Q&A

[goodbyebird]

Questions & Answers

We had a fair amount of response in the poll, so here is the rumored Q&A post! Any questions you have about graphics, ask away and hopefully someone can help you out. Makers can also make a comment and people can ask them questions specifically - I'll set mine up, feel free to follow that example - and I'll link individual makers as well as question threads in the post when I'm around to edit.

The Request Fest is still open until Sunday evening, so get those requests and fills in.

goodbyebird's question thread
timetobegin's question thread
geckoholic's question thread
hsapiens's question thread
~~~
Who's your most inspirational icon makers?
How do you organize your icon folders?
What are your favorite textures to use?
compressing your icons? (file size too big, smart objects)

Comments

Re: organizing finished icons

[goodbyebird]

I actually just dump all my icons into the same folder, the only organizing being by fandom name. Sometimes a challenge name is in the file name, sometimes not, but that's more of a pre-organizing thing from before the batch got posted, if I'm working on different challenges and such.

I never browse my icon folder (unlike my inspirations folder, which I look at quite often), it just sits there. My icon community is what functions as more of a gallery for me, and there everything is tagged and the posting date is there, so. That's all I need really :)

Totally get what you mean by clutter and Delete Everything tendencies. When a batch starts reaching thirty or more, my brain gets frazzled by the whole thing and I really need to get it posted so my current folder gets cleared out. If you're not maintaining a community, I'd recommend it.

As for PSDs, I'm now in the habit of saving them more often than not, as my memory is beyond terrible. I drop that in a separate folder, still organized by fandom and whatever else I named the icon. A couple-three times a year I root through it and delete the ones I deem less than impressive. It still amounts to quite a few PSDs tho. If it bothers you, you could try organizing them by technique? Like muted, saturated, complex, textures, etc? And maybe by year, as your methods will change as you go on.

Re: organizing finished icons

[valley]

(hopefully replying the correct place this time *cough*)

This sounds like very good advice, thank you! I've hesitated to make a separate community for graphics, but I'll think on it a bit more. I haven't considered putting PSDs in a separate folder, but I'll try that and see if I feel the need to organize by technique also.

Re: organizing finished icons

[goodbyebird]

Well it doesn't need to be a separate community, some people post it to their own journals. You just tag it and then whenever you feel like browsing past stuff, you just click the tag. It's what I did in the beginning, but then felt bad about people following me for my regular posts having to put up with my regular posts (thing this was before tracking tho).

Re: organizing finished icons

[valley]

Well, I've used the separate community/personal journal system when I was on LJ and it worked for me then. I've been trying to use my personal journal for icon posts on DW, but that hasn't been working out as well as I thought it would - it just makes me feel obligated to post only icons. So I set up a comm and am test driving that for a while! I might end up merging every back to my personal if I feel better about it, but it can't hurt to try.