Johnny

No, believe me, I don't have enough time on my hands. It's just that once in a blue moon I'll decide to spend a day just doing gfx work. It's really fun.

Heh, thanks. Actually, I do run out of ideas. When that happens, I just look through my immigrant images folder to see what I can slap on a sig, then snowball it from there. Thanks for the compliments. (And yeah, I'm sorta an insomniac. I get about 3 hours of sleep each night. But it's usually not from graphics.) Well, we all get better over time, right? Nowhere to go but up, I s'pose.

Well, at first (such a long long time ago) I just grabbed google images, slapped it on a background, added some text, and boom, that was my sig/banner/whatever. That was a very bad way to go. So, I'll tell all the steps I make in making my wonderfully delicious sigs (btw, thanks for the props ) Whoo boy, this is going to be harder than I thought... 1. Plan your sig. What do you want it to look like. Colors, render (that's an image, of say a celeb or a game character, or a chair, or whatever. You don't NEED a render, but I tend to go with them.), brushing (use brushes to make your sig more lively. You don't necessarily need this either.), effects (lightning bolts, sparklies, grids, tech, etc.), text (your name, name of site, etc.), border, and misc. other details. 2. Start by choosing base colors and brushing. Decide what color your background will be (Start with black, and add white brushing. These can change later in the sig.) Then start brushing it up (resources for brushes are at the bottom). Be sure to choose something that actually looks good, and not just a bunch of brushes put together. The brushing is the most critical step of a brushed sig. 3. Add the render. Take your render, and add it to your brushed background (http://forums.xisto.com/topic/9968-adding-a-render-to-a-sig-add-renders-to-your-sigs-in-photoshop/ is the link to my tutorial on adding a render), and if you want the render blended into the brushing, do this(http://forums.xisto.com/topic/9970-render-blending-how-to-blend-a-render-to-your-sig-in-photoshop/) or if you'd just like it to keep it as it is, continue. 4. Color your sig. Depending on if you want to blend the render with the brushing or not, add a color balance overlay above your brushing layer, or your render layer. Modify all three settings until you get to the color/hue/brightness/whatever you want. There's more advanced stuff you can do with color, but I'll get to that later. 5. Add text. Add your name or whatever you're going to add to your sig. This is also a crucial step, because bad text can make even the best sigs "value bin" sigs. Choose a good font that goes with what you already have in your sig. Then double click the text layer, and choose some nice effects to add to it (I often choose a outer glow and drop shadow, sometimes stroke, and sometimes bevel or color overlay. I rarely use the other settings, but they're all pretty nifty to use once in a while.) If you want your text to also blend with your background, you can change the transparency level to however you see fit. If you want your text to appear "behind" your render, or part of your brushing, move it under that/those layers. 6. Add extra effects. I often use "sparklies", grids, or things of that nature to spruce up a sig. If you want, ask me how to do these, and I'll be glad to tell you, along with some neat tricks you can do with them. 7. Add a border. Borders aren't ALWAYS needed in sigs, but in a VERY good majority of them, they do make them look a lot better. You can do a 1-px border, with just a single color, a two-px border, with two colors, a three-px border with a "sandwiched" color, or other different more advanced borders like "tech" ones. (http://forums.xisto.com/topic/9867-tech-bordered-sig/) Try different styles, as one might suit your sig better than another. Borders are highly modifiable, and believe it or not, they make a big impact on a sig. 8. Finishing touches. Add any extra effects you'd like, change/delete/add parts to your sig, etc. Play around until you find something that thoroughly completes your sig. Sometimes skipping this entirely is also the best route. 9. Experiment. Watch others. Read tutorials. I've found that just playing around in Photoshop can produce some pretty neat results (a lot of my stuff I've found on my own), and also, sometimes I'll just check out gfx sites, and see some different styles, and get plans for my next sig. There's some things you can only learn by seeing others do it first. Also, tutorials have been a big help for me. Believe it or not, I didn't know ANYTHING about renders or brushing or borders or blending or any of that stuff before I started reading tutorials. There are TONS of tutorials out there, and some are very unique, and give totally new ideas and shortcuts and such. 10. Most of all, have fun. You CANNOT just sit there and make sigs just because. You have to have fun doing it. I would definitely not have the patience to spend an hour or two on a sig if I weren't having fun making it. Don't force yourself, just do it. 11. I know all of this is still REALLY confusing. Like I said, this is just the basic concept I use in making my sigs. Feel free to ask me more about certain parts on AIM/Yahoo/MSN (where talking is faster) and I'll be glad to help figure something out. I'm absolutely sure you can't fully complete these without extra information. I'll try to answer questions to the best of my ability, but lots of times in making my sigs, I'm just snowballing, so I can't walk you through my entire thought process. All my contact info is in my profile. Sources: Brushes = http://www.deviantart.com/ (Browse, Resources, Photoshop Brushes) Renders = http://www.gamerenders.com/forum/ (Gaming and anime renders, you can just do a google search for render sites if that's not your style.) Tutorials = http://www.good-tutorials.com/ or http://www.pixel2life.com/ (Believe me, most tutorials listed on those sites are quality stuff. They hand-pick what goes on there.) Fonts = http://www.dafont.com/de/ or http://www.1001fonts.com/ Hope that helped a little bit. I'm not really that great at teaching this stuff, but I do try. Laters.

