extrapenguin: Starry-eyed man looking upwards on a field of stars with the text 地星人 behind him (shen wei stars)
[personal profile] extrapenguin
I finished my icons for the Guardian icon battle, round 2 as well as some for [community profile] icontalking's activity #25, so: time for an icon post! 15 icons total. As always, feel free to use them.


Icons for episodes 11-20, preview image.

Poll #21940 Favorite icon
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14


Of the above icons, which one is your favorite?

View Answers

Episode 11
0 (0.0%)

Episode 12
0 (0.0%)

Episode 13
5 (35.7%)

Episode 14
2 (14.3%)

Episode 15
1 (7.1%)

Episode 16
0 (0.0%)

Episode 17
1 (7.1%)

Episode 18
3 (21.4%)

Episode 19
2 (14.3%)

Episode 20
0 (0.0%)



Now, on to the prattling! This time done in the order I made the icons in.


Rewatchalong hadn't quite gotten to ep 11 yet, and I knew I wanted to use rewatchalong caps as much as possible, so I dug through any caps I'd done at prior times and found nice ones for episodes 20 and 19. I started with episode 20. Because faces were boring, I picked the car kneepat scene, which was damn dark and hard to do stuff with because I love a challenge. I put a light glot texture by [livejournal.com profile] tropicalsundae to the background and made the highlights and general colors red to make it seem like they were sitting on a backless bench in front of a lake at night.


Then I turned to episode 19, took one of my caps for it, and made a more generic and cool-toned icon. He has a nice expression, the icon is blue (I have a thing against warm colors), and the texture works! It's by [personal profile] jordannamorgan, called Ghost Story.


After I ran out of ready caps for episodes in the 11-20 range, I started capping in reverse order. I took a few caps before stumbling on this scene. Zhao Yunlan points his fucking gun at Shen Wei without seemingly even realizing that this is something he Should Not Do; Shen Wei might be immune to a lot of things but that gun is basically the one thing that could put him out of commission. It was striking, it was unique, of course I had to cap it and turn it into an icon by upping the drama via the lighting. I hope it's sufficiently striking.


Looking at icons 18-20, I realized I had a mini-story, so I wanted to find a 17 that fit as an instigation! Thankfully, we see Shen Wei murder Ding Dun in 17, so got a cap of Shen Wei being all murder-y. I played with it and colors until I got color toning that sort of worked and was uniform enough, then I added the text 杀人 ("to murder") on it to make it less bland. Not entirely sure of the text details, but the icon is sort of pulled together.


Still on an All Weilan All the Time kick, 16 presented a challenge due to the lack of Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan interacting, so I took a cap of Zhao Yunlan being cranky at the staged heroism opportunity and added the quote "I don't have time to play pretend" onto it, because that is a good thing he said. Again, cold-toned, because that's how I roll.


Then I took a bit of a pause to do other stuff before capping 15. This episode has the reconciliation of Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan post-identity reveal, complete with clinking of mugs. I'd spotted that icons 16-20 had a gradual zooming in going on, so I decided I'd make this A Set with Artistic Intent and all that by making it so that the camera distance would start out far and only zoom in at the end. Armed with that, I cropped this into the two of them toasting each other with water, added some color-toning textures (autumn bonfires by [personal profile] jordannamorgan), and doodled a heart over the light source. I also used the nondestructive dodge/burn technique to alter the shadows a bit so it would be more like the light was coming from between them, rather than from above.


At this point I'd capped episode 11, and in my rewatchalong album, I'd already had the thought that hey, this one bit sort of makes me want to do something inspired by Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene, so I cropped the icon to Shen Wei on his "balcony" and added the text "What light through yonder window breaks" behind him plus made it a bit soft-focus.


After that, I got bored of romance and tenderness and instead found that episode 14 had a nice shot of Zhu Jiu suffering, so I made a Zhu Jiu icon because why not. It fit with the distance requirement of mine! The clock face is from the opening credits because I couldn't find a better cap of it quickly. Also, micro-plot: Zhu Jiu suffers, then Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan celebrate.


For 13, I wanted Shen Wei from above, doing dark energy stuff at the wedding. Some playing with desaturated layers and colorize later, I had this. I think I screwed up the masking a bit tbh.


The final one was 12, for which I knew I wanted to keep the camera distance but also be shippy, so I watched through A Lot of episode 12 with a cranky face before stumbling on this! It's perfect. Zhao Yunlan pines from beside Shen Wei, and the text "That I might touch that cheek" fits excellently. The light and shadows also worked with me, so a touch of softness to the background and all was set.

I also took a cap that didn't fit in with the set, but I have an alt-12 this time! Featuring Shen Wei's pining and selective colorization.





I also made icons for the icontalking Blue Skies challenge – 4 of them, in fact! All this early episodes iconing made me miss Ye Zun, so I made 4 Ye Zuns.

I actually had real trouble making these icons, because I interpreted the color palette challenge a bit too strictly, especially at first. It took forever to make the first icon, after which I realized that wait, the challenge is called Blue skies, I should make something blue and made the second one. Then I indulged myself and let myself declare Ye Zun the evil twin and tested out the cutout thingy technique and text on a curve (former worked, latter I did stupidly). For the final one, I went away from the blocky solid colors and into overlay layers to make it more naturalistic. In total, I used 4 of the given palette's 5 colors.


Poll #21941 Favorite icon redux
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 15


Which one is your favorite challenge icon?

View Answers

Red and purple Ye Zun
4 (26.7%)

Blue Ye Zun
4 (26.7%)

Evil Twin Ye Zun
1 (6.7%)

Red mask pouty Ye Zun
6 (40.0%)

And of ALL the icons?

View Answers

Episode 11: balcony Shen Wei
0 (0.0%)

Episode 12: Zhao Yunlan watches Shen Wei
0 (0.0%)

Episode 13: Shen Wei makes a kaboom
4 (26.7%)

Episode 14: Zhu Jiu is hurt
0 (0.0%)

Episode 15: toast and a heart
0 (0.0%)

Episode 16: Zhao Yunlan does not play pretend
1 (6.7%)

Episode 17: murderer Shen Wei
1 (6.7%)

Episode 18: unsafe gun practices
0 (0.0%)

Episode 19: welp Zhao Yunlan
1 (6.7%)

Episode 20: knee grab
0 (0.0%)

alt-12 with the necklace
5 (33.3%)

Red and purple Ye Zun
1 (6.7%)

Blue Ye Zun
0 (0.0%)

Evil Twin Ye Zun
1 (6.7%)

Red mask pouty Ye Zun
1 (6.7%)









As always, if you want to know more about what I did in an icon or how I did it, just ask! I'll gladly answer.

Date: 2019-05-04 16:30 (UTC)
mecurtin: I am on the lookout for science personified! (science!)
From: [personal profile] mecurtin
Polls and a methods section means it's SCIENCE! If you did this with every big icon batch I'd be super-pleased.

What does the Chinese on Ep. 17 say? Some kind of man, but what kind?

I'm running off with: Ep 13, Ep 12-spare, blue Ye Zun. I seem to prefer YZ icons without the mask, because then we can see his lovely FACE and admire how different it is from Shei Wen's.

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