(disclaimer: i’m not that all experienced with graphics so this may just be a lot of personal tastes so you can pick what you want from this and discard the rest)

just looking @ it, the first thing that sticks out to me is how dark the blacks are? that can be okay sometimes, but with how thick the lines are for the first two avatars, i think it’s just a bit too sharp of a contrast? it’s fine for the other two i think.

the first one also looks a bit over exposed w/ all the highlights squint. esp in the skin. i’m guessing that’s a component of the original art, but that means it’s gonna prolly need a lower contrast or something. idk, i just fiddle with random settings until it looks vaguely okay bbihdwd.

ig there’s a little too much contrast for the first avatars.

another thing i just think abt is uping the sat/vibrance. the colors look a bit murky for the avatars. that might also be the contrast tho, so idk, ig something to play with.

ooo! I really like Icon2 and Icon6 (especially Icon6). Maybe it's because they look a little sharper in comparison to the others? I'm not sure...

But one thing that I think you do really well with your icons is the thick line art — which makes them a whole heck-of-alot more clean when you size them down. Tbh, that's probably my biggest weakness with graphics in general.

Other than that, I think breezes hit the nail on the head for the hovers.

... But then again, the only thing I do for my graphics is yeet the saturation up to the moon, drag the contrast down to hell, and sharpen it just shy of making people's eyes bleed... so take my feedback with a grain of salt and know what I do is hella stylized.

Keep it up, though! I'd love to see more of your work!

The cropping for the pics are pretty good, I especially like the way you did the icons.

One suggestion I'd made is to play around with the composition more. Try positioning the character differently than in the center for hovers and see how it looks.

oh my gosh, keep it up mouse!! gimp's a fantastic program to start with, so i'm glad you picked it up.

i actually quite like your graphics at the moment. one thing you'll realize is that they may look different, worse, better, etc., depending on whether the skin is dark, light, or possesses a particular colour palette.

i echo cyan's sentiments too! moving the main subject from the center position can make your graphics more visually appealing. if you look up the rule of thirds, you might see some good visual guides.

keep on going, mouse!!

Alright! So, took what you guys have suggested (I think anyway. I'll be honest and say I struggled with the contrast/color vibrancy a bit) and came up with another batch of icons and hovers.

ibb.co/album/iYOMdv

I'm really proud of how the hovers turned out this time. I feel they look a lot better than the ones I did for Android 21 but at the same time, the icons don't seem that good to me. I dunno why tho? They just look a bit blurry than they did when I was making em in gimp.

OMG Mouse!!! These hovers look so good!!! The improvement you've made in one session is crazy!

My favorites are hover3, hover4 and icon4 by far. And despite the thicker line art, the look of the lines has improved a lot from your previous hovers! V much my aesthetic.

Another thing to pay attention to, like cyanta claus and shiv mentioned, is the cropping portion. Other than composition, be careful about the edges of the image and what you're cropping out. I know that 90% of my time editing images for hovers is figuring out how I'm going to crop it, cropping it, and trying it 10 different ways. I even sometimes move around or hide things in the background depending on how I was forced to crop the image.

For the icons, the blurriness could come from the thinner line art — it's an issue that I often have trouble with when sizing down my images. Uploading them will often make them blurrier, too, which is why I tend to sharpen images, especially icons, a smidge more than I think it actually needs. If you manage to find a fix to this, though, deffs let me know... it's been a weakness of mine for yeARs.

BUT YEAH! Your progress is awesome! I can't wait to see how you improve even more!

my,,, solution is to NOT resize down jkSFLKJSFDLK. actually, i think it's usually better to not resize down a lot?? like the most i resize down to is 400px i believe? i mean if its below that, i won't mess with it but otherwise, i don't like resizing shit down. most sites will automatically make it work so long as the ratio is right and i know new macs have a different retina thing going on where if you make images perfectly to size on an older mac/pc, it looks rlly blurry on the new macs or something so keeping images like,,, double the og dimensions is advisable. and that, my friends, is why the rl community uses oversized images or so i'm told zJSLKFJLKSDF IDK I JUST lurk in the skinathon discord a lot jLKSJFLKD

um, but when it comes to a lot of that, this thing might be able to help? link

it does... sometimes not be up n stuff, but image cleaners like these can sooometimes help with blurrines?

but ya, like forte mentioned, gotta be careful about cropping, esp edges. your last three hovers have some whites and where things are just barely touching the edge. for example, in hover 1, i would move the image a touch down so that you have a little more room above her head. i also say this because the focus doesn't really lead their face so kinda getting it closer to the center would help w/ that.

