Time to hone your "but *I* like yours!" skills, guys

[taotrooper]

icon love meme

I had to restrain so badly and not to put humor samples.

I feel a bit strange by looking at those iconmakers and then looking at my icons. Mine look like someone puked a bag of skittles on them in comparison. Probably people don't use that kind of colors and textures anymore. I have no idea what kind of techniques and trends others use anymore, as I've been off the "scene" for such a long time. I wouldn't know how the fuck they get those smokey or pastel colors. My resources are years old and I don't know which ones to get.

So out of the loop. I like making icons, but at the same time I feel like I'm stuck in ancient times and no one remotely cool that isn't in my flist would like mine. There's also the fact I haven't learned to color manga so I've been wussing out on that area. This is why I want to make more FMA icons but I haven't dared. I wouldn't know how to put shadows and lights. Could I get away with simple-colored manga stuff? Or should I not even bother?

Oh, and I don't want to do icons of CLAMP lately. Which probably disappoints those watching mine and hamsterfactor's icondork because of that fandom. At the very least, I should tackle FMA as I still like it tons and maybe no one will icon the manga ever again with the new anime.

Funny enough, I've felt the same about fanfiction. Instead of writing for my older fandoms -except Okami, but there's no solid fandom for it-, I want to try it with my newest ones. But I feel so intimidated! Ace Attorney don't seem to care about genfic, and I haven't poked TotA but I doubt there's a lot of that either. And I have plotbunnies for the pairings I want to write about, sure, but I've never written for non-canon pairings and I wouldn't know how to do anything that isn't OOC or silly humor. I feel awkward. A-any tips for that, by the way?

(Oh, and I feel like a hypocrite because I once said I don't like to use fanart for icons, yet I want to make them now -with doujinshi, however; I wouldn't feel Kosher in using online website art, especially Japanese. But only with game icons. Might be the lack of canon expressions to use in RP what warmed me up to them.)

tl;dr: I've been an awkward turtle when it comes to participate in fandom the past few months, mostly because I'm afraid people would think I suck balls.