Cool_Freaker

Not a bad car manipulation - Try getting some words on it or something, adding grills or whatnot. Would get rid of the shadow thing under the car though.

Phyre, looking good. I don't think the render is cut out that bad, I think it looks fine, unless you look really hard, trying to spot out of place pixels :PJust when you change the font for Phyre, maybe move it down a bit more and a little more to the left. Loving that background though.leiaah, it's pretty decent for a first sig. Next time, try a border, bring out the text more, and try not to make it too monotone - awesome start though

Have to agree with you Johnny, the gift sigs look better, and Frozen's is the best :PI think it's because the orange and blue make a good contrast, the render is very suitable - with the hair being a soft grey, and the render itself is not too sharp and not too blurred. The orange abstract feature seems to work well with the clear bubble on top, and gives it a bit of a tech look. Maybe a more contemporary background - ie something more bold/defined, may work better?Flipn0tic - brushing is alright, like the text, but not the subtext. Grunge probably just isn't my thing.Girly - I don't really go for the diagonal scanlines, and I don't like the text particuarly, perhaps get rid of the shadow, or change font.Sephiroth - bit too monotone for my tastes, don't really go for the text, nor the bit of brushing in the background.Leprechaun - a lot of stars , good use of pixel stretch. I like the text on it - nice semi reflection.Eternity - don't go for the contrast bar, it stands out a little too much. The sides of the sig are a bit boring also.Beaverel - looks good, maybe make the text more visible/not so opaque, maybe just a little too much tech brushing. But dang, these are good Johnny

Don't think we've seen any of these apart from the first one Johnny. Certainly are getting better, though I don't know whether they're all in "order" :PAnyway, I personally liked were 1,2,3,9 (Similar to your faves)..1 - Think I've commented before, only thing is the font, which could be changed, and pixel text size isn't quite right.2 - I'm a Gundam Fan, so yeah - I like how the text is like on a tag, and the brushing is quite good. Maybe showing a bit more of the render, and a bit more of it's colour would be good.3 - Anime renders tend to sometimes look not very sharp. Apart from that, good use of the Chinese character, and cherry blossom? Background is good too - complex enough, but not overwhelming the render/character.9 - Nice colours, the red stands out. Text font is well chosen, well coloured, well placed. The brushing works, but the edges of the render look a bit rough. I guess the light patch up top works too (keep forgetting what it's called).I felt 4 and 5 were a bit too monotone, and 6/7, the brushing contrasted too much, giving a bit of a pixellated effect. 8... is interesting - I think with a bit more work (brushing perhaps?), it could look better .

Cut out the render much better. At least use a small eraser and get the edges. It makes a big difference.As Saint_Michael said, look up some tutorials, experiment a bit more.

Try manipulating some of the images more, quite a lot look like just some text slapped on top of a picture. I'm not sure if in Elements you can Anti-alias text, but some of the stuff looks really pixellated. Get a larger range of fonts while you're at it from http://www.dafont.com/de/ I know there are some brushes downloadable for PS Elements. Not as many as PS CS and 7, but there certainly are some out there. Give it a search, and use them - it will improve the "custom" feel of your sigs a lot. BTW - Gundam Rocks

I know what you mean theRealSheep. The Corby case was being publicised, and they decide to go and get paid a measly $10k to smuggle drugs. Really kinda stupid if you ask me.But don't you think the media has really covered the Corby case, perhaps too much? There have been Australians caught overseas for drugs before, but none have received the same kind of media treatment. Is it because she's a young female? I really feel they've tried to turn it into a huge drama - and while it is in a sense, I felt Corby should have some more privacy in the matter.Didn't Corby have some previous problems though? I heard she'd been convicted for something before - basically she doesn't have a squeaky clean past. I'm not saying she's guilty, but she may not be as innocent as all Australians are being led to believe. Anyway 20 years is relatively short in Indonesian terms, considering the crime. I think she should be at least glad for that, and hope her appeal doesn't screw it up any more.

Well sometimes doing some filters on a background is nice, or if you have a specific effect you want to get with filters, like textured backgrounds or whatnot. I know with lots of tutorials where you make patterns etc, filters play a big part.Pixel stretch is being whored currently, anyway, so I would recommend staying away from it.