First of all, I'd like to say that I'm glad to see you genuinely trying to improve! My personal fave are icons 5 and 6 of this batch.

I personally think resizing down is fine but that's something I suggest doing after cropping and the crop is in the same aspect ratio as your desired dimensions. Then you can lightly sharpen the pic to keep lines crisp.

So now that you're experimenting with different compositions, I'd like to suggest another thing for you to try. Play around with the curve levels of the pic! It might help with your contrast problems when you modify the pic's color curves instead of relying on the default contrast editor for now. It allows for greater control in maintaining different areas of contrast in the piece, as well as brightness levels.

For gimp, I think it's in Colors > Curves? You'll see a graph with a linearly increasing line. Try moving the end points of that line around. You can also click on the line to add individual points that you can move too.

I'm sorry for bugging you guys over this again. Your advice has been really helpful tho and I can definitely tell I'm getting a bit better at this.

ibb.co/album/grf3Qa

I think I'm starting to understand the whole contrast and vibrancy, at least somewhat but I'm still not 100% on it. I tried messing around with the curves level as you suggested Cyan but I've no idea if I did right? Regardless I'll keep playing around with until I'm familiar with it. I have found that the images turn out a bit crisper if I crop them and then resize them down a bit. Whereas before I was simply resizing them and then pulking them into my desired dimensions.

While I like all of the icons and hovers in this batch, Icon 6 and Hover 3 are the two I wish had turned out a bit better. They both have this lighting effect coming from the trees that I was interested in seeing if I could darker but I couldn't figure it out. Regardless I'm very happy with the progress I've been making and you guys have been a huge help in that. So I just wanted to say thanks again.

I like all of the icons and hovers in this one too. good job! Sorry if I am not saying specific enough things but I know different people have their own aesthetic preference when editing colors so I tend to avoid saying specifically what to do. But if you aesthetically like graphics similar to the way I do them, then I can give more detailed tips on that. 

Composition and cropping is more universal which is why I'm less apprehensive about it.

And by darken the lighting, do you mean something like this?



Cause I achieved that by fiddling with the curves! Move the right end of the line down to decrease brightness.

Mouse —

oml... these are my favorite by far! Hovers 1/2/5 and Icon 1/2 all look like graphics I'd use.

As for editing the lighting in the trees, you can always edit the image in sections. Copy the image, paste it as a new layer right above the original, edit the new layer to get the desired effect in the trees, and then use a soft or partially opaque eraser to erase the parts of the new layer that look weird.

I know a lot of things can be done with "masks," but I can never quite figure out how they work when I try to use them... LMAO

Keep it up, though! You're improving faster than I ever did!

Hey guys, I hope you don't mind if I ask for some more advice and thoughts on the icons that I've made. I'm both extremely happy and proud of how all of the icons and hovers turned out this time.

Which is fantastic because I actually did them for one of my favorite characters <3

I spent a fair amount of time before making these getting comfortable with gimp and I think it shows. My focus for a majority of the graphics was getting the colors to really pop and draw the eye. I think I accomplished my goal but if I didn't please let me know!

ibb.co/album/mwttQa

I messed around with the curves a lot this time too and by golly did it make a world of difference. Hovers 7 & 8 had a flat appearance colorwise when I started but now they're all vibrant and colorful. While I like all of them a lot, my favorites would have to be hovers 5, 7, and 8 as well as icons 14, 13, and 10.

One of the things I feel I need to work on is adjusting specifics parts of the image and not the entire thing. For the life of me, I can't seem to figure out how to get the select tools on gimp to work for me. It's frustrating, but I'm stubborn and I'll figure it out eventually.

I've made so much progress and I've got you guys to thank it <3