First Try On A Real Sig Constructive criticisms welcome

[evion 0]

Hi guys! I've been creating self personal sigs for awhile that i do not EVER want to show off (You should know the reason...) so just 20 minutes ago, i tried a new render that was inspired by who knows what. Of course i only crated 1sig because it totally stressed me out on what filters and such to use on the renders and i couldn't go far. I'm not too good with colors and so i need some comments on my use of them in this sig. This is maybe what you can call my first try to developing real sigs so i hope the sig-masters out there like Reaver and Saint-michael can teach me a few tricks i can use to make my sigs looks better. Thanks and enjoy!

 

First version w/o color

 

Second version with a gradient lime green over the render.

[Reaver 0]

Heheh teh mast0r is SM the sig is taking shape evionition, what i can suggest is not lowering the opacity of the render this is only used when filling space in the background and then it is alot lighter, for blending in a render in a sig such as this i would draw a rough outline of the sig with your lasso tool then set the feather to 15px maybe and then either select inverse and hit delete till you feel it is blended in or add a layer mask, and then the next step you need is brushes so you can brush a little on the render with brushes you used in the background. The text you used i think goes really well with the render and i do prefer the lime green one. Now as you say you have trouble with colours heres a tip - use the colours of the render to make the background coloured, it is called a pixelstretch and would be best if you read a tutorial on it probably here at Xisto or google for it. You dont always have to use that render to colour the sig you can use any render aslong as the colours are similar.Great Job

[evion 0]

Thanks for the comment Reaver! I'm sorry i don't seem to get you: Feather to 15px? Alright maybe the sig wasn't enough to tell you how i did it but i definitely didn't do anything that you said. I think I'll roughly explain the steps here:1. Draw one solid, black, 19 point line.2. Smudge it up and down in a swishing motion so that all parts are covered with smudges then smudge it unevenly trying to make it look rough.3. Duplicate and make 2 more copies of the original "line" and overlap them by moving one a little up and lowering the opacity and vice versa. Thus making the sort of line that goes through the archer's eyes and the words. 4. Merge all of them together and plastic wrap.5. Searched google for a nice archer pic =P (Got this one from a guild wars site)6. Placed the archer on a new layer above the original layer. 7. Duplicate archer and motion blur - then lower opacity.8. Lower opacity of original unblurred archer.9. Added text with a little yellow glow and Papyrus font (Didn't want to make it too fancy coz the focus is on the archer)And that's about it. If you can explain a little bit more on lameman's terms what you meant about the feather, inverse, and layer mask. I'm totally new to this rendering thing and have never had any tutorials on this. Thanks again for commenting!

[Reaver 0]

Heheh no i wasnt talking about what you did in your sig all my points are what you CAN do to your sig to make it better, and yes you are right my explanation was vague so i suggest checking out the Xisto tutorial section or even here and google for "render blending" and im sure you will come across the words feather and layer mask alot more with pictures also "Full Sig" tutorials will get you on your way and you can mix and match and take what you like.

[evion 0]

Wow...i didn't know there were so much to sigs...heh. Before i learned the "blend" i used to just gradient the render out. Which didn't work as well as blending would because you're limited to horizontal and vertical gradients. I've read through Johnny's tutorial in Xisto about render blending and decided to try it out. I ended up with this:

 

 

Which is pretty cool. Then i thought about what you said about not making the archer look so transparent and i gave him back his 100% opacity and guess what? It looked great!

 

 

Now the archer really stands out but the background looks a little transparent which i can't change anymore 'coz i already merged most of the background brushing layers together. (Now that i know about brush sets I'm going to try downloading soem to try it out but I still prefer designing my own brush backgrounds)

 

So now with your help and Johnny's I think I'm getting better at this. My inspiration is all attained by SM's and your work and I aspire to learn as much as i can from you and your sigs. Thanks again!

[nightfox1405241487 0]

I personally like the second one (the one with the gradient) better... the colors just flow together and it looks really cool. Of course, I'm not a photoshop expert an I usually have to use tutorials to make something cool...

[Saint_Michael 3]

Well, Im not master but i know a fair amount to help you by, of course i could just add to what reaver said but i go into some detail over your sigs.

Well instead of going through each sig one by one what i will do is put suggestions for what you need to work on.

1. Always have a border 1px black is usually standard, also is 3px black 2 px white 1 px black is also a stard as well since then you want to overlay that 321 border so the white goes with the background but yet keep the black px stroke intact.

2. Never Make your renders tranparent, you fix that in your last one that I seen

3.Brushes you need brushes do'nt rely on filters for background cuz then your not getting into the tru aspect of the sig design, only use filters when a tutorial your reading says it or you fell confident enough about your background to use them.

side not nice motion blur with you render that you did

4. Text its the hardest to do, since you have to blend it with the background and the look and feel to the rest of the sig. I suggest reading alot of tutorials on how to do text effects.

