Drawing Custom Icons Question

I looked at some of blizzards icons and they have a ton of detail in them. Did they draw the images in photoshop (or similar program) in a larger size and shrink them down? i'm attempting to draw my own, and whenever i try this, the image gets all fuzzy and bad-looking. i've also tried drawing at 64 x 64 pixels (which is about the size the icon would appear in the game), and have found that this method really won't give you the kind of detail necessary to make the drawing look really good. I'm thinking they probably drew them by hand, scanned them in, and computer colored them, but that still leaves the problem of getting crisp lines and so forth.

What technique do you guys use to make your icons? or, better yet, do any of you know how blizzard makes their icons?

any help is appreciated.

years of experiance and a wacom tablett

look at the link at my signature, its my freehanded icons...
well i drew them at 64x64...
always try make an icon simple as possible at the start, by drawing lines, the outline of your object... then fill it with color with paint bucket... add other details and then start burning... smudge lines that stands out too much, then dodge to give parts 'shiny' effect...
remember not to CnP!!! :)

I draw mine in 256x256, and when they're finished i resize them to 64x64.

I'm certain most of the blizz icons are handdrawn, although I'm not sure if they're drawn on paper or with a tablet. And yes, they were just as certainly made in a higher resolution.

o_O no wonder alot of details are lost... i really suggesting drawing them in 64x64, that way you can know how it looks like exactly...(zoom in of course)

ya, I always used to do mine at 64X64. The numbers on my clock were much easier to do when working on the pixel level. Heh, its like drawing on my graphing calculator

please note that you must remember to add a black 1 pixel line for each side of the image, to seperate the image from the border... look at blizzard's icons, they are like that(cept for the wood branch thing)...
or look at my icons, they are seperated from the silver border

I used to do all of my icons at 64x64, drawn completely on the computer with the mouse, but the last couple I've done at 128x128 and shrunk back down (Porky spell icons and DotM icon).

Just block in the colours first (like skin colour, then hair colour, etc), then start rendering at the 1 - 2 pixel level. Keep in mind Blizzard likes dark outlines around everything for both style and clarity, and their icon backgrounds are almost always black.

I always keep the icon open in another window in Photoshop at 64x64 size (so 50% zoom if you're working double size) to see how it looks at the proper size. You can do this in Photoshop 7 by going to the menu Window -> Documents -> New Window.

You can do it, npnp! =)