Today I whipped up an icon to replace the default folder icon with in Windows XP. It happens quite often that I will show a few image files to a Brothers in art client and these files usually sit in a plain yellow windows folder on the desktop. It was about time to fix that. Plus, it was a lot more fun than the stuff I should have been doing instead.
Halfway into the creation of this thing (which really came out of the blue, no pun intended), I figured that it would be nice to suggest a blue metallic material by reflecting some color off the sides. As I was quite heavy on the alpha anyway I decided to use that to let a bit of the background shine through at just the right spots. Here is what that did:
I am quite happy with the effect, although I am not 100% percent satisfied with how the surface reflection at the bottom came out. The top part of the icon will cause some problems when I create the smaller versions but I’ll have to adjust that by hand to maintain the fine details.
Bolo says:
On November 3rd, 2006 at 20:03
nice work man !