Here are some websites that you should go to.

http://www.gamefront.com/
-go here to download renders and the brush pack that I have up with like 1000 brushes for you to use.

pixel2life.com gamerenders.com
-these are the best 2 tutorials sites to go to for everything you need t oknow

dafont.com

go here to get fonts.

anything else just holla at me or reaver.

[gamerchick39 0]

i personally like it better without the lime green.. for some reason i dont think it goes very well with the image... the background is rather nice, i like the overall design you used. The image works real well with the character stretching across the sig. I personally think you should take the 4th one you posted, with the character not being so transparent, and then remove the color.. then it would be great But I like the sigs, they are all good

[ebbinger_413 0]

yeah...as has been said you could use a borderthere are several ways you can do this1) you can do a gradient layer...with black line on the outside and fades to white twoards the middle (takes a while to do this...at least the way i do it..im sure there is an easier way) and then do a blending option and set it to darken...that will add a neat little border effect onto the image2) the common 3 pixle border...save the image as png or jpg or bmp or w/e and open up in paint (easiest program to do it in) and just do a one pixle line on the very outside edge of the image in w/e color you want...then skip a pixle and do another pixle line in the same color...also yet again...the image will almost always look better if you dont change the opacity or blur it or anything...unless you are going for that effect for a specific reason...(e.g. to add motion to the character or w/e) i like the background that you created...it looks a lot better in color though...nice sig though....like what you have done...especially after changing everything!

[Reaver 0]

1) you can do a gradient layer...with black line on the outside and fades to white twoards the middle (takes a while to do this...at least the way i do it..im sure there is an easier way) and then do a blending option and set it to darken...that will add a neat little border effect onto the image
2) the common 3 pixle border...save the image as png or jpg or bmp or w/e and open up in paint (easiest program to do it in) and just do a one pixle line on the very outside edge of the image in w/e color you want...then skip a pixle and do another pixle line in the same color...

Ok lets work on easier ways to do these

1) The gradient layer will be very very simple :
Make your new layer above everything.
Ctrl + A (to select all)
Edit > Stroke (Choose something more than 1px so gradient is effective)(color,inside,normal, 100% , untick preseve)
Ok and your border will be applied.
Now choose your foreground and background colour you would like.
Go to Layer > Layer Style > Gradient Overlay
And then set the graient to foreground background and play around with the other settings (linear,radial,angle,refelcted,diamond) (reverse or not)
And you are done.

2)The 3 px border can be acheived quite fast in ps no need to go to paint.
Make your new layer above everything.
Ctrl + A (to select all)
Edit > Stroke (Choose 3px color,inside,normal, 100% , untick preseve)
The same layer : Edit > Stroke (Choose 2px color,inside,clear, 100% , untick preseve)
The same layer : Edit > Stroke (Choose 1px same color as above,inside,normal, 100% , untick preseve)

There you go quick and easy

[evion 0]

Thanks alot on the comments guys I'll work harder to make my next sigs even better. SM just one comment about your filefront brushes - LOTS of people download them. I had to wait like 20minutes for my turn to download them. I suppose you're very MUCH known to be a great sig-artist around =P. Anyways, thanks for the tips on adding borders but i think I'll go with my own method of adding borders which is to try and error till i get a good one for each different sig. I like change so this is what i am. How did you custom-made your brushes by the way? In Photoshop? Like you did a pattern on photoshop and saved it as a brush style? I tried that before and it worked only when i did it following a tutorial. Although you(SM) said that i should not use filters for the background, I don't really feel comfortable with brushes alone. For right now, my brush backgrounds don't look too natural and i need the help of filters to make it look more real. Other than that, all the rest of the tips are great (everyone else's too!) and i appreciate them.

[Saint_Michael 3]

with brushes you start with one style I recommend the following order to learn them from hardest to easiest.Grunge/techVectorAbstractfractalgrunge and tech are one of the hardest to work due to grunge being fuzzy, but to work out grunge you want to start off with at least 3 different sets that good well with each other if you go to H-j set you got some good grunge brushes in their, theirs also some others but you have to trail and error what you like.Now with tech that one of the most difficult to work with due to the fact that you can to match them and put enough in a background without making it look bad, That goes with doing tech borders as well you have to take you time and pay attention to itVector is like tech just have to find the right combinations to use and layer properties as well to make them work well.now with abstract its not as difficult you just have to mix and match them,with fractals it easy its mostly a bunch of lines goign all over the place but coloring can be difficult with that.But read tutorials and you will get the hang of brushes, but also read tutorials on filters as well and you can pull of some good stuff.

[acheron 0]

The image edges are a little boring, you should try doing a emboss or something similar. If you aren't using Photoshop, I suggest doing that.But it could always be good to use different applications to first make a rough look on the image.Photoshop is easy and there are several tutorials out there.Such as: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ love that site. I either check that site or do trail and error (play around).But other then the edges, it looks good. I'd pick the second version.