Beginning Iconmaker

[Trill]

So, I needed an icon like Cleric's Holy Lance from Warcraft 1, but didn't feel like requesting, and decided to give it a try and make one myself. And I think it turned out good, for the first freehand icon I ever made, but I need C&C from impartial and grumpy people, if I'm to improve.
Here's what I tried to replicate
Here's what I made
And here's what I made right afterwards to test that fire technique
(sword is from WC3 beta, I just added fire)

Thoughts and criticism?

 

[Naze]

Your technique to add fire is not bad tbh. Can turn out really useful depending on what you want, and the sword from wc3 beta proves it (however you drew fire over the icon borders - the bottom and the left borders - which should be avoided, hehe). About thoughts and criticism, I don't have much, but you can always take a look at some Blizzard icons to see how they draw their fire and try to imitate, since you based your technique on trying to replicate a very pixelated icon from wc1 =P

 

[Trill]

Well, Button Manager would put borders on top of that fire, so it won't look bad.

Thanks for encouragement. Gotta try making more icons now, it seems easier that I thought.

 

[Gyrosphinx]

You know, I think you did a great job with these! Keep it up!

 

[Trill]

So, it's me again, and I made some more icons for practice!
Now these really have some serious problem, I can see that, but I can't put a finger on them. I have no idea what to fix to make them stop feeling "off", so I'll need some serious C&C here.
I can upload .pdn files if that'll help.

By the way, if you guess the game I'm remaking icons from, I'll give you +rep, hehe.

EDIT: Hm, looking at these from another computer with probably different color balance I see that colors are way off from what I actually drew... or maybe its Hive screwing things up. Just keep in mind that if it looks WAY oversaturated and cartoony, it should be tad less saturated.

 

[Lordlycan]

Dota 2 Workshop - Character Art Guide - Dota 2 - Workshop - Knowledge Base - Steam Support

start there, your overal value patterns are not always on point (diffuse) and the use of complementing colors is what make them feel wanting i'd say. You're tending to use a lot of black, While blizzard themselves tended to stay away from that color as much as possible except when the character design really wants it. But even then they tend to favor darker grey/blue/purples. A lot of the rules for model design is also an integral part of overall design.


Your magic missile icon shows the best promise but you need to put a little bit more emphasis on it's greens.

 

[Saelendious]

Wew there's some cool potential