Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza

Hello! Welcome to my studio, where I will post a collection of short writings and artistic endeavours.

I am not a trained writer, nor am I trained artist. However, I do enjoy dabbling in fantasy writing and photoshop experimentation. I especially enjoy the art form of icons so you will see a few of those being posted here.

I have always been fascinated by Ents and Entwives so a lot of my work is likely to be...treeish in nature. With that in mind, I present to you my first piece:



This is a few iterations of an Ent icon. This chap is an Oak Ent. I used various images from around the web to try and put together a tree-like face, which I've shrunk down to the icon size of 58x58. If you ever make an icon, you will realise how few pixels are in a 58x58 canvas. As such, it's quite difficult to get good resolution on facial features etc. I like to think this one works though...just about.

I'm not too sure about the eyes. I used a picture of an eagle's eyes as I didn't think the eyes of Ents would be particularly human. They look a little too sharp to me though, so I might have to experiment with different animals.

There is a larger form of this image which I am still working on.

Those icons are great, Li! They have a very Tolkien-ish and Plaza-ish feel. The first one with the leaves and the border is my favourite. The use of eagle eyes is a stroke of genius.

@Li. those icons are awesome! I like all of them, but the ones with the autumnal leaves in the background particularly stand out to me. There's something about the nose which I really enjoy too. Looking forward to seeing more!

[Edit as I managed to type noise instead of nose and have only just noticed]

A great start! I'm looking forward to seeing different iterations as you experiment. The black background does look particularly empty compared to your leafy one, but the expression is fierce! This is a post-Entmoot Ent!
I was thinking it might be the white in the eyes making them look quite so sharp, because the yellow really works.

Hey @Li.! Glad to see you started a Cottage thread - I love hearing a bit about your icon design process! The eagle eyes are definitely piercing. What were some of the other elements that went into these?

This is really neat-- I love the quirky feel to the character. I actually know very little about icon making-- so I'm excited to learn a bit from your posting here. I think the third one is my favourite of this set-- and I'm with everyone, I really like the eye choice. They make an excellent focal point.

Cheers guys!

I'll work on a little tutorial post that explains the process I use for icon making. It is largely based on a tutorial that Peeg posted back in the day. Obviously, he did icons a lot better than me so my method is more of a subtraction than an addition. One of the best lessons I learned from Peeg's tutorial was that you should always start with a larger image and shrink it down to icon size. If you try and work in the 58x58 canvas from the first moment, things just won't look right. Once you have the body of the image made in macro, then you can play around with composition in the icon canvas.

Anyway, here is the result of tonights experiments: an attempt at Old Man Willow.

Ohhhhh, these are cool! I love the idea of using different animal eyes for the ents/tree characters. And I particularly like the lumpy nose in the first set--very treeish. :smiley8: Kudos for managing to put so much detail and personality into such a small space.

Looking forward to seeing a tutorial post-- thanks for being willing to do that!

I love the feel of this one coming out of the shadows. I also really like the silhouette of branches on the face.

Ooh yes, can't wait for some insights into your process! I like the highlights you've added to the one on the right for Icon Reasons, though I think he's a bit truer to the sinister Old Man Willow of the books in the one on the left.

Also looking forward to the tutorial post! Again, love the eyes on Old Man Willow.

Excellent icons Li. I particularly like the Autumnal oak leaves on the first ones, although the black space makes the face more visible in the other ones. The Old Man Willow is also appropriately dark and scarred while still having the feel of lacy green willow leaves in the background. I look forward to seeing more of your creations.