Graphic Fun (not as dirty as it sounds)
Jun. 25th, 2009 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
g33kboiSo, in my last post I mentioned that I had an idea for an LJ icon that I wanted to make, with animations and everything. This is a rough draft of what I've been working on...
I don't remember how the original idea for the icon came to me. I may have just been looking at cool icons and thinking, I should try making one of those. I had just taken a zillion pictures (actually more like 1230, but who's counting?) of the Indigo Girls at a show last week in Northampton, so I think that imagery sort of coalesced with the whole icon idea along with the lyrics of one of their new songs, True Romantic (listen to it on Last.fm), which has been a recent favorite of mine.
The image I'm using is a photo that I took at the show of one half of the Indigo Girls, Amy Ray, who also wrote True Romantic. (extra details provided for any readers not familiar with IG)
The phrases I wanted to use from the song are in this verse...
who that rocks your world". (edited to correct the lyrics, which of course now need to be corrected on the image)
OK, so now that I had a concept I needed some extra pieces. A bit of texture and a cool font or two. There's a website, bittbox.com, that I check out every now and then that posts free textures every week, so I took a look there first and found this awesome sheet music image found here. And then I thought I might try to use a font similar to the one used on the cover of "Poseidon and the Bitter Bug", the album that True Romantic is on. I actually found the exact font! It's called "little insect from another planet". Unfortunately, it's completely illegible when it's really tiny, so I had to scrap that idea. Plan B, look for something in a kind of scrawled handwriting style. I finally found one that I kind of like, Christoper Hand. It's not quite as scrawling as I'd like but the other choices were too sloppy, and again, didn't look good small.
Take "all the good stuff and put it all together." Here is at part of the evolution of what I've done so far... (click images to enlarge)
This is my original image, untouched other than to scale it to a size appropriate for the web.
This is that image cropped.
The cropped image with the sheet music texture and a couple of gradient layers applied to lighten and darken certain areas.
And then the whole thing scaled down to 100 x 100 pixels.
Yet to be done...
I'm thinking of playing with the size and color of individual words to suggest the same emphasis that is present in the song. As far as animating it, I could keep it simple and just have one full phrase fade into the next, but what I really want to do is fade each word in and then out and, ideally, time the fades to the tempo of the phrases in the song.
If anyone has any suggestions for tweaking any of this, I'd be happy for the feedback. Also, if anyone knows of any really good, detailed tutorials for doing what I just described in GIMP with GAP, I would be eternally grateful for any linkage you might be able to provide.
Oh, one more thing. This is a work in progress. Please don't take any of the images. (The best pics from the show will eventually get posted on Flickr.) When the icon is done, I will gladly share as long as you credit me.
I don't remember how the original idea for the icon came to me. I may have just been looking at cool icons and thinking, I should try making one of those. I had just taken a zillion pictures (actually more like 1230, but who's counting?) of the Indigo Girls at a show last week in Northampton, so I think that imagery sort of coalesced with the whole icon idea along with the lyrics of one of their new songs, True Romantic (listen to it on Last.fm), which has been a recent favorite of mine.
The image I'm using is a photo that I took at the show of one half of the Indigo Girls, Amy Ray, who also wrote True Romantic. (extra details provided for any readers not familiar with IG)
The phrases I wanted to use from the song are in this verse...
Baby, if you took all the good stuff...which I shortened to read "the girl that suits your fancy" and "the boy
and put it all together
and you took all the bad stuff
and you threw it all away
would I still be the girl that suits your fancy
would I still be the boywhothat rocks your world?
OK, so now that I had a concept I needed some extra pieces. A bit of texture and a cool font or two. There's a website, bittbox.com, that I check out every now and then that posts free textures every week, so I took a look there first and found this awesome sheet music image found here. And then I thought I might try to use a font similar to the one used on the cover of "Poseidon and the Bitter Bug", the album that True Romantic is on. I actually found the exact font! It's called "little insect from another planet". Unfortunately, it's completely illegible when it's really tiny, so I had to scrap that idea. Plan B, look for something in a kind of scrawled handwriting style. I finally found one that I kind of like, Christoper Hand. It's not quite as scrawling as I'd like but the other choices were too sloppy, and again, didn't look good small.
Take "all the good stuff and put it all together." Here is at part of the evolution of what I've done so far... (click images to enlarge)
This is my original image, untouched other than to scale it to a size appropriate for the web.
This is that image cropped.
The cropped image with the sheet music texture and a couple of gradient layers applied to lighten and darken certain areas.
And then the whole thing scaled down to 100 x 100 pixels.
Yet to be done...
I'm thinking of playing with the size and color of individual words to suggest the same emphasis that is present in the song. As far as animating it, I could keep it simple and just have one full phrase fade into the next, but what I really want to do is fade each word in and then out and, ideally, time the fades to the tempo of the phrases in the song.
If anyone has any suggestions for tweaking any of this, I'd be happy for the feedback. Also, if anyone knows of any really good, detailed tutorials for doing what I just described in GIMP with GAP, I would be eternally grateful for any linkage you might be able to provide.
Oh, one more thing. This is a work in progress. Please don't take any of the images. (The best pics from the show will eventually get posted on Flickr.) When the icon is done, I will gladly share as long as you credit me.
