Cool_Freaker

Not too bad, but the colours aren't working for me. I think the grey border/red text/blue and black background clash a bit. I'd recommend changing the font to something more "tech", and a different colour, and putting a metal gradient overlay on the border to make it look shiny.

It was slightly more linear than previous FF games, but in most respects, the same. I guess it's a trait of the series. The airship being not freely controllable was a bit annoying, but since they eliminated the World Map, what could you do...

Yep, I find usually for sigs to be good without renders they need some superb brushing, which is easily distinguishable, ie the brushsets used are unique/pictures, or need very textured/varied brushing with several colours.

For that kind of effect you'd need to look for abstract brushes I think. Get brushsets that look like 3D renders or "light". Usually on Deviant Art I sort by popularity/downloads, so the most popular ones are up the front, which are usually pretty good.As Johnny said, the text isn't great.. it's not that readable - I'd suggest adding a glow or something if you don't want to change the text altogether. The background is alright, but by itself it's a bit boring. Firstly, the brushing is all white on red, and there's no render to divert attention. Try changing the colour slightly when you brush to give it a bit more depth, or add a nice render to it.

I used to use PhotoImpact, and Photoshop is far better. I don't think you can get the filters required to get that sort of background in PhotoImpact. Still, won't do you any harm looking it up and proving me wrong

Good work! It seems the practise has paid off - a huge improvement mate, you got a border, text is easy to read. The whole thing blends well enough together.Not the greatest fan of the font, though, but it's alright... All I would suggest now, is for your next sig to try some brushing and renders perhaps

In my opinion, the colours don't seem to match too well. There's yellow on the top left, but the little logo thing is blue/pink? Then the overall thing is a black/grey? I think it should be more uniform throughout - go with a tech, black/grey feel throughout, perhaps with yellow, or implement more blue and pink. The text "Combine simplicity and style" needs to be straight - parallel with scanlines in my opinion, tech with angled text doesn't work too well.The link buttons really need a new font, it currently doesn't fit with the banner. I don't particuarly like the grey colour either, or how it's bevelled... I think to go with the actual banner, the buttons should be smaller, in a more tech-like font, with less bevel, perhaps even just on the banner themselves. Probably don't have the links bar standing in front of the banner.If you could put a bit of yellow on that abstract feature on the right it may fit in better also... anyway, lookin' good.

Heard it was an alright game, with some control issues or something.I'm a big fan of the Anime series (never read the manga), and I don't believe the game deviates off the anime, and is more of a side story. Thus, they are searching for the Stone, and lost their bodies BECAUSE they tried to revive their mother :lol:I'll have to wait though, it's not out in Australia yet, if it ever will be.

Well it's on after my weekly dose of the OC, so I sometimes have a look. Don't remember specific favourites, but I enjoy most of his opening stand up comedy things

Horrid text. You really need to make it readable, there's a difference between being smoky/faint to being blurry. Get a border on it and personalise it more.There's not much to comment on really - keep at it.

In terms of fanbase alone, the Final Fantasy series (including 12) will win it over Halo and Kingdom Hearts - simply because it has been around for so damn long.I guess in terms of technical genius we won't know until the games are released (yeay KH2 coming out at the end of the year )

I'm not sure how you will position the actual tables if you have parts of the banner sticking out. Does this mean you'll have a large white space outside the site space?Little Lulu is predominantly red and black/brown. It would be much easier to blend with a similar colour scheme. Try a different font, as I think it's supposed to be a bit more "fun", if not, just make sure you try not to have it pixellated as pixellated text looks really bad.Otherwise, just continue the design in the main area next to the menu - have your cell, with a green gradient bar on the top saying "News" or whatever it's about, to match with the rest of the site. On the left, if you could have pictures on the buttons it might flesh them out a bit, and if you add a hit counter you shouldn't have spare space on the bottom left. I think having like Tubby's face on some of the buttons would be cool :lol:It should still be a fairly clean design like that...

My favourites are from Annika Von Holdt - http://www.annikavonholdt.com/blog/welcome The brushsets there are quite good, and can be used for a variety of things. My favourites though are the Witching, and Garden of Decay.

Yeah, it's Cloud from Final Fantasy VII. You can get the Final Fantasy font, at http://www.dafont.com/de/ - under Video Game Fonts. If Good-Tutorials is down, try http://www.pixel2life.com/ - they have TONNES of tutorials for Photoshop, Flash, and more. On all three sigs you really need to get a nice border, even a 1px black border is fine - Just open the JPG in Photoshop, Ctrl+A to Select All, then Insert Stroke, 1px Black normal. The first signature is really quite plain, the fact that it's all grey really brings it down. I think you'll need to get a better background that will contrast more with the dragon render. Not only that, but the text and render feel a bit blurry. Try to sharpen the images and text up a bit, in fact, I'd get a whole new text, in bigger size. The second one has a good size, nice render, but I think you could have gone, again, with something less blurry. I'm sure there's lots of Cloud renders like that, which you could have used to a better effect. "With-in" is one word, so "within" just looks more sophisticated in my opinion. I can see you've tried the Clone Stamp tool. If you really wanted to use it like that, try replicating several pieces of metal, and in a more random fashion, rather than in the straight line way you have there. The third one is too monotone, like the first, the text doesn't blend, and the render doesn't look too sharp either. I think the overlay or whatever of the metal pieces looks quite good; it should be accompanied with a tech border. You need to really make something stand out when you have something so monotone. Try colouring the render with some sort of overlay, or have an outstanding text and border. Anyway, those are just my two cents

They're different types of games. Final Fantasy XII and Kingdom Hearts 2 are both made by Square-Enix, so they will be different from each other (so the franchises don't overlap and they lose money - I mean that would be stupid). Halo is a First-Person-Shooter, which is not even an RPG.They'll all be good in their own right.

