Johnny
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Posts posted by Johnny
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Haha! I knew he'd get kudos for having a tank popout. I knew it from the second I saw it. Even I was like, ooh, it's a tank popping out.Even though I gave Brooks a 10/10 for his current sig, I'm going to vote for Phyre because I think that the pop-out is very effective in this one. The thing that I don't like in both of yours is the text. In Brook's, I don't like the overlapping text, and Phyre's name in his sig is very hard to read.
1:0 Phyre up.
BTW Phyre, remind me to comment on the sig after the battle's over...was wondering about something.
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Haha, frankly, I still dunno what exactly they do. I mean, I KNOW what look they'll produce, but I dunno exactly why.
@Phyre -- I agree on the wind filter thing...
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See tutorials pt. 3. You can use just about any render with grunge.@KuBi -- Hm, glad you like it. ^-^ The render's from Street Fighter, btw. Fei Long, I believe. And the bg for this one was actually pretty easy. Some general grunge at first, then black hard grunge over it.
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I have no idea why people are rating tutorials now either. :-/
You should post them in the normal tutorials forum, and then move it here leaving the link.
Hmm, after doing this tutorial, I've learned a few things, but I've been using color balance in my sigs anyway. I think you should do effects and stuff....I don't know. Anyway, here're what I got:
How did you get your scanlines like that? I tried making them just 2 pixels far each, and it turned out really crappy.
Edit: Inserted img tags.
Hm...good point. I'll move them and whatnot in the future.Not a bad sig, and the scanlines, I believe, were set on soft light for mine, and set in a 3x3 pattern.
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Wurklash and Nickmeister have some great tech brushes, sexyalice has some great fractals, and the rest have grunge, pretty much. Of course, they don't just limit themselves to one style, so you'll probably find many different types for each artist.
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Nice one Mike. Very nice. You just better hope he's looking for more challengers.
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Just showing some appreciation for a second gift.
Hope you like it.
Everybody else, you know.
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[:: 1v1 Grunge ::]
Phyre:
Johnny:
It's first to 7 votes. Good luck, and nice sig.
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Okay, the first part of sig brushing is figuring out which to use. Let's go over some of the types, and I'll show some examples of each. Excuse me if it's not the greatest tutorial in the world...I was tired and got bored and rushed it a bit.
Abstract -- Abstract is pointed out by 3d shapes or by triangular-ish shapes. It's kind of hard to explain, but you should be able to recognize it if you see it, although some brush designers have different ideas of abstract. Basically, abstract brushes are useful in tech sigs.
Fractal -- Fractal brushes are defined by many lines and swirls, also hard to describe, but VERY easy to recognize. Fractals are one of the coolest looking brushes, IMO, but unfortunately, they're very hard to use. There's no real good way to use them...they just come in handy every now and then.
Normal Grunge -- Grunge is basically a dirty, scratched, or eroded looking style. It's probably the most used type of brush, simply because it's so versatile. You can use grunge in just about any sig.
Hard/Rust Grunge -- Bah...these are hard to describe...hard grunge is sort of a really chaotic looking grunge, that almost looks pixellated sometimes. Hard grunge is one of the more useful kind of brushes, and it's used for a really dirty or destroyed look.
Soft Grunge -- Soft(Cloud) grunge is a softly rounded grunge, that basically, looks like clouds. DO NOT use only soft grunge as your background. Soft grunge is more for details and blending, than backgrounds.
Sparkle -- Sparkle brushes are shown in a couple different ways. The main kind is by little balls of sparkles, or stars. These should rarely ever be used solely as a background, but more of an effect of an explosion or a spell. The second kind looks sort of like shattered glass, and it's very useful for blast or beam effects, but it can also on occasion, be used as a background.
Tech -- Tech is tech, plain and simple. It's made up of lines, numbers, etc. It should never be used as just a background, but it's used in tech-themed sigs, of course.
Vector -- Very similar to Tech, but it uses more arrows, circles and other shapes. It's used mainly in "different" sigs, ones that stray from the norm. Simplistic, stylistic, or minimalistic sigs.
Now, there are many more types of brushes, or variations/mixes of the previous ones, but those are the main ones. Now, the next step in choosing your brushes is to figure out which ones to use WHEN. This is usually decided by the render used with your sig. I'll go over the main brush types and which renders to use them with.
Abstract -- Mainly tech renders. See the Tech part up soon.
Fractal -- It's hard to decide when to use fractals, so I'll leave this one up to you.
Normal Grunge -- Just about any render can be used with grunge, as I said before, it's very versatile.
