Seeing Vulpix's thread made me want to make blends for the first time in over a decade. They are actually insanely fun to make.






and a few 100x100 LJ icons >:3

Oooh, what exactly are blends? These look soo amazing, they remind me of the vibes some weirdcore/surrealism artists would go for and I dig it! :V

I don't know exactly what a "blend" is myself but dang they look awesome! :O

Aldo I love the icons. I still enjoy making those things now and again.

CooperationIsKey wrote: ↑Mon Oct 09, 2023 5:05 am I don't know exactly what a "blend" is myself but dang they look awesome! :O

Aldo I love the icons. I still enjoy making those things now and again.

NinAcTi0N wrote: ↑Mon Oct 09, 2023 4:32 am Oooh, what exactly are blends? These look soo amazing, they remind me of the vibes some weirdcore/surrealism artists would go for and I dig it! :V

Thank you! Blends were a type of graphic design that were popular in the 2000's to early 2010's. They were basically digital collages with characters or celebrities made in photoshop or any other photo editor. They were all over DA, livejournal, blogger, xanga, neopets and basically any artsy space back then. There are tons of old groups on deivantart that are basically archives of these things. Here is an example and another example

A lot of people used these for early layout headers and forum signatures. Usually with anime characters or celebrities
Here is some examples

Not gonna lie, I just remembered this post and thought about doing a similar collage technique with a few of my favorite OCs :V Not just that but this retro nostalgia is taking over me all over again lol

I’m still curious though… would you use a specific program to get the dithering right, or would it be done within Paint Tool SAI (or whichever art software you used)? I love dithered textures :’]

NinAcTi0N wrote: ↑Fri Dec 08, 2023 1:05 pm Not gonna lie, I just remembered this post and thought about doing a similar collage technique with a few of my favorite OCs :V Not just that but this retro nostalgia is taking over me all over again lol

I’m still curious though… would you use a specific program to get the dithering right, or would it be done within Paint Tool SAI (or whichever art software you used)? I love dithered textures :’]

AHH sorry for the late reply Nina, I used photoshop but honestly any art/graphics image editing program can make it work! I did it with cranking up sharpness and using a posterization effect though!

AAA these make me so insanely nostalgic for old Neopets "mall" usershops + forum art... I think there was a huge storefront called SunnyNeo or something? I kind of want to make these for some character shrines... Fanlistings also all have great examples of these! I like this one for Cure Happy!

yes!! i know exactly what you're talking about lol the mega malls. that cure happy fl is a 10/10 layout omg!! i love the fanlisting sites cus they always have such creative and unique blends on their layouts

Speaking of blends.... I'm actually planning something special with them, and I'm super duper excited ^V^ ... I'm still having computer troubles with my PC (TMI?), but I'm working on making some old school blend graphics for some more fun web stuff! For one blend I'm planning on doing, I have very limited graphics to access, but I think that the restriction will be a fun challenge! Urghhh I can't wait to share!!!

That sounds so fun!! I can't wait to see them! Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions <3