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

[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.