Icon Directory

in order of surname

( ladies and gentlemen )

( rules, answers to potential questions, and a bit of discussion on how/why I make icons )

There are a lot of Lily Cole icons, but my beloved wanted a set from The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. You know why there aren't sets from that movie already? Because the lighting is really weird. So these are not the most beautiful I ever did, but maybe you need a wild redheaded street urchin with an unsettlingly-proportioned face. You never know where life's going to take you.



( and she was not a weed, she was a flower. )

Sacha Baron Cohen is unreasonably handsome, and finding pictures of him out of character is not that easy--or rather it's possible but I don't like iconning public appearances where there are award show logos in the background behind people or whatever. Just for my personal style, it's distracting. But as it happened, I needed a period PB and he looks pretty Victorian with the mustache in Hugo, so I did that. There are also some Baron-Cohen-as-himself icons, because of the thing I said before about him being incredibly handsome. Yeah.



( You see, I was injured in the war and it will never heal. Good evening, mademoiselle. )

Also from Lost Souls, Ben Chaplin. Playing against Winona Ryder he's a little funny because it's like "WHICH OF US HAS THE MOST DOE-LIKE ENORMOUS BROWN EYES" but that is not a bad thing for a PB to have on his resume. If you are like me and over a long RP career you have used allllll the other handsome dark-haired white guys in the world, perhaps Ben Chaplin is the answer!



( God does not answer this type of prayer. )

So these are from Lost Souls, which--okay, hear me out. It's a very, very silly movie shot very, very well, and at the heart of its dumbass script are some interesting ideas. Why it's called Lost Souls is a mystery since there are no lost souls in it, just a formerly-possessed woman who may or may not be crazy and a guy who may or may not be destined to become the Antichrist. I have a big ol' boner for movies about Satanic shenanigans, but I still say it's worth a look just for the ending.



( So I walk down to your house and let myself in )

Alessio Boni reminds me a bit of Huge Ackman in the face except with blue eyes and a narrower mouth, and I don't see how that can be a bad thing. He has a lot of :| expressions, yes, but on the other hand he is quite pretty. The lighting in a number of his scenes was kind of weird so whatever, inconsistent colourings going on.



( There's a full moon over Russia / St Petersburg or Leningrad / (I don't care) )

Fuck yeah Regency/Imperial period dress. I meant to just icon Alessio Boni in this because it seemed like nobody else had, but Clémence was so pretty that I wanted to do her. I mean to icon her. Yes.



( I've been frozen, now it's so hot I can barely see / been cutting them down so they can't make fun of me / been a Russian girl, I've been a Russian girl )

From Miami Medical, and a handful from random pictures I grabbed while I was using him as a PB at forgotten_gods. (Much respect to citadel_icons, whose sets were the lion's share of what I used.) Some PBs just add a ton to a character and you remain fond of them forever, even if their doctor show is kind of silly and has ridiculous lighting.



( The movement you need is on your shoulder. )

"Banners" in scare quotes because really I just picked my favourite two caps and you can do the rest to shape according to taste and journal layout. I don't know why I bother with them at all except to go LOOK AT THIS ONE and stuff. So yeah, Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen Prejean! This is on my top five list of favourite Catholic movies, probably one of the most realistic portrayals in film of how sisters actually live. So if you want a nun character who isn't an exoticised pre-Vatican II stereotype, maybe this is the PB for you! Or any social worker/therapist who works in prisons, I guess.

(Also when I first watched this I was a wee babby and didn't notice how awesome the soundtrack is. Tom Waits and Johnny Cash and Patti Smith and Suzanne Vega, holy shit.)



( Sister, I won't ask for forgiveness / my sins are all I have )

These come from here. Laura Barrett is an adorable little Toronto musician who plays pretty little songs on kalimbas. Yeah, she does have glasses and acne scars. Still cute. I know some of you out there want a believable geeky-girl PB instead of just using Felicia Day again.



( geek the girl )

These are from Black Widow (so some more '40s period stuff, his character is a Toronto streetcar conductor as I recall) and a little segment of him playing with Laura Barrett at the AGO (more on her shortly).



( I hate you all, you smell like borrowed ideas )

I thought this was an impossible task when I started out. Mary Margaret O'Hara is an elusive, eccentric creature who released one fantastic album (Miss America) and then DISAPPEARED FOREVER, rarely performing live or adding vocals or tracks to other people's albums. Her performances are accompanied by jerky abstract movements and her vocal mannerisms are sort of proto-Björk, and every so often she hosts a Martian Awareness Ball in Toronto or acts in a tiny indie film playing a crazy bag lady who wears Christmas lights on her head and I DON'T EVEN KNOW, but it's wonderful. (She's Catherine O'Hara's sister and has done a fair bit of acting in Canadian movies that nobody saw.) But I did find some stuff for icons, including some 1940s period dress ones from Black Widow.

And then there's like...this.

These range over about twenty years, so...that may be exactly what you need! Or not!



( you take a walk, I'll be your side, you take my life, I'll give you mine, and you--you give me something to cry about )

Last Cassel set from me, at least as far as I have planned. Pretty young-looking at 34 when this was made.



( I bring you precious contraband and ancient tales from distant lands )

French People Week continues at solpadeine. When I first got Netflix (it only recently reached Canada) I was all excited to see that they had this movie for streaming, because I have fond memories of watching it in the theatre way back in my last year of high school. Like a French Silence of the Lambs in atmosphere but with a way shittier plot/ending. Netflix only had the dubbed version, alas, which was all I'd been able to find in years past at the local video rental place. (Remember video rental shops?) Conclusion of boring anecdote: the movie doesn't really stand up well to a second viewing, but it is often lovely to look at, with atmospheric lighting that is sort of bad for iconning. I did it anyway. The world always needs more Jean Reno icons.



( Who said 'hell is other people'? / He said, 'I think it was the Beatles.' )

And with these I am done with Martyrs, I promise. Erika Scott plays the younger Morjana Alaoui, Jessie Pham plays younger Mylène Jampanoï, and there were some huggykissy shots that I couldn't split up into Morjana sets or Mylène sets. So yeah.

Warnings for blood on the adults and scared unhappy children. :( I did not do icons of Jessie Pham from the earliest part of the movie where she's really banged up because I just couldn't do it--the point for me of iconning Martyrs was that I know people play in horror games and Bad Things happen sometimes and I wanted images for that, but it's just such a rough movie.



( This lady's shaped like the Tour de France, / A thousand wheels besieged the city of romance )

Well, let me explain. There's not a lot of variety of expressions in these, I'll admit, but I also want to point out that other Mylène sets out there seem to be from everything but this movie. Warning again: these come from Martyrs, which is a harrowing movie, and these icons feature lots and lots of blood.



( Est-ce que maintenant...déja? )

Morjana looks like she could play a sister to Eliza Dushku, to me, and perhaps right now you want to play a Slayer or a zombie-killer or anyone else who ends up covered in blood a lot, BUT THERE ARE NO ICONS. I've actually had a hard time finding PBs who were unshiny and unglam enough to be realistic as post-apocalyptic-game characters, but I think Morjana and Mylène (coming up next) could work well.

Warning: these come from Martyrs, which is a harrowing movie, and these icons feature lots and lots of blood. And a handful of happy-shiny photoshoot icons at the end!



( Est-ce que maintenant...déja? )

You read that right. Because sometimes you need a terrifying violent yet kinda-sad punkass thug character. (I added some more to the Black Swan set too.) I'm trying to be better about making bigger sets because in my little RP biosphere I don't really do threading and was not aware until recently just how tired you can get of a small set of icons/expressions. I feel for you guys! I want to help!

Data points: Cassel was 29 when this was made, in 1995. I think he could pass for younger given the hard-bitten existence this character looks like he leads.



( When I take the prisoners swimming, they have the time of their lives...every breath death-defying )

Joel Plaskett is a pretty dude, and in person he's even prettier than these photos suggest. Wholesome happy-guy pretty, big charming smile. Photographers, however, seem to all think he should do Blue Steel(tm) when they take his picture, and poor naive Joel just does it for them.



( I'd rather be deadly than dead any day )

Tobias Menzies makes a lot of snarky faces. And he has big crooked teeth, which always makes me feel empowered as an orthodontically-challenged person. I'm sure the utility of these will be limited, but my rallying cry is "so what".



( when I hear the word 'security', I reach for my shotgun )