Is that supposed to be a blank gray image?

Hm, haven't tried that before...interesting...

Number 4 is the best.#1 -- Too simple, bad font, text could use effects, text on bottom hard to see.#2 -- Bad image, bad font, text could use effects, icky yellow color.#3 -- Too simple, bad font, text could use effects, bad image.#4 -- Nice colors, good font, good image, needs border.#5 -- That weird stuff under the name sucks, text could use efects, overlapping images looks odd.Sorry for being critical, but I can honestly say that it was comments like these that made me better. I'll show you some of my really old stuff sometime, and you can see the drastic improvements...And it wouldn't hurt to check out my tutorials in the how to's and tutorials section, or pixel2life.com or good-tutorials.com . Those are all good resources on sigging.But overall, you're off to a good start. Keep it up.(BTW, why do some of them have daman's name on them?)

Here's a bunch of new ones today. I think these are pretty good overall. Comments/Rating/Rep/whatever appreciated.

Don't listen to Damann. He steals sigs. j/k Damann.

I have a tutorial for blending renders with sig backgrounds. I think what you're trying to do is the same concept. http://forums.xisto.com/topic/9970-render-blending-how-to-blend-a-render-to-your-sig-in-photoshop/

Well, glad you got it to work eventually... Me either. X.x YEARS ago....

Well, you just assumed he used brush sets, which made me think that you thought it -had- to be done with brushing... And I meant downloaded brush sets, not brushing in general. (But REAL gfx people know that brushing means using a brush set. )

Hm....I'm really not that good with Imageready (Because I simply DO NOT use animation) but maybe on the last frame, go to edit --> canvas size. I'm not sure if this will change the size of the whole animation though...

Haven't you found out yet Damann? I always get the last word... We should do another one though... X.x

Oh, didn't see that....feel free. I love comparing my sigs to others. (Gives me ideas for how to make mine better...) Oh I see. Didn't see his post, I think... Make sure you quote stuff though. I'll let it slide, since it was really short this time...

Lol, I sure hope you don't mean Jashin. He's a VERY busy person, and most likely has no time to play around in silly sig battles with me. Plus he'd mop the floor with me. *shrug* okay then, tie it is. But why aren't you gonna do a new one? It's fuuuun! And it drives me to make more sigs, because I never do them just out of the blue.

lol, you don't need brushes for everything, daman. And I'm pretty sure GGG is anti-brushing anyway. Does everything from scratch.

Errr...that's eggs....not shrimp.

Hrm...I'm not sure quite what you're asking, but try to look up adding hotspots to your images...I think that's what it is. It'll make certain parts of the image clickable, and they can link to different stuff. Pretty sure that's what you meant.

I think it's a pretty good sig overall, but there's a few things you could do that would make it better.1. Get rid of the border. It looks good, but it just doesn't flow right with the sig.2. Make Tracy's name a better font, add some more effect to it, and lose the stroke on the pixel text.And that's just about it. With that done, the sig should look really good.And it's definitely a good change from all these stupid counterstrike sigs I've been seeing. :(No offense to the guys who make those, but they really bore me...

Heh, well, as long as it's on-topic...But if it gets outta hand, I can just split it, I guess.

Lol, if you say so...

Same problem here. AHHHH, I see. Whirly nice?

O.o Don't worry about my posts, I just like to speak my mind. Which happens to be quite childish or nonsensical at times. Other times it's like this, where I try to use big words like nonsensical to make myself look smart. So, when are we getting hitched anyway? Oh, and don't wear a pink dress. I hate those. IRL - In real life. I still haven't given up that one...

You really do dislike me, don't you? No, we don't know each other irl, just from our old host.

Stay on topic. I'd give your sig a 6/10 because I don't know anything about Photoshop, so I just gave you the same rating as Johnny. However, I do think that you should choose a better font and maybe dress it up a little. If you take away the font, everything else looks fine, so the problem, or rather, what's hindering you from getting a high score is the font. Just the opinion of an unexperienced PS user. 137931[/snapback] Are you telling me to stay on topic? Cause if you are, that's seriously annoying. I was telling damann that he needs to watch his post amount, which is definitely a necessary post. Anyways, yeah, the text is what really blows it away from anywhere near coolness, and even without that, the sig is kind of plain. I just noticed, this guy hasn't replied once...why are we still posting here?