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.)
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winterfish
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Date: 2007-11-10 01:17 am (UTC)(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.)