Okay, so check it, today I’m gonna walk you through this thing I was messing with called “blue icon bat.” Sounds kinda weird, right? Well, here’s how it all went down.
First off, I needed an icon. A blue one. And I wanted it to be, like, a bat silhouette. Don’t ask me why, it just popped into my head. So, I fired up my usual vector graphics editor – I ain’t gonna name names, but you probably know the one. Started with a basic circle, squashed it a bit to get that body shape, you know?
Then came the wings. This part was kinda tricky. I messed around with bezier curves, trying to get that jagged, leathery look. A lot of tweaking, a lot of undoing. Seriously, I think I spent a good hour just on the wings. The trick was to not make them too perfect, bats ain’t exactly symmetrical, are they?
Next up, the ears. Little triangles, rounded off just a tad. Played with the positioning until they looked, well, bat-like. Not too pointy, not too floppy. Just right.
After the main shape was done, I filled it with a solid blue. But it looked kinda flat. So, I added a subtle gradient, darker at the bottom, lighter at the top. Gave it a bit of depth, you know?
Then, to make it pop, I added a thin white outline. Just a pixel or two. Made the whole thing stand out against any background. Tried different shades of blue too, just to see what looked best. Ended up sticking with a nice, vibrant one.
Here’s where it got interesting. I wanted it to be an icon, right? So, I needed to resize it. And resize it. And resize it. Tested it at 16×16, 32×32, 64×64… you get the idea. Made sure it still looked decent at small sizes. Had to simplify the wing details a bit, they just turned into a blurry mess otherwise.
Saved it as a PNG, tried it out in a few different places. Looked pretty good, if I do say so myself. Not perfect, but good enough for what I needed it for. And that’s pretty much it. Blue icon bat, born from a random idea and a whole lot of fiddling around with vector graphics.
Lessons learned? Bezier curves are a pain, but they’re your friend. Gradients can make a huge difference. And always, always test your icons at different sizes.
