Icon-A-Day, Icon #10, Hard Drive.

Getting this one in just under the wire.

Published on January 17, 2005 By mormegil In Icons

Icon 10 (Hard Drive) Ok, so it's 11:10pm and if I don't get this posted to my Icon-A-Day plan will be in tatters. I wanted to do something special today since it is the 10th Icon. So I decided to do the hard drive icon. In the last few packs I have done I have done a modified hard drive with a window in it. Now it seems everyone is doing that so I figured I would do something different. I noticed that all the my External Hard Drive icons show up the same as internal drives in Windows. So I thought I would try that as our drive.
Step 1: This icon is going to be almost entirely made of Mesh fills. First thing I do is mock up the basic concept, with a few Mesh Rectangles.	Step 2: Then I start "Sculpting" the meshes. Check out the Mesh Fill 101 Video for details on this technique.	Step 3: Now I start adding the bevels that will make the drive enclosure match our folders, and My Computer icon.
Step 4: Once I have worked up the shapes to mostly what I want, I copy the side of the drive, Fill it grey, and give it brush transparency.	Step 5 Now I want the drive to have a cord. I do it quickly with a mesh fill; all state lines, and delete my original line.	Step 6: Now I give the mesh a fill of black with some gray highlights, and smooth the node of the mesh to make it look more like a cord.
Step 7: Now we add the Reflection. This is a bit harder this time because I have to do more skewing and messing with the image to make it fit properly. I also pull a quick shadow off the cord.	Finished Icon Image.	Download Finished Icon Here
Now we have a Hard Drive icon, and further established our metallic style, as well as give ourselves something to inspire the rest of the drive icons. Once more: For a better idea of how I did the mesh's in this icon check out the Mesh Fill 101 Video. Read the other Icon-A-Day Articles: Icon # 1, Icon # 2, Icon #3, Icon # 4, Icon #5, Icon # 6, Icon # 7. Icon # 8. Icon # 9. CorelDRAW for Skinners videos: Mesh Fill 101, Gloss 101. And don't forget to check for all the Icon-A-Day icons as they get made, in the Miscellaneous Icons Gallery at Wincustomize.com

Comments

horiz0n

on Jan 18, 2005

someone needs to make a case like that

-OZZY-

on Jan 18, 2005

ooooooooooh...pretty.....

very nice

c242

on Jan 18, 2005

This is the best HD icon I have ever seen, seriously.

And the whole pack begins to remind me of a modern version of D.O.T (for the dozen or so people that remember those).

Paul : Next series of tutorials : Doing a WindowBlinds skin going with these.

Corky_O

on Jan 18, 2005

Wow!

Thanks, Teach.

jvenables

on Jan 18, 2005

Paul, Stunning work mate, can I ask if you are making a series of HDD,FDD,CD Writer, DVD Writer, Network HDD & USB Memory Keys(Subtle Hint) I have been looking for a set of stunning icons for my Drives for Object Dock Plus....

mormegil

on Jan 18, 2005

jvenables, I should cover all of those in this pack.

BlueDev

on Jan 18, 2005

Excellent work Paul. Again, most impressive.

retiredmaster

on Jan 18, 2005

Oh no - where are the pictures? I see broken image icons...

Get Loose

on Jan 19, 2005

Good!

But, can i do some nice-looking icons with GIMP 1.2 ? i'm doing some internet explorer icons, but they are getting ugly

.................

mormegil

on Jan 19, 2005

You can do Nice Icons with MS Paint if you have the talent and Time. But yes I am sure you can do wonderfull stuff in Gimp. I however cant realy help you with that. As I am a Vector man. But if you look around for Photoshop totorails, you should be able to make a translation of most of the tools to Gimp, since they are more simaler in nature then Corel and gimp.

Underdog45

on Jan 19, 2005

The deal with the GIMP is that it is mainly what it says it is: a Image Manipulation Program (that's the IMP in GIMP). You can use it for creating things, but it mainly is for modifying images made elsewhere. A great free vector drawing program is CreatureHouse Expression 3.3b which can be downloaded from Microsoft (MS just bought it) and can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/ If you want to go the open source route then try Inkscape (inkscape.org) but as far as I can tell it does not have as many features as Expression.

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