[Tango-artists] Techniques
Sacrat
sacrat at gmail.com
Wed Jul 26 02:49:07 PDT 2006
I don't know if I'm the only person having this question, but still...
Should we have some basic techniques for creating Tango-style icons
described?
For example, if the goal is making pixel-clear icons with highly
professional look (like http://mezich.livejournal.com/13176.html) some
things must be clarified:
No bitmap resampling.
I think it's pretty obvious for anyone with basic small-sized graphics
design skills that one of the most certain way to kill an icon is making
one in one size, render and then scale it down (or even worse - up) for
others.
Instead an icon should be redrawn manually at a desired size or scaled
in vector editor with needful adjustments of elements to make them get
into the pixel grid.
Consistent color
I've already argued with Jakub about that but the thing is what we're
trying to get: a resample-like look or consistent and clear icon set.
Right now some smaller icons have shifted colors, compared to bigger
versions and it's not because of some technical limitations: same icons
can be redone without a "color loss".
Clear edges
In order to create pixel-perfect edges one must follow two basic rules:
1. stick to pixel grid and refer to rendering output when possible
2. control line width, mostly adjusting it to 1 px.
There're many more things to mention in order to have a consistent icon
theme look, but these are the major I think.
The less problems remain unclear the fewer problems the project would
face in the future.
P.S.: if any, I'm even ready to try making a tutorial, covering the
process of creating a complete icon set (all sizes + SVG) in Inkscape
(which I do personally dislike) or Illustrator.
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