woah. really?

[certainthings]

Dear People Who Make Icons,

I just read this "It ususally doesn't take that long for me to make an icon ( 20 -30 minutes) unless I'm trying to get text on it" in a post.

Is this an average thing? Because if an icon isn't coming together for me in about a minute, I scrap it. I cannot imagine spending that kind of time on an icon.

Sincerely,
A person who sometimes makes icons

Comments

[mrbig1316.livejournal.com]

I've taken hours on one icon before.

:/

Because I'm picky.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

*blinks* Wow. That is ... Okay, I don't have words for what that is.

[ignited.livejournal.com]

It used to take me that long when I made icons as a regular thing (made them really big at first so it was like a collage, then I shrunk them down) but nowadays it's like 5 minutes. Mostly because I'm too lazy to work on it any longer now.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

Five minutes seems reasonable, I think there's probably been a couple of times when I've spent that amount of time on one but not often enough to remember exactly.

[allyoops.livejournal.com]

I've done icons in half an hour, sometimes an hour, but only if it's something complicated I really want to try and pull off (ie something I've never done before and I try try try until I get it done), but usually it takes a minute or five at the most. Five if there's text, because I'm totally sucky at teh text.

I can't stand taking too long on any one icon. I get impatient.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

Okay. And yeah, I suck ass at text which is why I don't really use it ever.

And randomly, I saw Ando (or technically the actor) on a McDonald's commercial yesterday. *nods*

Who is this Kevin mentioned on your icon?

[devidarkwolf.livejournal.com]

Depends. I never time myself, but I take maybe 5 - 15 minutes on one icon. But I don't do much except for mess with curves, colour, saturation, and other less complicated stuff.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

*nods* That's pretty much what I do to my icons too.

[frala.livejournal.com]

Ive spent shameful amounts of time on one icon before it depends on how much i have to do

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to think I'm a slacker.

[rustydog.livejournal.com]

A very simple icon will probably take me five to ten minutes. The more complicated ones, where I have to do a lot with effects to get it to look the way I want, can take me 40 minutes or an hour, even if they don't end up looking complicated. If it has text, definitely on the higher end. Last night I made 8 relatively simple text-only icons, and by simple I mean really not up to the standards I prefer, and it took me 1 1/2 hours. That's why on the rare occasions I post a batch of icons, they never have more than about 10 icons.

Then again, if I was making icons all the time, I would probably have a collection of techniques and effects I used all the time and could execute pretty fast, and do the same thing with the whole batch, and it wouldn't take as long. Part of my problem is that I almost never make two icons the same way.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

I have a hard time with text only icons, them bitches are hard. Or maybe they're hard because I am horrible with text, so I'm with you on the time consumption of them.

[bitter-crimson.livejournal.com]

I'd say on average I spend 45 minutes on an icon. Sometimes they might be quicker (10-15 minutes) and sometimes much longer (hours upon hours). The length depends on what's contained in the icon itself, usually. A lot of my icons are manips, so while making the "icon" I'm actually making the manip as well. Then there's animated icons. Or the times I go berserk because I have to have JUST THE RIGHT FONT. Very few of my icons are plain, with no text/animation/etc. And even then, I get kinda anal about cropping and all that. Heh, this is probably why I generally only make icons for myself. It's too hard to make lots of them for other people, and I think most people don't like my icon style anyway.

(This icon, for example, took around 45 minutes, I think. Tons of time going through source material for the perfect panel, then lots of time editing the text by C/P-ing letters from other panels of the comic, plus C/P-ing background for the speech bubble so it wouldn't be too bright white, since then it wouldn't look like an authentic comic scan. And yadda yadda. I'm very anal.)

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can see the manip taking awhile I don't really include that in the icon making time process.

[punnky-kitty.livejournal.com]

If I'm trying a new technique or I'm just feeling creative.. I can sit and make icons for hours. HOURS. o_0
After that, I'll save the .psd and future icons take 10-30 minutes screwing around.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

Yes, but more than one during those hours, right?

[katysam.livejournal.com]

Some icons take longer than others but I don't think I've ever spent more than 10 minutes on a single icon (without text).

If I add text, it can take a ridiculous amount of time on top of that to complete it. But I think that's due to the ridiculous amount of fonts I have accumulated. I'm a font junkie.

The most time consuming part of iconing, besides finding the perfect text, is making the screen caps. Or at least it is for me. I find that part a part terribly tedious and admire those people who post screen caps covering each episode. I wonder if they have a magic 'screen cap' program they use.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

So far it seems everyone takes more time when there's text involved, I know I do but I rarely use text because I am not good with it Al, not good at all. I wonder if there are any icon makers out there who are brilliant at the text and can make it look good in a matter of moments?

