Avalon

So is that 120 wide x 350 high? Not the usual orientation of our sigs. Just checking.

I assume you mean an hour a day. Yes, you are right. It is becoming increasingly difficult to think of unique things to post about. I find it much easier to use the "View New Posts" link and then contribute to other people's posts. There are so many new posts every day, it's not hard to find one that you have some thoughts about, like this one for example. Most of us are busy to some extent, it's a matter of balancing your time between what you consider to be important. If you think your hosting account here is important enough to you, you will find the time to post. Once you have your credits up to a reasonable level, it's not hard to keep it at that level, you only need to post enough to earn one credit a day. The trick is be consistent, then you won't have a problem. EDIT: This short post just earned me 1.04 credits and took about 5 minutes, I don't need to post any more today if I don't want to.

Here you go Defiant, enjoy. P.S. Thanks to Saint Michael for cutting the render.

I'm not particularly happy with this image, vector is not my favourite style. Still, gotta at least try, never learn otherwise. I have tried to convey what GFXTrap is all about, what it means to me anyways.

Good point AD, it's a real shame. They are really good sigs, it would have been nice to see more like them.

Bah! Who needs a PSD? I did it with very careful use of the clone brush. It was quite easy because the text was on a plain background. I'm not in the habit of using other people's sigs, but it seemed the best way to explain what I meant. So do you think that type of embossing works?

Thanks BH & tuyetmy. The animation is made up of 20 frames so each frame shows the symbol only moving 18 degrees. The more frames used the smoother the animation and the larger the file size. It's a bit of a trade off between smoothness of the animation and file size. I had no idea what the symbol said. I tried to find the symbol that matched the tattoo on the head of the render, it was the closest I could find. I used Xara3D to make the rotating symbol and then inserted it into the sig frame by frame.

Very nice work Silver. What other forum have you come from? It's obvious you're no newbie at this, these are quality sigs. :lol:Anyway, here's my thoughts.#1 Great work for no render being used. Possibly could have made the text a little larger seeing as there is no render to fill the space.#2 Very similar background to #1, I think the render should have been larger or more prominent, again to fill the space a bit.#3 Really nice vector sig, but I think the scan lines killed it a bit. They took away the sharpness of the vectors.#4 Excellent sig, can't suggest any improvements with this one.#5 Awesome blending on this sig. The pixelating on the text unfortunately lets it down. #6 Another excellent sig, I would have gone without the scan lines though, they look out of place on the sig.Look forward to seeing more great work like this from you.

When I said 'emboss', this is the sort of thing I had in mind. It's a 1 pixel white drop shadow on black text. The idea was to make it look like the text is 'embossed' into the wall. I think it works quite well. You might want to choose a cleaner font, but you get the idea. I'm not trying to rip off your sig, just using it to explain what I meant.

I like the second one better, the first one looks too 'washed out' for my liking. As for the text, what giving it an embossed look and putting it in the non textured areas of the wall behind them? I also think the renders look a little off-center, it looks to me that they need to go a little to the left.Nice work, as usual mate.

Yes, cPanel's method is much simpler, but like I pointed out in my first post... This is the whole point of the alternative method.

A very good question! In my opinion all a splash page does is delay the visitor from getting to the content. Considering most web sites are all about content, a splash page contradicts with what it is you want a visitor to do, browse the site, it just throws up a hurdle for them. I personally don't like them, here's an article from http://webdesign.about.com/od/navigation/a/aa020303a.htm that discusses the pros and cons of splash pages to help you make your own decision. "Since many splash pages only include a flash animation there isn't a lot for a search engine to optimize on." The same could be said for a splash page that contains only a graphic. If you really must have a splash page, I agree with truefusion, this one looks too busy and I'm not a fan of red backgrounds. Even though it is busy, it doesn't really tell the visitor much about the site, so what purpose does it serve? In fact, what is the purpose of any splash page? To tell a visitor about the site? If you let them get straight to the content, they would find that out anyway. Please don't be disheartened by our comments, you wanted our opinions.

C'mon folks, we need more people to vote here!

I agree with Saint Michael, these are good for a first attempt. The thing that struck most about them is their monochomatic look, i.e. not very colorful. Mike has done you a huge service by directing to these tutorial sites. It's easy to say what it is you don't like about a sig, but to point a learner to places where they can improve their skills is terrific. Well done Mike!