Hard/Rust Grunge -- This is mainly for "destroyer" renders, like war ones, tanks and such, or fighters, from tekken or street fighter or something. That's definitely not all it's limited to though.
Soft Grunge -- Like I said before, it's more of a detail and blending style, so it's also used in many different situations.
Sparkle -- It's used for explosions or beams or blasts, or spells or whatnow. This would be a weapon-wielding render, or a "magical" render, like a wizard.
Tech -- Tech brushing goes with tech renders. Robots, vehicles, futuristic things.
Vector -- This goes with "different" renders. Sleek and minimalistic ones, mainly.
Okay, that pretty much sums up CHOOSING your brushes. The next one I make will show you how to actually USE them.
As before, I'm linking a PSD that has the different brush styles, and an example of a render that might fit them. They are grouped into sets with the render and the brushing together, named after their style. Just make each set visible/invisible to check out the different ones.
"Now, remember, this is not for you to use as your sig. You may not use this or any part of it as your own. If any layer or part of it is found in a sig of yours, that is called a rip, which is basically image plagiarism, and I will not only make you remove it, but I'll also publicly declare you as an art theft, and the download will be taken away from everyone, to prevent further problems. Remember, this is just for you to LOOK and LEARN, I'm not giving it to you to use as your own. I've never had any of my art ripped, and I'd appreciate it if I could continue with that. If you REALLY want one of my sigs, send me a request through PM or instant message, and I'll most likely make you one anyway.
Okay guys, have fun, and look forward to future tutorials by me. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to ask, and I'll do my best to help you out. And remember, this is just a general guideline. You don't have to follow it directly, and you can add/remove/replace steps as you wish. Experimenting is the key to becoming a good designer."
Made in Photoshop CS, so things may vary, but you shouldn't have any problems whatsoever with this one in particular.
Link to PSD:
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Wow, that's like....DARK. But I love the quote text. ;)I'll make the topic in a few.EDIT: No, like, really really DARK.
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Well jeez dude, it's not gonna make a whole sig for you. It's just for little stuff, like adding a border, starting a new sig, cutting out the blank space after you've cut a render, so on and so forth. Just minor stuff that can save you time.
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X.x it's more about the tutorial than the sig, but thanks.
Nah, I pretty much ignored you. Just felt like doing them.But np. Show me some results sometime.
Well this is just a general outline of the techniques. If people want to add more, they can use the same methods. O.o
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Renders is to Mike as sigs is to me. He has a load of good ones. O.oAnyway, looks nice, other than the text...the color doesn't quite fit (a cyan-ish would look better) and the bevel can go.And there's like, odd black squiggles on her face?EDIT: Forgot a rating. 6.5/10. Sorry KuBster.
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I'll take you on with my current, if you'd like.
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Okay guys, after forever and a day of putting these tutorials off, I finally got around to making part one of my tutorial series, to show you how to effectively color your sigs, and multicolor as well.
One result will look like the very last image in the tutorial.
So, without further ado, let's get down to business.
STEP 1:
Open a new sig (I used 400x150 pixels) and fill the background with black. Then brush up your sig (this will be in a future tutorial) with white and add a brightness/contrast layer (from the layer-->new adjustment layer menu, or the black/white circle icon in the layers box.) and bring the contrast up to about 30. It's always wise to add a brightness/contrast layer to give a background more depth, and a cleaner look.
STEP 2:
Now add whatever render you may want to use (also in a future tutorial.) In this case, I used a nice Half-Life 2 one. Add a bit more brushing to blend him in (ALSO in a future tutorial) and you're looking good so far.
STEP 3:
Then, add whatever effects you may like, and some text.
STEP 4:
Now comes the fun part. Make a new color balance layer (found right by where you found the brightnesscontrast) and check out the new box. There's some sliders, and radial buttons for the different tones of light. Make sure the preserve luminosity box is checked, otherwise the "clean-cut" feel you made earlier with the brightness/contrast layer will dissipate. Now, play with the sliders a bit to create a base color. You'll want something not too vivid, and a similar color to your render's main color.
STEP 5:
Now, for the multicoloring part. There's quite a few ways to multicolor. I'll show you a few different ones, as each one is useful in different situations. First is the cloud coloring technique. This is a really quick and easy way to multicolor, but also has less control over colors than other methods. Create a new color balance layer, and play with the sliders until you get a more vivid color, which is similar to your render's secondary color, if any. It should be along the same lines as your first one, but a lot more vibrant. Once you have that, you can go to Filter-->Render-->Clouds, and this will add a cloudy look to your color balance's mask, and you'll see that you now have a multicolored sig.