I don't know that I'd consider the screencapping process part of the icon making but I suppose that technically it is, eh?

[impala-chick.livejournal.com]

Wow, someone said that? Not like I make a ton of icons or anything, but I usually make stuff because I have an idea of what I wanna do with the pic so it doesn't take all that long... That would be super frustrating to just do one icon after all that time.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

That is what I think.

[ellipsisblack.livejournal.com]

I'm like you.

But then, I'm also about instant gratification, so. ;)

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

Yay us!

[fromyourashes.livejournal.com]

Between finding/making caps, deciding where to crop, coloring, etc.etc. and then the freaking OCD kicks in and I lose my eyesight and start squinting and leaning back and forth and...

Sometimes it can take that long.

But if I've got an awesomely clear cap, great quality, and I don't need to eff around with the coloring much? Less than 5 minutes.

Then again - I make pretty crappy icons. LMAO. And I use a pretty crappy program. *shrugs*

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

I don't think your icons are crappy.

[marishna.livejournal.com]

For me it depends on what kind of show I'm working on, how good the images are I'm working on, and if I'm in the mood. Lately I've been making a lot of icons and I've been working with caps of the same colouring and consistency so it's easier and faster. But I probably still spend anywhere from five to fifteen minutes on each, depending on what I'm doing. Sometimes longer if I decide I want to do something with a lot of textures.

This icon I'm using here was probably twenty to thirty minutes.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

Oh, I hadn't thought about the show, and how the colouring of it might effect (affect? - you'd think I'd have learned which one to use by now, eh?) but okay, yeah. Some shows take a longer time to work with, I find Buffy a bitch a lot of the time.

[goodnight.livejournal.com]

ahhaha shit son! An icon takes me like 10 minutes max, depending how much thought goes into it, but usually I dont make an icon until I know how/what I want to do with it...

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

ahhaha shit son!

Hah! You sound like fictional Christian Kane or possibly Carlson.

[iamnotkris.livejournal.com]

I never really take longer than 10 minutes, unless I'm using the one icon to experiment a few different colouring techniques. I dunno, I get bored easily, and I figure if an icon doesn't come together within that time, then it's not worth making. I dunno. Maybe it's just me xDD

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

No, I'm with you there. Yeah huh.

[bubbles83.livejournal.com]

It depends. If I'm just making icons for fun, it usually takes about 5-10 minutes. If I'm not happy with it after that, it's not worth it. If I'm making it for a challenge, those can take longer depending on if I'm doing anything fancy on them.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I take a bit longer for the challenge icons but not very often. :p (this could be why I don't win a lot)

[miss-mandy.livejournal.com]

My icons only take about a minute. But then again I don't do much except crop it and mess around with the brightness/contrast.

I like simple icons.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

I like your icons.

[guest-age.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, it takes me longer than that. And I consider myself to still be a novice, so... Yeah. :-/

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

You'll get faster eventually. Mmmhmm.

[vileseagulls.livejournal.com]

Whut? I have macros set up in Photoshop - I find a crop that looks nice, hit two buttons to run all my colouring, if it doesn't work, delete or reduce effects as necessary, and call it quits. One to two minutes tops, if it's being stubborn. If it really doesn't work, hit undo and run the OTHER set of colouring macros, repeat process.

What were they DOING that took so much time? I mean I don't use brushes, but I've played with them, and I can't by any means justify twenty minutes even with that.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

I tried an action thingy before, I didn't care for it that much.

I don't use brushes or at least not very often because I'm not good with them but uh yeah, I'm not sure what these people are doing. A lot of fiddling would be my guess.

[ongiara.livejournal.com]

Well, it depends. Usually, it takes me about 5 minutes to make one, sometimes less just because I like it simple and coloring's the only thing that I'm screwing around with. If it's supposed to be something special, I do take longer. The icon coming with this comment drove me nuts for 30 minutes probably and I found that more than frustrating *nods* I prefer things to go swift, yo.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

This is why my icons don't take long at all, I don't do anything special with them.

[smeckles90.livejournal.com]

Think it all depends on how many layers you're adding to the icon and how much of a perfectionist you are. I don't spend too long on an icon, but I do have a friend who's willing to spend hours on just the one.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

Holy crap.

[jheaton.livejournal.com]

I'm more of the five minute school, but if the circumstances demand otherwise, I'll take as much time as it takes. The one I'm using on this post took at least an hour, due to the technical demands (likewise, the James K. Polk one took forever), but usually it just takes as long as it takes to crop/resize it and slap a one-pixel black border around it.

[solookup.livejournal.com]

5 minutes to a max of 10. If I'm going to spent half an hour on an icon, I'd rather be doing something else instead!