Avalon

UPDATE!!! There will now be prizes awarded for this SOTW!!! 1st Place: 10 credits 2nd Place: 7 credits 3rd Place: 5 credits

Yes, this was edited the day before itsmyard posted his entry. Due to questions asked about the criteria for the SOTW, I had to make a slight change.

Well gee, how about that, your site is #1. Now let's see what happens when I search for the term "mud mall". Look at that, my site is #1! I wonder if the fact that it happens to be my domain name makes any difference? Let's try another one, how about "Trap 17"? Well, well, Xisto.com is top of the list, imagine that. Typing your domain name in as the search criteria is hardly proof that you have some magical system. When I search for the term "fantasy pictures", (because that is what my site is all about and what people will search for) my site comes in at #9. That's not bad considering I have done nothing but let spiders visit my site. No magical secret and no money spent on site promotion. Oh, by the way, searching for "link:http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/; still doesn't give any results. When I type "link:http://www.mudmall.com/; I get "Results 1 - 4 of about 70 linking to http://www.mudmall.com/; It's been over a week now and still no link results for your site. How do you explain that if your site is #1?

Sig sizes usually range from about 200 to 400 wide and 100 to 200 high. There is no set size as such, I usually make mine about 350 x 150.

Why is this topic still here if it is against the TOS and can cause damage to a member's system?

In my opinion it is rude to advertise one forum on another forum. Guess what, so does this forum! Here's the number of posts and members for Xisto at the time of this post If that is not the sure sign of a forum that rocks, then I don't know what is. Why would we go anywhere else?

The guidelines are there to try and lessen some of the confusion I had with the last SOTW that had a broad theme like this. As for the credits, I don't know what arrangement SM had for the credits so I thought I best not any award any until I know how it works. In the future I would like to be able to award credits, so watch this space. While I'm at it, here's my entry.

Version 1 is certainly the better one for mine. Only thing I can suggest is do something with the black area on the left and made the 'gfxgamerz.com' text stand out, perhaps a 1 pixel stroke might work. 8/10

Looking the sigs you have with text on them I would say there is not a lot wrong with your text. All that aside, if you think your text is not good, how do expect to improve if you don't keep trying? To improve at anything requires practice, not doing it will not improve things. On to the sigs themselves. #1 Looks good except for the black vertical lines, I think they overpower the render too much. The text could do with some work, perhaps have the drop shadow a little closer. 7/10 #2 Excellent image, great lighting and coloring. I like the text position, it just needs to be bigger so it can be read. 8/10 #3 I'm a little confused by this one, is it 2 or 3 renders in there. The glow effect is a little too strong for my liking, it overpowers the face of the left render. 7/10

The second version is much better, it adds atmosphere and depth to the sig. I think it would have been better if you stuck with the original font though, it suited the render more. Nice work! 8/10 from me.

Mike, it is sad that you will not be here as often. We need and admire your skills as a designer, even if some people don't appreciate them, they are many that do, especially myself. I am not going to try and tell you what you should do, that is entirely up to you. Only you know what is the right thing for you to do.I assume your site has been hacked and this has something to do with your decision. You do realise that removing yourself from this community will not solve anything there, in fact, it might just be giving the hacker exactly what they want. But again, the decision is up to you.As for the GFX Crew, while you leave huge shoes to fill, I will do my best to continue with the good work you have done and keep it a high profile feature of this board.I hope you decide to finish your template, it's almost there and looks very good so far. As you have said, I'm sure it would be approved by all concerned.Anyway Mike, think about what you want to do. I will support your decision, what ever way you decide to go. I and many others appreciate all your help in the past and would like to see it continue.

Yeah I know garbage, but if we don't stick to the rules the whole thing will get out of hand. I didn't realise the sigs were too big until I looked at the properties to get the links for the voting thread. Had I noticed it earlier, I might have been able to ask for them to be resized.

Yes, maintaining quality with animated sigs can be difficult, but not impossible. The trick is to use careful color selection and try not to use gradients. Even so, animated gifs can look quite good sometimes. Here's a few I made a while ago with Paintshop Pro. As for Flash, I haven't made anything for quite a while, but here's a couple I have made. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ (An interactive book for a roleplaying game) http://tempest.2ya.com/flash/promo_small.html (A promotional movie with sound for an old ISP that I made a long time ago, 1.5mb download and contains rampant plagiarism)

Hmm... it's very hard to make out what the renders are and the text is very difficult to read. It think I've seen a lot better from you, but it could be I don't like the style. 4/10 from me

By just typing http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ into your browser you should also see a random sig. However, yours shows a 404 error. Are you sure you made the 'images.png' folder in the correct place, that is, in the 'www' or 'public_html' folder? (Either one will work.)

Your Flash sig is a very good example of WHY most forums don't allow SWF files on their forums. That sig is 3.48Mb in size. Imagine if several posters on the same page had sigs like that? A person on a dial-up connection would never be able to get the page to load. As a rule of thumb, with a dial-up connection it takes around 5 minutes to download 1 megabyte, therefore, your sig alone would take over 15 minutes to download. More than just a little ridiculous don't you think?

Nice work Slay, considering you are so new to Photoshop. You are right though, you need to find more brushes besides abstract. Finding brushes for this version of Photoshop will not be easy, I wish you luck.

There are various links covering sig rotators, search the forums for "sig rotator" and you will be amazed by what you find.

This is a great tutorial jayron/jibnet, much better than copying from another source. With a post like this you deserve the credits you earn for it, unlike when it is copied from another source. This is why plagiarism is not tolerated here. Well done!

This week's SOTW will have a theme of 'flight'. Your sig should portray anything to do with flight, this can be natural flight such as birds, insects or bats for example. Or you can use a mechanical flight theme such as an aircraft, spacecraft or even a parachute, (it could be loosely translated into flight). The theme is purposely made fairly general to encourage more entries. Good luck everyone. EDIT: Any render used must be of something that actually exists, nothing fantasy is permitted. This means things like fairies, dragons, angels or a pegasus are not permitted. This also means renders of fantasy spacecraft such as Star Trek's "The Enterprise" are not permitted, let's "keep it real" people. Sig size: Between 250 to 350 pixels wide and 100 to 150 pixels high Brush Style: Freestyle Color: To match your render Render: Flight theme Text: Your name Other effects: Optional Due Date: June 10th UPDATE!!! There will now be prizes awarded for this SOTW!!! 1st Place: 10 credits 2nd Place: 7 credits 3rd Place: 5 credits