User: love_sacrificed (posted by immortalje) Date: 2008-07-06 18:17 Subject: How I work Security: Public Location: home Mood: thoughtful Tags: !discussion

So... instead of finishing that episode post, making threesome icons, doing stuff for university and whatever else I was supposed to be doing, I'll be writing about making icons (and possibly writing fics - as it's likely I'll get off topic ;) )


I don't remember how I started out making icons (just that I wish they wouldn't look so terrible by now) but early on (around the time my only online friend I know in rl started making icons as well) I was told (by said friend) that I was mass producing icons since I did them so quickly. Then again, back then it was just picking a pic, resizing, picking what's visible and possibly adding text.

Then I had dark pics for the first time and I tried to lighten them up (without much success) and eventually I found tutorial community over at LJ. I checked some out and "learned" what tools were available to me using PS7. I'm not someone who follows instruction, so the tutorials were simply for telling me about what I could use.

Ever since I saw the tutorials I've been wondering about my working style. Most of the people who wrote tutorials I looked threw, said to pick a cut from the get go. I never do that. It's way more fluid than that. When I'm working on contests (newest addiction), I simply go through a folder of screencaps one by one, sort out the picture that aren't usable or don't speak to me. Those caps that speak to me... I do a vague overview of the potential(!) cut and resize it roughly. I then open a new image in the correct size and either move the whole picture or a slightly larger part (depending on how close the size of the pic is to 100x100). After that I move it around until I like what I can see in the picture. In most cases I sharpen the picture and use the layers for effects. Once I like it, I save it. Sometimes, I play around with different layer options, saving all of them that I like (- ending up with 5 and more versions of the same pic on occasion)

Right now, I'm not using a lot of text, since it doesn't come to me (I'm sure it's related to my writers' block when it comes to writing on the computer), but when I add text I find it either fits the way I positioned the cut or not... when it doesn't I move the picture around until it does.

I don't know what I'm going to end up with nor do I have a goal when I start on an icon. I just let it tell me what it wants to look like. I like surprising myself with an end result I would have never thought about if I tried to.

I've never really considered participating in an icontest until I found the dwicontest just about to close it's first round and needing a couple of more entries. It's exiting. I still mostly work the same way as with "normal" icons, don't really take that much longer even (finishing pretty quickly still), but I find that I try more and work towards a goal. I think about what I could do with the given pictures. I like that I don't have such a big range of pictures to choose from as it makes me concentrate on what I have available and think about what I'm doing. The contests also make me break with habit, trying new things.
I especially like to see what the others came up with using the same pictures. It gives me new ideas. Inspires me even more.

I can honestly say, even if my first ever made icon combined several sources, not many of the following did. In fact, I think the only icons where I blended pics together where actually made for contests as I don't really take the time for it otherwise.

Writing fics, I go about it the same way I do icons... or pretty much that way. I produce tons of bunnies and spring from one to the next, hoping I'll stick with one long enough to finish the fic. I have way too many ideas - sadly - to work on and that's in most cases the reason for writer's block. I simply have too many ideas and no idea which one to start with.

I rarely plot out what I'm going to write. I just let it come. The biggest example of that is a House fic I wrote. It was House/Chase with an on/off relationship. It was supposed to be about Chase going ahead and trying to seal the deal. No other characters involved as well. Suddenly Foreman drops in and Chase has an aversion to bondage and House comes to the rescue and it's revealed that he's realised the danger their relationship is in. He never was supposed to do that. Chase was supposed to bring the topic up and convince House to make a decision in either direction. Totally not how I originally wanted to write it... and that was only a one-shot.

The same goes for my Harry Potter fic "Uniting Forces" (*remembers that it still needs a beta*). At one moment I had Harry say that Draco couldn't be reformed. A couple of chapters (and weeks in rl later) he tells McGonagall that he hopes that Draco could be reformed and I found myself wanting to do it versus making him a faithful DE from a few chapters before.

That's the real problem writing long fics... I change my "fanon" characters within a short span of time. The same goes for reading (and is most probably influenced by it)... there are times when I'm addicted to a certain aspect of a character and the next moment I want a different one (e.g. good Dumbledore vs. manipulative Dumbledore). One moment I want to make a character suffer for all they've done and the next I'm all about redeeming them. Whenever I realise that I start to plot fics out for more than the imminent part (since plotting a scene actually helps writing it) and consider where I want to go aside from the vague plot I have.

I never really think about what I'm writing, but let the words come out. It's why I like doing emotional pieces and am not so good with describing surroundings and speech (sometimes gives me the most trouble). I'm good at giving a character motivation. I've got a couple of one-shots about Jack Harkness on my computer that consider his situation and relationship with the Doctor (and Ianto and Gwen...) where I don't write speech at all. I refer to it, summarize it - people are actually talking, but I don't put it into sentences, because it's all about the situation and not what is said or isn't. I like analyzing situations like that.

Sadly, I'm currently only writing during lectures, using pen and paper and (as in most cases) am too lazy to type it up. Really need to change that. Maybe once exams are over in about two week (plus however long I take to turn my mind off)

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