kate_nepveu | Icon discussion meme

Ask me about some (up to five, say) of my icons, and I'll tell you about them. Or, ask me to ask you about some of your icons, and then when I do, post in your own journal—because we picked our icons for a reason and talking about them is fun.

yhlee asked me about these:

Keyword: "rhinovirus"; source: http://www.giantmicrobes.com/us/products/commoncold.html.

My most recent icon; I uploaded it around the time of Boskone, when I had, you guessed it, a nasty cold. I added it because I was talking about "me and my rhinovirus" a lot, and since someone had already personified the rhinovirus as a giant blue plushie . . .

Keyword: "Princess Tutu (beware the meta)"; source: episode one, "The Duck and the Prince (Der Nußknacker: Blumenwalzer)."

The first icon I made for Princess Tutu; for a while it was also my defaut icon for the show. (This version is tweaked slightly from the initial version.) I loved the contrast between the cute little duck and the looming freaky eyes, which are the storyteller's who is supposed to have died but is still mucking with the story. And I knew even then that "beware the meta" was a big theme of the show (overview & recommendation post).

Keyword: "Trigun (Wolfwood)"; source: episode 10, "Quick Draw."

I have to talk about this together with the other half of the pair:

which is my default Trigun icon.

It took me a ridiculously long time to find a default icon for Trigun; I didn't make these until I was watching episodes 20-22 and going back through prior episodes. The show is about Vash the Stampede (the guy in the red coat), and I wanted something that showed both sides of him, his goofiness and his strange proficiency with weapons. I was browsing back through prior episodes and came across the scene in these icons, in which Vash and Wolfwood—a priest who also has a strange proficiency with weapons—fight a fake duel. The combination of guns and little smiles seemed to be just what I was looking for, both to represent the series and the two characters.

Keyword: "Li'l Delirium: oh no!"; source: Jill Thompson's The Little Endless Storybook.

Delirium is one of the Endless from Neil Gaiman's Sandman (booklog). The kid/chibi versions, the Li'l Endless, were drawn by Jill Thompson in issue 40, "The Parliament of Rooks," as part of a story within a story. (This issue is collected in Fables and Reflections; Thompson also did the art for the Brief Lives arc.) Her Li'l Endless group portrait (see these icons) was very popular, and so she later did a hardcover called The Little Endless Storybook (publisher page) in the same style, which this is from.

If there was ever a visual way to express "oh no!", this is it.

Keyword: art; source: Emile Bellet, "Parfum Bleu."

I bought this print on our 2005 cruise; it hangs in our living room. I like the colors and the way the shapes give the impression of movement. I don't use it a lot because I don't talk about visual art much, and possibly it wants a more specific or different keyword, but I like it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

chomiji

I love the Giant Microbes. I just wish my late mother, microbiologist and stuffed animal collector, had lived long enough to see them. I did buy some for my brother-in-law the developmental biologist, at least!

kate_nepveu

Sounds perfect for your brother-in-law.

I don't have any strong urge to own one, but it's a handy pictoral shortcut.

penmage.livejournal.com

When N had mono (two weeks before our wedding) I got him the Mono.

It still lives in our bedroom.

yhlee.livejournal.com

Niftiness!

Thanks for the opportunity!

kgbooklog.livejournal.com

Does anyone know a good free program for editing animated GIFs? I really, really want to use this (http://www.youngwizards.com/Fan_Stuff/Save_The_World_LJ_Icon.gif), but the file size is too big.

I don't do animated icons, so can't help.

desdenova.livejournal.com

GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) is excellent for most image-editing needs, including animated GIFs.

I've been meaning to try that. Can it zoom in far enough to make it easy to change individual pixels (like MSPaint)? Oh, and anyone can ask about my icons too (60% of them are simple crops from Girl Genius).

Yes, you can do that. GIMP is far superior in functionality to MS Paint. It is more along the lines of Photoshop. As such, there is something of a learning curve, but it is worth learning if you have more-than-rudimentary image-manipulation needs and don't have the budget or inclination to buy Adobe products.

there is something of a learning curve

Nah, really? Just because it took me a couple minutes to figure out which window has the menu with the save command? As you can see, I did manage to get something decent just by deleting frames (layers). And I can probably get it to look like the original by having the intermediate frames just add the new text instead of redrawing the whole image.

But I get the feeling that GIMP wasn't really intended for editing animations; I can't find any way to show the animation, and I can't seem to set the frame delays on individual layers (I can use the original settings or override all the delays when saving).