Let me talk a little about :miyako:

[TexasDice]

The constant feeding of my ungrounded narcissism aside, I am really flattered that so many of you guys seem to like so much. I've been complimented about this emoticon in private and publicly, so I thought it might be a good idea to show you guys how it came into being. 

First things first, I am not a professional photoshop artist/graphics guy. The program I'm using is called Paint.net, is freeware and I probably couldn't even use photoshop if someone gave it to me. The only reason my emoticons don't look like shit, is because scaling down makes everything look better.

 

Now that this is out of the way, I would like to shed some light on the inspiration behind

As almost everyone might know, the character depicted in is Shiina Miyako, from the Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai! Series. The emoticon however, was not taken from the Visual Novel, but from it's lesser known Anime Adaptation. I will be upfront here; the Majikoi anime is pretty bad and shouldn't be seen anything more than fanservice, since the art quality as well as the fact that they gathered up all the original voices are the only things worth watching it for.

The origin of however, is from the sole episode which I actually love; Episode 3. The opening gag of that episode was hilariously funny and made me fall out of my chair. If someone out there has read Majikoi, I highly recommend watching Episode 3 of the anime. 

Anyway, the scene I captured to make the emoticon happens during dinner or breakfast or some other kind of meal, I don't remember. The character of Miyako tries to put spicy sauce on Yamato's (the protagonist) food, explaining it's deadly nature in detail.

During that scene, the artstyle changes from into the "super deformed"-style, not uncommon for anime humour. I actually wanted to make this emoticon for quite a while, but was too lazy up until the contest. (´・ω・`)

 

Enough going off-topic, here is a snapshot to simply show it to y'all:

 

So, how did I do it?

First things first, I cropped Miyako's body out of the scene. Despite fully knowing that I would cut out the entire body later on, I made sure to get the entire thing anyway, just in case someone accuses me of cutting corners.

Next, I did the same thing I did with all of my other emoticons ( should be the most famous one) ; I cut out the mouth and made it bigger. Most of the time, facial expressions get lost whenever the picture gets scaled down to the extremely limiting 30x30 resolution and making the mouth bigger counteracts that severely.

 

Finally, I started to crop the image. I actually redo this step the most and make an empty post with the uploaded picture on Fuwa, to compare how the face aligns next to the old Fuwa emoticons. I think I ended up making cut deeper a total of 16 times. Here are the examples that were kept for testing and comparing:    

 

So why did I explain all of this stuff that everyone in possession of usuable hands could google? To teach my lesson; I guess.

Whether or not it was the reason of it's acceptance, the thing I had in mind from the very beginning, was that I wanted  to blend in with the other Fuwa Emoticons. No matter how great your emoticon is, it shouldn't stick out like a sore thumb or people will think of it as alien and not use it. Especially if it's a new emoticon.

 

That would be all. Everyone can dislike, unfollow and report this topic as spam. 

[Eclipsed]

Amen, it's honestly your best work since your Eye Cyclops giveaway entry, keep up the goodness 

[mitchhamilton]

Thumbs down.

[Mugi]

Still waiting for a Mayucchi emote..

[Flutterz]

It's a great emoticon in and of itself, but hair color aside it barely looks like Miyako if you haven't seen the image it's cropped from.

[Nashetania]

[Dergonu]

3 hours ago, Nashetania said:

Damnit, I was going to do that!

Oh well...

[CeruleanGamer]

 

Your artistic skills never cease to amaze me.  

[TexasDice]

Thanks everyone 

[Funyarinpa]

great stuff  

[Flutterz]

Would just like to give credit where credit is due, the first time I made the :­sacchan: emote it kinda sucked and I couldn't put my finger on why, then I remembered this thread and was able to fix it. Making mouths bigger OP

Before: 

After:

[Tyrael]

Just popped in to say that Majikoi doesn't have an anime adapation
 

nope

 

it doesn't

[Fred the Barber]

Missed this thread the first time around... incidentally, the SD version looks so different that I didn't even realize : miyako : was Majikoi's Miyako. I think at one point I even briefly googled around trying to figure out what other Miyako it could possibly be. Naturally, admitting my ignorance publicly was not an option.