Biggest range would have to be Deviant Art. Look under Resources and Photoshop brushes.

Easiest thing to do - Get a blank transperant canvas. Make a new layer and fill it with whatever colour. Then get the eraser and choose a Grunge brushe and erase the outside edges to your liking...I think that's what you're trying to get?

If you're just starting books are good to learn the different functions and features of Photoshop CS - and generally help in getting the basic gist of it. Once you're past that stage though, you're better off playing around and looking up specific tutorials. I've found in books it tends to go on more about photograph touch ups and stuff, which aren't really used for signatures (though good to know nonetheless). Renders - basically just pictures that have been cut out, and are used in a signature/wallpaper Brushes - in Photoshop there's a brush tool, which can take many different shapes and styles. You can download custom brushes which allows you to create many different textures/styles/whatever I learnt pretty much through reading some easy tutorials, then trying them, then pretty much just mucking around, seeing what does what. You don't need to be particuarly skillful at Photoshop to make things look good, it's more about having an eye for it - placement, size and colour co-ordination are critical, and is something only you can develop to your own taste. Play around as much as possible, there's always the undo button, and Photoshop allows quite a lot of undos. Experiment on new layers to avoid mucking up your good ones.

My Faves?Garnet/Dagger - FFIX (named one of my internet alias from her)Kasumi - DoA (everyone's DoA fave with a thirst for revenge as well - how sweet)Aoi - VF4 (only with my blond hair wig addon thing )Aeris - FFVIIAnime:Sakura - Card Captor Sakura (she's so cute)Never went for Lara Croft... to...erm...hmm..

Depends what blending you want... If you want like two images to blend together like this sig I made a while ago: It's simply using a gradient on the Mask layer... you just adjust the white bits, so that they're on the part that you want showing from the layer underneath.

1 - Simple, subtext looks awful... though it's bold..2 - Not the worst image, but really font could have been much better, choose something with that "pencil" feel to it. Blending in, in terms of colour would be good too.3 - Don't like it, toilet's are more complex than you're making out :(4 - Nice render used, though feels unoriginal5 - Different at least, on the right, I think it has a quaint feel. If you could make the background patterns hide some message or picture it'd be quite interesting.As Johnny said, not a bad start. I think you really should try blending in everything more, and adding a border, even if it's a 1px black border on the outside. Simple sigs aren't always bad, it usually just needs a keen eye to pick out a nice render and a nice font to go together with a simple border

There are it's similarities and it's differences. Although it's kind of to be expected, as you must realise both countries have a similar culture, whether it's influenced by one or another is a different matter. Both were colonised by European powers, both Australia and America became English dominated - hence English being the national language (and Australia was really only ever English dominated). Because of the "relatively" short age of both the countries - the culture that has developed because of the roots obviously will have its similarities.That said, I'm sure Americans can tell an Australian, as Australians can tell an American. But due to things like ANZUS, yeah, the ties are only going to remain... Plus America has influenced all areas of the globe - Australia has just been more open to that influence...

There is a dubbed version of Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's really got a deep plot, with metaphorical references to some bible interpretation I believe. I found it incredibly hard to understand at the end though, with the last few episodes and the concluding movie End of Evangelion.It has all these metaphorical flashbacks and scenes, the story unravels and the average person gets totally lost. I swear, half my friends said Rei turned giant and destroyed a ball of giant cheese. I kinda enjoyed the beginning, say, 15 episodes though, with the killing of Angels and stuff, though I'm generally not a fan of post apocalyptic kinda things. I felt the world was really desolated, like the city Tokyo 3 had barely any citizens, even though each time an angel attacked the alarms would go off telling people to go to shelters or whatever.

What Ralphie said is pretty much right.Otherwise, not too bad, don't really like the brushset you used though. I think making the border more solid would help it... I don't get what the logo thing on the right is, I think it needs repositioning - either make it larger or something.You don't normally do a stroke on pixel text either, but definitely the main text needs to come out a lot more.

Hmm, lets see :(Super Nintendo: Final Fantasy VI (or III as known in America)Nintendo 64: Super Smash Bros.Gamecube: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (awesome fun with friends, though not so great alone I must admit)Gameboy Color: Conker's Pocket TalesGameboy Advance: Final Fantasy Tactics AdvancePlayStation: Final Fantasy IXPlayStation 2: Final Fantasy XPC: Age of Empires II(Yes, you may have well just picked the Final Fantasy games on each of the systems )Never played Xbox apart from a few minutes in the shops.