extrapenguin

A total of 23 icons, some of which are terrible. For Guardian icon battle, pt 3,

icontalking activity #27 – Calm and Clear,

Icons for episodes 21-30, preview image.

Poll #22316 icon opinions

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

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Of the above 10 icons, which is your favorite?

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episode 21
0 (0.0%)

episode 22
1 (7.7%)

episode 23
3 (23.1%)

episode 24
3 (23.1%)

episode 25
1 (7.7%)

episode 26
0 (0.0%)

episode 27
1 (7.7%)

episode 28
3 (23.1%)

episode 29
1 (7.7%)

episode 30
0 (0.0%)

Now, the prattle! In episode order.

This is one of the ones where I didn't yet have caps from the episode, so I just went through and capped all six episodes in such a state, then came back to look at the caps and icon the next day. I spotted a very civilized-looking Zhao Yunlan who looks like he's about to channel Mei Changsu ("The reason I won is because you are stupid and I am smarter than you"), took out the doctor's office, and placed him on a nice black-and-white texture by lookslikerain which had a very suitable diagonal. That was a bit missing of extra oomph, so I added another texture for colors, this time by azuremonkey.

22 I had some caps of, of which the best one was this gesture of Zhao Yunlan's. I thought hey, why not make it so that it looks like he's drinking something on an alien planet, so I went through the textures directory to find this. It looks like he's drinking on a desert planet! I did some luminosity mask toning of the lights and shadows to make him look like he belonged. I did make one with a different variant of the texture and color tuning, but I didn't like that one as much:

For 23, there was a Shen Wei cap with his blade, so I took that. (I think I'd bored myself of plain "look at this character's face" icons, so I went for more full-body or gesture caps this time.) I found that I had a texture that had random Chinese text at exactly the appropriate angle, as well as a texture that had a color splash thingy at the appropriate place and angle, so I put those on, decided I should write a word on it, and spent five days figuring out what word would be best in my fraktur font. I eventually settled on "justice" but had alternative versions as well:

This is actually one of the last ones I made, which is why it's so hilarious in its positioning within the set. I had Shen Wei with his bomb, I'd just rewatched the scene (because it was too good to skip through, okay?), and I wanted to make a funny icon, since people like those.

I already had a cap of 25 with this very thirsty expression, so I funnied it up. Arrows are doodled by yours truly. Texture by azuremonkey.

Another piece of fun with selective colorization! Having the rest of everything grayscale didn't quite gel, so I used a layer in Soft Light to give it a touch of its original color. I used a variety of layers in different layer modes to give the pendant some oomph. Then I realized I needed some text to ~~ruin~~ enhance the effect, so I took the first lyrics on my mind ("I've loved you for a thousand years / I'll love you for a thousand more" because I heard it once at some dance performance and was instantly earwormed. What's it from, anyway?), edited it to fit our more-dramatic-by-an-order-of-magnitude Envoy, and presto, Shen Wei is promising to love Zhao Yunlan for another 10k years.

Episode 27 was terrible for good caps, so I picked this one and made it look like they were walking out of a space station. After all, this is science fiction! And the super sekrit research area's glowing strips of light were very space station-y. The space was created with two textures by proverbialsunrise and a plain black layer onto which I used HSV noise to create "stars".

They were standing next to each other, so I made an icon out of that! It's pretty simple – just the two of them, masked off from their original background and then some adjustment of levels done so that there's a better range of values from light to dark. That made their hair look a bit too matte and made Zhao Yunlan's t-shirt blow up, however, so I did some nondestructive dodge/burning to darken Zhao Yunlan's tee and Shen Wei's coat, as well as bring back the highlights and thus sense of depth for the hair. The background is just a black layer with HSV noise. I did make an alt with the same "space" color effects as the preceding and succeeding icons to make another mini-narrative, but didn't like it as much as the first version:

This is actually the first icon I made out of these three (27-29)! I had a cap of Zhao Yunlan touching Shen Wei's shoulder, and wanted to sort of riff off ... something, I forget what. Anyway, some romantic mood textures from proverbialsunrise and the text "you can go but don't stay" later, I had an icon! One where Zhao Yunlan wants Shen Wei to come back.

In episode 30, I spotted Zhao Yunlan lounging on his couch in a full-body-icon amenable way, so I took a screencap! (It also looks like it could be Zhao Yunlan waiting for Shen Wei to come back from his errand.) I used a bunch of textures by azuremonkey to achieve a sort of dreamy quality.

Textures by:

lookslikerain

azuremonkey

proverbialsunrise

white-bamboo

I also participated in a mini-rumble! There were two challenges: negative space and close crop.

Negative space came really easily – a little bit of cropping, a texture, and boom, done! I did add a sort of "platform" for Shen Wei to stand on so it wasn't just him floating in the aether.

Then I had a bunch of problems with the close crop one – I tried selective coloring of lips

and cropping to just the hands

and then some terrible texture stuff

but nothing clicked. Then I decided aw fuck it, I'll do a close crop of Zhao Yunlan's phone instead and add some textures to make it a visual representation of secrets, and hey, it was surprisingly decent, so I submitted it:

(I did of course get concrit from someone who didn't get it, and suggested changing the crop so it's a closeup of the mouth rather than the fact that he's talking on the phone.)
All textures by

alwaysbeenasmiler (at

hiraethe)

Poll #22317 pick your fave

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8

View Respondents

Which is your fave?

View Answers

Negative space Shen Wei
5 (62.5%)

Close crop Ye Zun's mouth (and you should've submitted that instead)
1 (12.5%)

Close crop Zhao Yunlan's mouth (and you should've submitted that instead)
0 (0.0%)

Close crop of mugs clinking (and you should've submitted that instead)
1 (12.5%)

Close crop of Zhao Yunlan with the rectangles texture (and you should've submitted that instead)
0 (0.0%)