[GUIDE]How to Choose the Right Icon.

[The Observer]

HOW TO:
CHOOSE THE RIGHT ICON

Well, here's another small help for those who wants to suggest some "icon change" for items, skills, and maybe heroes.

NOTE - Not everything written here is true. These are solely my opinions and might possibly offend others that suggests some icons that "I" said "is stupid and sucks". This guide is here to point out that, yes, there are alot of good icons out there and i love alot of them but there is like a 1:57 ratio in icons whereas 1 is the good one and 57 are the bad ones. My "opinions" are here to maybe help or make other "non pro" icon suggesters a little realization that not all icons that look better than the current one is good.


1. Keep within the theme: Never ever make players have a mindgame on what an icon is about(Except for Buriza, which even though i know it's a ballista, i still think it's a retractable triple edged sword). Don't give a staff a picture of an axe(like Monkey king bar) and a sword a bow(like buriza). Also, don't just go photoshop an existing icon so it turns out to be "in theme" (like razor's 3rd skill) since it'll only turn out to look bad and unappealing. And we don't want that do we?

Example:
(a retractable triple edged blade!)

NOTE: Buriza "IS" a bow from diablo. XD. But only diablo players would know that would they?

2. Imaginative Icons: This is like rule no.1 but is kind of different. In rule no.1, it says "Keep within the theme, do not use a bow to represent a sword" but in here "do not use a swarm of insects to represent oil". I mean "What? how can the two rules be different?" simple. Rule 1 states "keep within the theme" which means, "if you're suggesting a weapon, give it an icon of a weapon" while Rule 2 states "keep within the limits of the theme" which means "give an oil an icon of an oil, not a swarm of insects".

Example:
(This is a burning drop of tar)
(This is a swarm of insects, which is considered as oil)

3. Ohhh... Flashy...: Another problem. Do not overreact to the item's/skill's icon since your main point it represent it and what it can do. Do not give a sword a fiery effect if your suggestion doesn't have anything to do with fire. and do not make a skill icon the center of attention in the icon set. there is something we call "color sequence" in icon sets which leads to Rule 4.

Example:
(light reflections are usually not great cause it's not warcraft-ish and it's too flashy)

4. Color Sequence: Always remember that all icon sets have a color pattern. Just open your eyes and see that there are 4 icons. sometimes all of them have the same color or 2 icons have a different color to the other 2 icons. Do not make an icon set a 4 colored rainbow.

Example:


(A perfect harmony of icons, all colors agree to each other... Unicolor)


(Dicolor, Green+Purple)


(Tricolor, almost a rainbow, but the colors still match)


(A rainbow)

5. Warcraft-ish>photoshop-ish>cartoonish>printscreen: Ok, another common problem is that people tend to go to extremes and just get the coolest icon or photo that catches their eyes and edit it. A bad thing is that sometimes you see a great picture like this scythe then go rage on photoshop, crop, edit, and get the great part of the picture. The thing you're not understanding is 1: it's not warcraft-ish & 2: it's cartoonish. I mean, look at this, you get a set of gambling cards, and one of them is a magic: the gathering card. imagine that. It's the same with icons. you always only need to get the cards of the same type. No one knows the value of a "black lotus" in poker. And the other thing is icons that are just cropped printscreens. seriously, cut out with the jokes, printscreened icons looks bad, period. (another term for printscreen is 3-D icons)

Example:
(warcraft-ish)
(photoshop much, look, it's a simple arrow on top of some pulsating electrical-firey-fireworks mixture of colors)
(cartoonish, it looks like some drawing)
(printscreen, it's 3-d like)

ADDED INFORMATION: Just a while ago i was checking a topic and this was discussed in there...

"They don't have to be LIKE WC3 Icons! Who said it have to be? IceFrog? Well look at some icons like medusa's new icon set, puck's skills, void's backtrack, etc etc."

Well, yes. They might not be warcraft-ish, but here's a simple rule i replied to that post.

"They're not warcraft-ish, but they attained the qualifications to be used in dota which is
1: Have a better icon than the first
2: Represent the skill better than the first or if the first had already represented the skill before, go back to rule no. 1"

So you can quite literally use unwarcraft-ish icons as long as they follow these 2 rules.

