Flashback Saturday - White Collar Pilot icons

[sandy79]

Another batch of icons, this time for Round 2 of episodes20in20. My claim was the pilot episode of White Collar. Hope you like them!

10 THEMES
first scene	hair	b&w on color	far away	fake background
shadows	weapon	fave character	muted	one word
5 CATEGORY / SAME PICTURE
01	02	03	04	05
5 ARTIST'S CHOICE - It Takes Two...
01	02	03	04	05

weapon: since we only have the SWAT team towards the end with guns (and one of Hagen's goons), I decided to label Neal's brilliant mind as a weapon of some kind.

Category - One Picture: I had some trouble to find the right pic for these five icons. Finally, I settled with this, since Neal is somewhat relaxed in that scene (not to mention the glee on his face when Peter hands him his badge)

Artist's Choice: From the beginning, we saw so many wonderful teams on the show. I know that even in the pilot episode, there are far more than just that five, but they are like the best of the best (at least to me)


Picture credits:
screencaps by kanarek13, screencappednet and midnight_road


As always, comments are more than appreciated, as well as hints for making them better.
If you take them, please give credit where it's due.

Comments

[littlemissnovel.livejournal.com]

I love your hair, weapon (unique choice!), one word, same category 2 and 3, and ac1 and 4! Great set! :)

[ciaimpala.livejournal.com]

Great job! I especially like hair, far away, one word, and cat3 and 4 :)

[tinny]

Good job! I like First Scene and Hair, but I'm especially impressed by the creativity in your category set. If you can't change the cap, change the colors. :D I like them all, but especially #3, the vintage coloring gives it such a melancholy air, and #4, very artistic.

eta: because you explicitly asked for hints to improve: it's no coincidence that I picked the icons from your set that have a lot of contrast. I suggest adding light and contrast to your icons.

If you're working with Photoshop, try adding a Gradient Map Adjustment Layer (with a simple black-white gradient) and set it to screen to lighten the image. Set it to Soft Light to increase contrast. Play with the opacity of the adjustment layer until you like how it looks.

You can get a similar effect with a Levels Adjustment layer, just slide the middle (grey) arrow and/or the right (white) arrow to the left to lighten up the image. If you don't have Photoshop, simply use the Levels tool.

As a rule of thumb, you want to end up with an icon whose focus (i.e. usually the person) is not darker than the rest of it.

If you have any questions because I wasn't clear in my descriptions, feel free to ask, I'm always happy to help. (I'm off for the next week though so it may take a while.)

[mylengrave.livejournal.com]

nice icons!
cat 3 is my fav

[neonspider]

Nice job! I'm really digging the pop art look on cat1 and cat4. 'Hair' looks really good too, love the coloring and the perfect profile shot! I also like the simple composition and the pink background on 'fake bg', and the vibrant blues on ac1 are lovely as well :)

[bad-numbers.livejournal.com]

yum.. matt bomer. *stares at the screen for a good 5 minutes* that man is beyond beautiful - i've personally never seen this show, but anything with matt in it has to be a home run :) i really love the variety of your category set, they all look unbelievably different, xo.

[kanarek13]

*happy sigh* brings back memories :D Overdose of fluffy hair :P