InsaneJournal

Icons or "A Little Picture is Worth a Thousand Words"
Icons are one of my favorite parts of fandom. I love looking for them, gushing over them, stalking supporting their artists, having the perfect little picture for a comment.

They can express our fangirly joys,
Our frustrations with life,
Make us laugh like loons,
Awe us with their beauty,

Or just let us bask in the love!

I may love my icon collection even more than my shoe collection. *shocked gasp*
xie_xie_xie summed up our fandom's love for all things iconic so eloquently in this lovely Ode to Icon Makers: Dear Icon Makers

But not understanding terms like hotlinking or how to credit let alone upload them, it took me a long time to start grabbing these little pics of love. Thankfully, people were happy to step up and walk me through it.


Keep in mind, I am technically challenged. A technotard, if you will. So if I can do this, any of you can. Feel free to leave me hints, too!

Where can you find them?
To get you started, we have two great icon communities here on IJ: qaf_icons and iconics. I recommend joining them both, you will find lots of different artists and styles. Truly something for everyone. From there, I moved onto individual icon maker's journals. While in the communities, just click the name of the icon poster to route you to their personal journal. Sometimes they post graphics there or list a separate graphics journal they keep just for icons and graphics. See an icon you like used in a post or comment? Just ask the poster who made it. I love it when people love an icon as much as I do! Also feel free to look through my user pics and steal what you like. I think I just passed the 800 mark. ;)

Sometimes icons are made only for someone's personal use or are not "shareable". This is usually noted in the post or in the description.

How do I steal,grab,take for my own collect them?

I save the icons I find to folders on my computer and then upload them from there to IJ userpics. It works for me, but I know different methods work for others. Here is IJ's tutorial on Uploading User Pics.

Looking around, you see a lot of warnings about hotlinking or requests to upload to your own Host or Server. Being a technotard, I had no idea what these terms meant, in fact I still get confused.

Bandwidth theft or "hotlinking" is direct linking to a web site's files (images, video, etc.). A good analogy is imagine a random stranger plugging into your electrical outlets, using your electricity without your consent, and you paying for it. How do you get around this? One way is when you find an image you like, and that you're allowed to use, right-click on it and select Save As. Store it somewhere on your hard drive, like a folder where you'll be able to find it later, for the moment. Then upload the image to IJ or a hosting service. You can then delete it from your hard drive.

By Host or Server they mean website or hosting service. A very common hosting service is www.photobucket.com. It's totally free and when you upload images to it you can direct link from your own account using code and links provided by photobucket. Registration is easy and using it is even easier. Trust me, I use it, so anyone can do it. ;) You can then use photobucket as your "online hard drive for images/photos", sharing and uploading them to IJ or what ever you want.

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due
Like any piece of art, an icon maker sweated, toiled, and put their heart into making this little piece of happiness. Let's show our thanks by crediting them. Crediting also lets others know where to look if they want to find more from this artist. When you load an icon into your user pics, there are two text boxes: Keywords and Comments. In Keywords, put in a description of the icon. This is the description that will show in your list of icons when you comment or post. In Comments, list who created the icon. For example, for my beautiful Brian default icon my Keywords are: See U in your Dreams. My Comments are: by nanoa.

Leaving Love and Words of Adoration
While shopping around for icons, be sure to leave a comment letting the artist know how much you liked their work. Feel free to wax poetic on the cropping, coloring, or lighting. I have a tendency to gush about how hot Brian's abs look. Even if you just leave a thank you or tell them which one you took, it is soooo appreciated and helps feed the talent. *grin*



Icons by youbetterwiseup, brianslave68, url_girl, youbetterwiseup, qafmaniac, zaipixie and maybe742
Technotard assistance from zaipixie, xie_xie_xie, and happier_bunny.