I used to frequent chat rooms quite a lot. I am 46 years old and funny enough I used to get quite a few people, (presumably females) wanting to meet me in person for all sorts of reasons. I never misrepresented who I am or my age, but still I used to get these approaches. It's not always the "sick old man" that starts things, but I'd think I have to agree that most times it is. I never followed through with any of these advances and would never even consider doing so, I am happily married. My wife used be concerned that I'd go to the chat rooms and I think she thought I might be having an "online affair", which as I stated above, I was not. In the end I stop going to the chat rooms because I was sick of the advances and just plain idiots in there, but more than that I wanted to my wife's mind at rest.On another note, in the chat rooms I spoke to quite a few people that progressed to real life relationships from their online relationships, some even married. I have to say, most of them failed quite quickly. I don't think you can truly know a person from talking to them online.Being the age I am, I was into the "CB radio" thing when I was young. This was very similar to the chat rooms of today, with the same type of outcomes. People would talk to each other on CB, (age and sex was harder to hide of course) then meet in real life and be very disappointed. It seems things don't change much over time.

There are a lot of graphic designers here, why not put the creation of the new logo/s in a competition of some sort? Opaque could judge the winner.

If you want a spellchecker for use with the forums, I highly recommend the Google Toolbar. I couldn't live without it. The good thing about it is it is functional in any online form that you type text in. That means you can use it on ANY forum, not just here. The other plus is you have the Google search engine at your fingertips. I know if you are a Firefox user you already have easy access to Google, but you can now have a spellchecker too! Here's the link to download the Google Toolbar in case you want to install it. https://www.google.com/intl/de/toolbar/ie/index.html

I don't think it's right that contributors should be voting, but hey, someone has to vote I guess. Saint Michael - The animation idea is good, but the graphic has no text for too long. It's more like a blank userbar than one for Xisto. I think the blue text should stay visible for longer. Johnny - Sorry, it just looks too plain and the smaller text should be further to the left to balance the bar out. Razor - Looks very professional, it tells you about the forums and the free hosting. Not bad with such a small graphic to work with. Not sure if it's the scan lines doing it, but the text looks a little pixelated in places. Even so, it gets my vote. Avalon: 1 S_M: 0 Razor: 2 Johnny: 0

While the image itself is very good, I think the content is not really appropriate. A person looking at that splash page would think the site is all about Tekken, (I think that's where those characters are from) when of course it's about a lot more than that. I think it needs something more generically related to graphics, perhaps partial screen shots of various graphics programs, not just Photoshop. If characters are to be used, make them from a wide range of games. Perhaps cover things like SOTW, Tournaments, Battles, Tutorials, Resources and Requests. To me, these are the things GFXTrap is about.By the way, with SOTW #27 being about splash pages, is GFXTrap considered as a Xisto corporation site? If so, I might make that my subject for the SOTW, seeing as I am thinking about it already.

A funny thing happened the other day with one of these sites that tried to disable the right click. This particular site, (can't remember the address) opened a javascript alert window saying I didn't have permission to access the images, however it also opened the right-click menu allowing me to save the images. I don't know if this was because I am using Firefox or there is something wrong with their script. Anyone else had this happen?

If this is the case, just imagine how much money Google is making from Adsense! I have no idea what the ratio is for what they charge advertisers to what they pay publishers, but you can bet the Google people are sitting on a gold mine with Adsense. My guess is they charge advertisers per impression whereas publishers are paid per click. Even if your click ratio is really good at 10% and you earn $2,000 in a day, Google would have made a profit of $18,000 for the day from your ads. This is of course assuming Google pay you the same amount per click as what they charge the advertiser per impression. Given the coverage Google can offer an advertiser, that charge would seem reasonable.

Click on the link I posted and you will see. Basically it's just the GIF image posted as part of the image description.

I couldn't figure out whether to use the glow on the text or not. I thought it needed something to lift the text out of the background. Perhaps using dropshadow like truefusion suggested might have worked better. Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks SM, I must say I am a little surprised to have won this. I can see a lot of work went in to your sig and when I first saw it, I thought "uh oh, I'm sunk now". Perhaps it's because you used an unconventional render of Wolverine, (from weapon-x I believe?) and I went the more classic approach which most people seemed to be able to identify with. Thanks for the battle and I look forward to going head-to-head with you again soon.

This is the first popout sig I have done for a while. Be careful that big foot doesn't poke you in the eye! R&C please.