Yeah, looks like you have good brushing technique 3asy Bake, and good choice of text. Some good use of filters too, I think. Some of the effects on the text don't work that great in my opinion, though, and colours in some, clash a little. They look well done though, and this part of Trap 17 can only improve with designers like you showing of you work

I always believed Westwood was a subsidary of EA, or at least had always had their games published by them. It's just that EA decided to cut costs and simply intergrate the Westwood team into EA, instead of having separate entities.My favourite was Red Alert, though. It had a bit more variety than the original (which I played a helluva lot), it was Soviets vs Allies, and there were really funky Tesla Coils . The squirmish mode was a big bonus for me as well. Red Alert kept the charm of the original, whilst improving on it, graphically, and just in design. I never went for Tiberian Sun much, it seemed slow to me, and I didn't particuarly like all the units which could do funky things .I don't see why so many people didn't enjoy Generals though? Whilst it's not like the original Command and Conquer's, I thought it was a solid RTS, worthy enough of the namesake, though I agree Phyre, a Tiberian Sun sequel would have been nice.

Since you're a Final Fantasy fan.... I would guess other Square-Enix games would be pretty suitable - try Kingdom Hearts, that's one of the more popular PS2 RPGs... Star Ocean is pretty good too.For others, I know stuff like Harvest Moon is popular enough, and I believe there is one on the PS2... if you call Deus Ex an RPG, that's been pretty darn well acclaimed by magazines, though it apparantly didn't sell well.Dark Cloud I heard was pretty good too, as you have to rebuild a city/town while you adventure off. I think the original was a PS2 launch title or at least first generation title.If you're really bored you could try the .hack// series - I haven't played it, but I heard it's quite entertaining, though nothing "really" special.

Yep, a lot of Final Fantasy Music is great, though it's a shame Nobuo Uematsu left Square-Enix.If you search around there's a really big torrent (6gb) with just about all the FF music you could ever want.

Looks great Johnny :PThe pixel text looks a bit funny to me though, is it the right size for the font? Perhaps since the font has a grunge feel, you could have tried some more grunge brushing, or instead picked a font which matches a little better with the current background. I can't say it looks particuarly out of place though, and I have to really nitpick to find anything in this one

Yep, when you're happy with your brushing, but it's not quite enough, just add another layer on top and continue brushing. Thus it's easy to erase - pretty much what HmmZ said.Monotone in a sig is a crime, in my opinion. At least try to have the text or border a bit different if you can.

I think Saint Mike's talking about his render blending in his sigs. Notice how it's the same colour and there's some brushing over the top.Oh, and Hmmz, if your render can't be erased easily or there's some other problems - I like to use a very small inner glow, which doesn't look too bad or obstructive.

Love the text, border should be improved though - just a little bigger and maybe not so bevelled with a different effect on it instead of purple.Try a few different tech brushes on there as well perhaps, but it's lookin' good.

Some really good ones there Johnny - nice improvement over your old Spiderman/Naruto sigs.I like 1,5 and 7...1 - Has some good brushing in the background - nice how you blended his feet in with the image so it looks like he's "in it". It's cut out well and good matte settings for transperancies.5 - Looks good, though I don't really like the thin yellow border - I think black would define it more... Text is nicely placed7 - Render fits well with background and the border is unique - maybe just a little brown, but I think that's the effect :DI didn't go for 3, 6 or 8 so much:3 - It looks dreamy, and to me the render doesn't fit that feel...6 - Text is hard to make out and I just don't think the render works there - the stars don't look that good, probably the brush size was changed from default or something8 - Once again text is kind of hard to make out, it's a little "too" spotty on the left, and maybe a little monotone for my tastes.Overall though, great work.

Too monotone for my liking. I would suggest keeping the Gandalf his own colour, and rather doing some white brushing on top to blend him in. Try a more "LOTR" font too, or at least something more script like. (There are actual LOTR fonts - look up Ringbearer or Tolkien)

Nice blending of render with background. If you could do a similar effect on the right somewhere, as it looks a little empty. Alternatively make the text a really interesting feature with some nice script font.

It's just a little tall, and on the animated sig you can see the rain going out onto the border. Looks good though - nice improvement over your other sig.

Bevelling everything is the biggest sign of n00bishness - get rid of it all. Now.Otherwise, decent background, render is clear, positioned well and cut clean. On top of Johnny's text suggestions I would say you should position the text itself better, probably moving it all to the bottom right would work.

I think it gets the effect you wanted... the best thing is, because it's so unique, it doesn't look n00bish, just different - which is reallllly good for a first sig.I'm looking forward to what you'll make next time

Johnny just about said it all. I would add, maybe place the text in a more central position, it looks a bit random now... and I would suggest a different font - you don't really want to be doing effects on pixellated fonts.

Totally agree. You don't need to know too much about Photoshop to make something which looks good. Placement, size and colour are vital - just have an eye for it I know that I started by looking up Lightning tutorials, brushing tutorials and extraction tutorials - so you can get renders from images, make lightning in the background, and do some decent brushing

Have the render on top of most of the brushing. If you do brush on top change the blending mode. The text should be in a more central position I believe, and some sort of effect to bring it out more would be nice (ie different colour/glow/overlay of some sort).I think the second one is better. The first is too monotone.