Avalon

This is the first time I have made a vector sig. It's not as easy as I thought. Notice from mayank: Edited as reported

Very nice work as usual Saint_Michael. Nice mix of colors and brushing. Although, it looks like for Yoda's mouth has got a serious case of 'grunge'. Looks kinda odd.

Please read the rules regarding how to request a sig and/or avatar. It is pinned at the top this forum here.

The site has a nice clean look to it, looks professional, like a business site. The sections appear well laid out and informative, even if I can't read the language. Navigation is simple and clear, even if I can't read the language. :)Here's my suggestions for improvementThe Piper Warrior III picture used for the background image is pretty much a waste unless you are going to repeat the image. With just the 1 image it is often covered by other graphics and therefore pointless.The History section has too much text on one page for my liking. With a large amount of text, visitors might tire of reading and therefore your message will be lost. It might be better to break the history up into sections, perhaps make sections that cover a range of years so you have multiple pages to the section but with less text on each page rather than 1 large block of text.In the gallery it would have been nice to see captions under the images that tell you what plane it is and how big the image is.On the Fizika page, (not sure what that means, it looks like a description of how aeroplanes work), some of the images have English text and some don't. Use of a uniform language would be better if possible, even if you have to change the text on the images yourself. Looking at those images, I think it would been better if you cleaned up the text on them, some of it is very hard to read.Load speed of the pages was quite good for me, even if I am on a dial-up connection. Perhaps the Internet was a bit congested when others were looking or you have changed things since they made their comments.Overall, I'd say a nicely laid out site that appears to be very informative, well done. 8/10

Can you provide more information about the banner you want, this will save a lot of rework by the person that makes it for you. The sort of information we need is detailed here, a banner request is similar to a sig request. This will save both you and the graphics designer valuable time.

The servers were temporarily offline, I'm not sure why, but as they are now back online it must have only been a minor problem. As with any web host, even paid ones, this happens from time to time, I think it's anything to worry about in the long term.

As you have probably found out by now it was only temporary glitch. This happens to all hosts from time to time, even ones you pay for, so it's nothing to worry about. I must say, Xisto has been the most reliable host I have ever used and I have used a few paid ones along the way. For a free host their uptime is very, very good! Most free hosts are very unreliable.

Ooooer... this looks like stiff competition! Very, very nice work! Only thing missing on the last 3 are borders. You can leave them off in the future too if you like, it would be the only way I could beat you in a SOTW!

If you look closely you can see different levels of green, brown, red and yellow. With selective masking each color only shows in certain areas. It was all about playing with color balance layers, masks and grunge brushes. It's only a little sig, but it's got a lot of work in it, obviously it doesn't show. More practice required it seems.

The only filter used was a 'melt' filter on the text. The brushing is all grunge (8 layers), with 8 different color balance layers. Maybe using filters might have been easier?

Thanks guys, both of those are valid suggestions but not really what I was looking for. If I turn off images in Firefox, I can only view them in the same window/tab, so it means I can't see the actual post any more. In addition, that doesn't seem to work very well when the person is using a sig rotater script to display their sig.As for turning off sigs, well the point is, I do want to see them. I just wish the file sizes were a little more reasonable. Perhaps sig creators need to take this into consideration when designing sigs, myself included. In the mean time, I guess I will just have to turn off sigs and settle for seeing the graphics in the show off section.

I am one of those poor souls that connect to the internet via a dial-up connection. The unfortunate thing is I also like graphics. Therefore, I am quite used to waiting for pages to load that have a lot of graphics on them. However, sometimes the size of the graphic files are just over the top, I don't mean the physical size of the image, I mean the time it takes to download. i.e. the file sie.Some of the graphic sizes are just excessive. For example, in one persons sig there was a single graphic that was 687Kb, not that it was phsically large, but it was an animated graphic. On a dial-up connection, a graphic that size takes around 3 minutes to download, let alone worrying about the rest of the images on the page. That's just plain ridiculous! Being Xisto is supported by advertising in the forums, I have no problem the graphics associated with them, but I do wish there was a limit on the file size of graphics used in sigs. I know most of the graphics used in sigs are actually hosted elsewhere so it might be a little difficult to control, but if there is a way, I wish it could be done.I know I can turn off viewing sigs in my Forum Control Panel to speed things up, but the truth is I like looking at some of the magnificent sigs that have been created here. I have made a few myself, so I am a bit of a fan of them. I just wish the size of some them was a little more sensible, Perhaps a 100Kb limit? I think that would still allow the vast majority of sigs out there.P.S. The other option of me upgrading to a broadband connection or better is not financially possible unfortunately.

Here's a bit of an experiment for me, multi-colored grunge and a melting text effect. It's only a small sig, let me know what you think.

These both are very nice backgrounds, but that's all they are. A sig normally has a render and/or your name on it. They almost look like the were downloaded from a style gallery somehwere, being they have name of the type of background they are.

The brushing on the first was better than the last, the render on the last is very poor quality. Here are some links to help you learn some of the techniques, look for additional help in the Tutorials section. Look in the Resources section for links to renders. Border Tutorial Pixel Stretch Tutorial Complete Sig Tutorial Hope that helps.

OUCH! Oh well, rules are rules I guess.

Here's my entry, I don't think tech is one of my strong points. It's supposed to be a high tech handheld portable viewer with a little overlaying data screen that drops down from the top left corner.

Why was Hmmz's entry removed from the voting?

Clearly you read the pinned topic on how to request a sig. However, you forgot to take note of one very important aspect... n00b So I guess you know what that means now...ask again in a week if you have 10 posts.

The same question can be asked of just about all the renders used in sigs here. Usually unless we have explicit permission from the artist that created the render we are in breach of their copyright.

Here's a new sig just because I was bored. I love the way the render is evil and cool at the same time. All comments appreciated as usual.

It appears people seem to think quoting another person's post adds to their post and increases their credit more. Correct me if I'm worng, but I don't think quoted text is used in the calculation of hosting credits for a given post. Can someone confirm this? I think this is similar for code blocks and the like. I believe this to be one of the reasons mods are strict on using "quote boxes" when you are quoting from another source, be that another post or text from a web site.

I too work for a living and also have 3 children, yet I easily manage to post enough to keep my account active without a problem. You have seen comments from others about how much you have to post on some other hosts that use forum posting as a means to keep accounts active. I think the level of posting that is required here at Xisto is very reasonable, especially considering the level of hosting services provided. I really don't understand what all the fuss is about.

Excuse my stupidity for not using a render from a game in my previous entry. This render is a Tekken character.

The biggest problem I can see with your sig is the fact that you converted it to GIF format. This has caused serious dithering of the colors of the render tand the drop shadow. At least I think that is what it is, although it could be scan lines as SM has suggested.