6. Filler Icons: These are icons that shows the concept of your item in a low view. Never use them. Find better looking icons than the one that you first found. This is the first icon you found then I found this icon which is 10x better than the first, amiright? Always go in a search, do not be contented in seeing a girls underwear, delve deeper, there's a pot of gold under those rainbow stripes.

7. Do not use pre-existing icons: This is always a problem. Some heroes have cool looking item like icons that are a great find and some people are forced to use those cool icons for their items. So what now? Look at Necrolyte. His ulti is the icon of the scythe of vyse, does he turn people to sheep? No, he kills them. So avoid this small problems and just look for cool icons, like this icon. Too bad it's not a scythe...

Example:
(This is Guinsoo's & old Reaper's Scythe)
(This is Sadist & Infest)

8. Icon Swaps: Not that of a problem but icon swapping is wrong, not that bad actually but it's really a bad thing to do at times. I'm accustomed to like let's say axe having his "axe icon" for his ulti then suddenly you swapped it with the MKB icon. What? Axe suddenly realized his axe doesn't deal bonus damage so he changed it to a new one? An icon change would be better than an icon swap at times.

Example:
(Berserker's call, Battle Hunger, Counter Helix, And what? Demon-Breaking eye? (love that suggestion about MKB's Skill name change))

9. Passive, Active, Autocast: The only differences are the borders. A little editing will help. This isn't a big of a problem since no one cares that much about them, just look at enchantress's impetus. But if it's passive I suggest removing the shiny silver border.


(passive, active, and autocast icons)

10. PA Icons: I call them PA icons cause they're blurred. But why put this in the last? Simple, it's not that of a problem. There's alot of blurry icons in dota (Duh) which for most looks fitting. sometimes blurry icons represents fast movement, invisibility, ghostly attributes, or wind. So this isn't a problem. but still, avoid blurry icons in items since even though it's wind, ghost, or invisibility themed, where in the world have you seen a blurry axe or a blurry armor?

11. Fighting Icons: Ever see an instance where two icons looks like they're clashing at each other or is facing different directions? Well, some people doesn't like that and it's actually sometimes misleading, cause directions are a big thing, even at icons. Here, look at this pictures.

If the change in picture 1 to picture 2 didn't bother you that much then it's ok, but for some people, the change that happened was big enough to be annoying, i put it up in a simple way of showing it in lines so it would be simple. If you look at the pictures again, you'll obviously see that in the second one, the lines are clashing in directions or are pointing towards different directions. The good part here is that no one cares about this much and the bad part here is that some people views it as a bad thing. Look at these proofs of why it looks bad for some.

Legend:|/-l\| = Any symbol inside the two vertical lines are icons

|-/\-| |/\--| |--/\| = if icons are leaning towards each other, a space between them is made

|-\/-| |\/--| |--\/| = if the icons are facing at different directions, a space between them is also made

|///\| |\\\/| |---l| |lll-| = Direction change, you're looking at one direction then suddenly it changes, not that bad but still, it's kind of annoying.

|////| |\\\\| |----| |llll| = all icons face the same direction, which won't make the viewer follow a different direction when looking at it.

Not really that much of a problem really, but a single file of icons is better than a ton of icons facing in different directions. Harmony is better than Disarrangement, always remember that.

That's about it. if there are more just post them here. I made this topic because i've been noticing "these" common problems in icon suggestions.


Special thanks to:
-Icefrog for continue on improving the quality of dota for the greater good.
-Hiveworkshop for all the icons that are not yet present in dota that is used in this guide.

EDIT: added 2 more rules.
added examples.
added final rule.
added alot of stuff to finalize the guide.
changed the warcraft-ish icon example because alot of people hates it.
changed the photoshop much icon so it really looks like it's too photoshopped.
edited stuff that wyvernoid pointed out.
just added a small info and 2 new sub rules.
added the really final rule.
edited some examples.
Edited color harmony, now the examples fit the description.

