posts about ballot-stuffing in fandom challenges. Look, guys, I don't get it. When you win because you voted for yourself, isn't that just stupid? What do you get? A banner? Great, hurrah, rejoice. And internet prestige? Well, I'm pretty sure that the people who didn't vote for you can still tell your work is crap, banner or no. And the banner isn't going to impress anyone -- its sole purpose is to make you feel good, and it can't do that very effectively if you got it because you like you and not because other people like you. *sigh*

3. I still haven't seen SGA 3x20. What is WRONG with me?

4. Ronon Dex = awesome. I wish there was more Rodney/Ronon fic. HILARIOUS Rodney/Ronon fic. Unfortunately I think it's just plain easier to write Rodney/John. Damn.

So I'm trying to keep news of iconzero updates out of this journal, but I cannot resist telling you this: I have made my first icon tutorial. It's not an icon I would have picked to tutorialize, but someone requested it, so there ya go. It's for this icon:

So I have a question. And this has been bothering me for the past week, since people started actually commenting on iconzero and like, taking icons and stuff. Which is totally what they're supposed to do. But since comments on icon posts tend to run to the "liked #7, snagging it" variety, I'm COMPLETELY CONFUSED over whether or not I'm supposed to reply. This is where you, dear lj friends (and random people wandering by), come in! In other words: Poll time.

[Poll #746222]

Errr, so as you may or may not have noticed, my presence has been rather sparse around LJ lately. Sparse to the point of nonexistant. This is due to a number of factors, most of which are very much of the let's-forget-they-ever-happened variety, so I won't go into them here. But for the past two weeks I've been veeeerrry slowly getting back into the checking lj routine (which, the first time I tried again, seemed absolutely overwhelming), and I think I'm good to go. So like, don't be surprised when you see me, and stuff.

And also, guys, lovely, treasured lj friends, don't be surprised when I post a lot about Stargate Atlantis, for, you see, while recovering from a leg injury I watched it all on DVD and uh, bittorrented episodes in season two, right and it is Well and Truly With the Crack. And there's not much I like more than crackfic, except, perhaps, shiny objects and spaceships. And nice collarbones. BUT OTHER THAN THAT, not much. (And, hey, if you like cracktastic things, check out this post by liviapenn.) I still love HP, but right now SGA is all new and shiny and there's something like TEN SEASONS OF SG-1 that I can watch. Which is like, woah crazy amount of canon compared to HP's paltry six books.

I've also updated iconzero approximately ten trillion times in the last week, so if you like icons and wallpapers or me! if you like ME! and stuff you might wish to check it out.

And a random pimp: If you make lj icons at all ever, you should check out anais_dirge, who creates the most gorgeous textures in existence.

So ... how's everyone been doing?

More icons. These are in a separate post because they're not hp-centric. There should be colors to suit pretty much everyone. I may have gone overboard.

teaser:



( icons yay! )

Comment, credit, you know the drill.

(Also, if anyone knows of like, icon community places for HP and stuff, it'd be awesome if you pointed me to them.)

So. Icons. There are some newer ones and some older ones. The older ones are down at the very bottom of the post, and you might not want to look at them. RonIsTall icons, House-color skirt icons, dementoid icon, and some miscellaneous icons contained herein.

teaser:



( ICONSES )

Comment, credit, you know the drill.