Wodhann's Icon Graphic Tutorial

[Lord Tirian]

Thanks for the tutorial! It is a great starting point and led me to finding the Pixelbender plug-in. As with any tutorial, I've started to deviate from it by now, but it was very helpful to get me on the track, so to speak.

Here are a couple of icons I made for Gazebo's City State Diplomacy mod:

Spoiler Icons :

One comment regarding the tutorial: I find resizing to 172 px diameter works better with the CiV frames, using 174 px as diameter seems to obscure the innermost part of the frame unlike the stock icons.

As TPangolin, though, I prefer to make starbursts through brushes - I like that using a brush gives you finer control over whole composition, since you see the shape of the starburst before placement. Gives an idea of the final composition (even if you then modify the starburst shape after using the brush, as with tutorials and other stock resources, a brush is just a starting point).

 

[Wodhann]

Thanks for the tutorial! It is a great starting point and led me to finding the Pixelbender plug-in. As with any tutorial, I've started to deviate from it by now, but it was very helpful to get me on the track, so to speak.

Here are a couple of icons I made for Gazebo's City State Diplomacy mod:

Spoiler Icons :

One comment regarding the tutorial: I find resizing to 172 px diameter works better with the CiV frames, using 174 px as diameter seems to obscure the innermost part of the frame unlike the stock icons.

Great icons. I'm glad I helped you achieve that level.

Is that plugin free? If yes, I'll add a note to the tutorial about it so people have something better than the older photoshop effects.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Is that plugin free? If yes, I'll add a note to the tutorial about it so people have something better than the older photoshop effects.

It's free, it's here, but it's only for Photoshop CS4 and CS5. From what I see from the screenshots, you're using a newer Photoshop version, so I guess the plug-in was a testbed for what eventually became a stock feature.

There's also a standalone toolkit on that page might allow you to apply it to images without having to own Photoshop, but I haven't tried it.

Might help some people, though, if they are (like me) sitting on an older Photoshop version or have the time/interest to figure out what the toolkit on its own can do.

Finally, I suggest playing around with the Cutout filter (see GIMP equivalents), best on an extra layer that's a copy of your actual icon foreground. It helps to get the "Art Deco" feel, but needs a lot of tweaking/blending and manual editing to get it right - but it can get rid of extraneous detail and produce cleaner lines.

 

[TPangolin]

Yeah, I was wondering how you got the cutout to work so well! Is there a secret? I usually just put it on Soft Light/Overlay and then give up.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Yeah, I was wondering how you got the cutout to work so well! Is there a secret? I usually just put it on Soft Light/Overlay and then give up.

Magic! Really, there's no secret, it's just a lot of try-and-error, but couple of things that work for me:

• Use a large image, a lot of faults are forgiven when you scale it down...
• Up the contrast of your image before you apply the Cutout, it helps the filter to find sensible edges.
• Experiment with it in conjunction with the Oilpaint effect if you can (sometimes before, sometimes after works better).
• Manual tweaking is definitely needed: blur the edges, draw over them, blend gradients over it, use the Dodge tool and so on.
• Luminosity blending works best for it, especially if it's set to something like 66% opacity.
• Use the layer with the Cutout effect as tool, if you keep a copy of the layer around you can use the magic wand to quickly select areas and then use it to manually edit the other layers (especially to get the high contrast effect by lowering the brightness and hue of select areas)
• Use gradients: draw a black-to-white gradient on another layer, set it to Overlay or Pin Light and experiment with the opacity, that really helps with making it "pop"

 

[Wodhann]

I find oil paint filter to be basically better in every aspect, but you can use cut out to your advantage. Just remember to put it in a layer above and with a lower opacity and experiment with it - never just cut out the entire image and be done with it. Also yes, use a higher resolution, even if you have to resize the image. This also applies to oil paint filter if you want the changes to be more minute.

 

[Craig_Sutter]

A couple more:

 

[iWBffta]

First post on the forum.

Awesome tutorial, and awesome job!

Side Note: Is there a civ mod for the Final Fantasy Tactics kingdoms? One of my favorite childhood games and seeing duke larg in civ 5 form is amazing.

 

[Wodhann]

First post on the forum.

Awesome tutorial, and awesome job!

Side Note: Is there a civ mod for the Final Fantasy Tactics kingdoms? One of my favorite childhood games and seeing duke larg in civ 5 form is amazing.

Thanks man, and welcome.

No I don't believe there is a FFT mod for Civ5 unfortunately.

 

[NotAFacehugger]

Nice tutorial unfortunately I have Gimp so I got stuck. Can anyone who knows Gimp possibly help me out?

 

[ptoss1]

My first attempts. Never used photoshop before.

 

[Scotch0101]

Nice tutorial unfortunately I have Gimp so I got stuck. Can anyone who knows Gimp possibly help me out?

Gimp is ok for icons. You need a special plug-in to save icons as DirectDraw Surfaces (dds)....which, unfortunately doesn't work for most people I've tried the plug-in but I got an error message saying a .dll file was missing....apparently you need the 2.8 version....I have the 2.68 version and for some reason I can't upgrade . In other-words, you'll be lucky to get the plug-in working.....
Here's the link to the plug-in: http://code.google.com/p/gimp-dds/

 

[Craig_Sutter]

Paint.net will save in dds format. I have the gimp plugin, but it doesn't save dds in the right compression for 45 pixel sizes... so I work in Gimp and save dds in Paint.net.

 

[NotAFacehugger]

Gimp is ok for icons. You need a special plug-in to save icons as DirectDraw Surfaces (dds)....which, unfortunately doesn't work for most people I've tried the plug-in but I got an error message saying a .dll file was missing....apparently you need the 2.8 version....I have the 2.68 version and for some reason I can't upgrade . In other-words, you'll be lucky to get the plug-in working.....
Here's the link to the plug-in: http://code.google.com/p/gimp-dds/

Actually I've gotten the saving as a dds to work. but i still dont know the program so making the icons is hard for me.

 

[calcul8or]

There's a tutorial for icons in Gimp here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=463116

 

[Enj0y]

@Wodhann great tutorial. Civ has such a specific style, not to mention dimensions, to get things to look right.

I used this lesson as a guide and came up with this. Rhys Tiras, Grand Admiral of Corsica, Heir to the Oceans of Earth.

I appreciate you taking the time.

 

[bane_]

This graphic tutorial is very good.
Thank you for this.

Here is my latest Icon: