In this article we will try to tell about common things of icons creations. These things are known by attempt icon-men but it could be unknown for beginners.
Material and Brightening
Before you will draw an icon you should right understand behaviours of its material. If it gives blik; if it transparent, so perhaps it breaks rays; from transparent object it could be focusing falling light on it (like from lens). In general in creation icon one of the factor of success in the difference in materials. The property to add/repel light. Metall will have bliks not the same as plastic, wood or glass. And because the more general aim is it draw small icons - bliks are main way to draw good icon. About lightening — remember, that light to all icons in one set should be the same (from one side to all icons)
Perspective
If icons in one set and in one composition will be drawn with different perspective it would make impression, that they are pulled out from different sources, and not drawn special for composition. It happend when somebody makes icons very fast or just don't want spend money on buying and collects them from different places(sometimes stealling it). It make impression of very cheap product.
Colour of background
It is very important to choose colour of background of icons. Because icons, created for white or coloured background should look on dark backgroumd more brightly and it will be hard to eyes to adapt to them (it's very uncomfortable). And icons from dark layer will be look on light background grey and wan. But it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do bright icons on dark background and grey icons on light background, just do it with in harmony with back. If we have pixel icons or icons without antialiasing (1 color for transparent) so very often color of pixels on the edge have similar color to background color
If you will change back under these icons you will see points from last back. It looks terrible. When you have icons with effect of reflection (materials like metall or glass) and they will use alfa-transparency (32bit). And with it its need to use on different backs you can adapt icons under different colours of back, making it transparent in that places, where should be reflection from substrate (and of course where is transparency)
Inking
Inking round of icons is very strong method to make icon brighter and to make it universall for every background also texture and photo
Colours in icons
We talked about colours in other articles. Here we will talk about colours, using in icons. We can divide colours on 2 aspects: comfort and associations.
Comfort. In creation of icons we impress colours differently. For example image of rich green symbol (in size of few points) on white back will be looking not clear, and understanding of this object will send for discomfort:
if all icons in composition will be such uncomfort, it is dangerous for vision. Rich yellow colour really hard to look on white back. its a pity if you will minimize brightening of these objects they will look wan and grey just loose those background
And vice versa, blue, red, and black colours looks good even if icon consist of few pixels. So, as you can see, in creating small icons you should delete colours that are bad perceptible on background. For example if you will take green symbol that looks bad on white background and to use it on blak background it will look perfeclty- of course its better than blue colour.
Plus you can do inking (or shadow) grace of that icons will be simply reading on any back:
It is an opinion that colours of very small objects we see like grey blue and orange — we just can't perceive other colours: because of our eyes. Perhaps, its true.
Associations. Some colours in icons are unofficial standard. For example button "delete", "erase", "stop" usually look on red background. So these are the elements that you shoulf look to take care. Button "accept (check button)" as usual its a green tick. Icon "Attention " usually is orange or red.
It's a theory that in people's evolution we have different speed of impression on different colours. For example green for us always mean herb, something safety and calm that's why speed of perception on green colour(or backdround) is not high. Blue is also means calm. But red and orange were associated with predators (tiger, cheetah, leopard), blood (danger ) and something edible, so reaction on these items is very high and man catches it first (in cause of good bright).
www.icojoy.com | Zhebrakov Andrew (Andy-S)