[Shatterman]

firstblood!
great rule totally agree here. just learned that buriza is a crossbow.!
sticky please

[JJE92]

Overall good job, but just some minor issues I have with your icon choice of point 3:

The icon you said that it would be warcraftish, doesnt look really warcraftish imo. Its too squishy, you cant really see what it should be. Imo this rather looks un-warcraftish.

Then the point with cartoonish: Im not really sure about it, but to me most icons of warcraft look cartoonish, therefore I dont get this point.

[Zack1996]

Sticky this. Epic Guideline.

[Light-Coke]

Going to link this into my more or less crappy guideline to make it seems good.
Thanks : )

[TraVeIIeR]

pretty good guide, the order could be a bit more structured imo
like 5 following 1 and 3, 8 and 9 together

[warp0]

Yea sticky it IMO its pretty good eh. I do have to say though, Burza is a crossbow. :P

[qlq]

Agree with everyone. Needs to be stickied. Could provide great tips to many people trying to find/make a right icon.

[The Observer]

@JJE92

differentiating cartoons to anime is pretty much the same as differentiating warcraft-ish icons to cartoonish icons. and yeah, i'll add another rule (that would be final) for the warcraft-ish icon since it's kinda blurry.

(and if you can't differentiate anime to cartoons...)

This is an anime:


This is a cartoon:


EDIT: i have edited the first post, aligned it like how trav said, and posted the final rule. thanks for everyone who liked it.

[TraVeIIeR]

even better now, the rules follow each other more logically and it got more examples (colorscheme etc.)
sticky now please

[The Observer]

thanks for everyone's support.

[Nightguest]

Great job!

[virtviuz]

I was too lazy to read the whole topic (wall of text!!!) but from reading some key concepts and from reading others people's comment, I was certainly convince and is giving this two thumbs up since it is complete and would teach a lot of people a thing or two when choosing icon (also: pls include that if you saw an icon in hive, it doesn't mean that its already warcraft-ish)

[The Observer]

@virtviuz

haha, well that would be bad. some people(like you) can edit bad icons and turn them into something cool. so maybe some of them are, but this guide is here to help them understand that to themselves. and some of hive's icons are kinda neat, like this icon

i feel the need for this to be bumped.


(Double posting for bumping is against the rules. Don't do this in future!)
Cp6uja.

[TL-Flames]

Originally Posted by asam3

i feel the need for this to be bumped.

I'll do that for you.

Good stuff though, a lot of people would do well to adhere to this. Me included since i don't have an auto-cast version icon for one of my skills.

[Wyvernoid]

Originally Posted by asam3

Not that of a problem but icon swapping is stupid. i hate it. i'm accustomed to like let's say axe having his "axe icon" for his ulti then suddenly you swapped it with the MKB icon. it's stupid. an icon change would be better than an icon swap.

I would also recommend this to be sticked, if I did not see sentences like that. Saying "i hate it" (not even "I hate it") is not really an eloquent argument; not is saying "it's stupid". If you want this to be official, you have to sound official first - at least capitalize your i's and the first letter of each sentence, and write the text from an objective view (thus eliminating "it's stupid" arguments).

Also find more accurate examples. E.g. the "warcraft-ish" sample icon you used isn't really warcraft-ish. Also in the 4th section, is the skillset you provided intended as a successful one or a failure? Since in my eyes they look pretty consistent (except the 2nd being just a bit bright, but that's all), but you used "OMGWTFLIGHTBLU3Z!!1" which seems to signify your dissatisfaction with it.

But other than those, several very good points. Nice job.

[The Observer]

well i was going to use Enigma icons since they're really dark colored but that would break rule number 7 and 8. and yeah i was leaning to changing that example. and i'll edit this maybe in a few days, it's already the periodic exams.

[Drikam]

THIS SUCKS.

Because there is nothing bad in photo-shopish!

[The Observer]

Originally Posted by Drikam

THIS SUCKS.

Because there is nothing bad in photo-shopish!

sorry i changed the icon, it was bad before.

[Drikam]

Now it sucks less than it sucked before. Nothing bad in photoshop if you use it properly.