STEP 6:
You can also take it a step further by right clicking the color balance's layer mask in the layers box, and clicking "Add Layer Mask to selection", then clicking the first color balance layer, and pressing delete (make sure your background color is still black.) This will make it so instead of the primary color on all of the sig, and the secondary on certain parts on top of it, the primary color will be in some parts, and the secondary will be inverted, and everywhere else.
STEP 7:
Next up is the lasso coloring technique. This gives you a bit more control on what parts you would like to multicolor, which is useful in situations like explosions, where you'd want to have a centralized section of color, or for example, you'd like to color a render's pieces differently or something. Anyway, create your primary color just like before, and then take out your lasso tool. At the top there will be a box called feather, change the 0px to about 15px. This will give the color soft edges, instead of abruptly changing from one color to the next, although that may be wanted in some situations. Now, hold shift (to make more than one selection at a time), and make some selections wherever you want the secondary color to be. Then, let go of shift, but with the areas still selected, create a new color balance layer, and play with the settings again to get your secondary color. You'll notice that the areas you had selected, are being filled with the new color. There's your lasso coloring.
STEP 8:
A slightly less used method of coloring, but sometimes useful (mainly in tech style sigs) is the rectangle coloring technique. Starting with your base color as before, grab your rectangular selection tool, and make some selections (while holding shift) wherever you like. Then create a new color balance layer and create your secondary color again. This won't look nearly as good on this one, because this isn't a tech sig, but you get the general idea. I've also found that this works well with different layer effects and patterns.
STEP 9:
Another way to color is done by brushing over the layer masks of your color balance layers. To do this, just create your primary and secondary color balance layers, and grab whatever brush (soft grunge or sparkle works best) you like, and brush over your color balance's layer mask. This produces similar results to the lasso coloring technique, but gives you a bit more control in the way the color is shaped. This is probably the most useful coloring method, as it gives you the most control, and it's slightly easier to do than some other ones.
So, here's my final result for that sig, with a few additions.
And SURPRISE! Yes, that's right, for the first time ever, I'm giving you guys the PSD for this sig so you can check it out, and maybe learn a few more things from the different layers in there. The link will be at the bottom of the post. Try hiding/unhiding (click the eye icon) the different layers, to see what effect they have on the sig. Now, remember, this is not for you to use as your sig. You may not use this or any part of it as your own. If any layer or part of it is found in a sig of yours, that is called a rip, which is basically image plagiarism, and I will not only make you remove it, but I'll also publicly declare you as an art theft, and the download will be taken away from everyone, to prevent further problems. Remember, this is just for you to LOOK and LEARN, I'm not giving it to you to use as your own. I've never had any of my art ripped, and I'd appreciate it if I could continue with that. If you REALLY want one of my sigs, send me a request through PM or instant message, and I'll most likely make you one anyway.
Okay guys, have fun, and look forward to future tutorials by me. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to ask, and I'll do my best to help you out. And remember, this is just a general guideline. You don't have to follow it directly, and you can add/remove/replace steps as you wish. Experimenting is the key to becoming a good designer.
Also, this was done in Photoshop CS, so things may vary in different versions, but you shouldn't have any problems.
Link to PSD:
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Biscu itrat? No Mike. No.And this one's too simple, with a plain background and text. You can do better, by far. 6/10.
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The link for the render doesn't show, and as for the theme, it doesn't really seem to have a set theme, as the bg looks like a mix of abstract and grunge, (mainly abstract), but I can tell you that tekken characters, with the exception of one or two, like um...what's his face...yoshimitsu? aren't really tech, which is sorta where scanlines fall under.But meh...it's an odd distinction, I admit. I've noticed that smaller-spaced scanlines give off sort of a grunge look, if used right, while the bigger ones tend to look more tech.And also there's diagonal scanlines, and X's, dots, squares, grids, so on and so forth.
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Do what now?
Np, and renders are technically bad (because they're using copyrighted characters, in most cases) so I doubt filefront would wanna do that. But trust me, all of Mike's packs have great renders, you won't be disappointed with any of them.
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Not bad at all, and usually scanlines don't quite work if they're covering the whole sig, but they don't look bad here. They just don't match the theme. It still looks slightly plain, but not bad. The worst thing would be the the text, but that's not too bad.7.5/10.
9/10
Johnny's Sig Tutorials Pt. 3 -- Choosing Brushes Which to use, and what they look like.
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