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Graphics Help
Topic Started: Mar 15 2014, 02:11 PM (1,464 Views)
Posted Image Marc
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Hey,

So I decided to try to make a signature. This took me 2 hours and I'm not very proud of it.

My "art"

#2 Tepig

#3 Pancham

#4 Brushes, Backgrounds, New Styles (Mostly Failed attempts)

#5 New Style 2

I was hoping one of the more experienced people could give me some pointers. I'm using Gimp, but I do have Photoshop, unfortunately, I do find photoshop a LOT harder to manipulate than gimp. If anyone could help me out a bit, I'd be very glad :D

This IS my first try at a sig. Hopefully you'll give me some positive feedback and don't overblow yourself with how much I suck xD

Thanks a lot!
Marc

Edit: I've decided to make this a kind of Portfolio where I can view my progress over time and revisit old stuff. So I'll constantly be posting new sigs and stuff I've made. If I turn out really good, it can be a kind of encouragement to newer people. If I turn our really bad, it can also encourage new people, as they know that someone (like me) are always below them!

Therefore, I will post all the variations I make here. I hope you can still give me constructive feedback on how I can improve on them!

Oh and if anyone wants to challenge me to make a sig of something, feel free to do so. I will post my failed results ;P[/spoiler]
Edited by Marc, Mar 23 2014, 09:48 AM.
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Posted Image Marc
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Randomness
Yea, that was my fault. I lowered its layer opacity at the start but forgot to revert changes.

Actually I made the backgroud myself, it wasn't an image
Attempt at another sig:
Moltres Mods


Not too sure what I think about this. Still think Pancham is best... I'm still testing brushes, backgrounds and stuff.
Edited by Marc, Mar 16 2014, 02:22 PM.
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Posted Imageptd2fan
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Head squirtle and just the prettiest person ever.
Mark I like the pop out tepig more than the other tepig dog you made,also mark you need to have more self confidence and stop staying your sigs are bad, they are great for a first try,heck when I touch art I usually make stick people or some random thing called art.
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Posted ImageUnsharped
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Unsharped (Elysian)
Yup indeed your work is amazing i agree with ptd2fan.
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Posted ImagePurpl3
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Pew Pew Pew :3
you should have a lot more confidence in your work! for first time signature making there are really good! :)

im not that familiar with the techniques in making them as im more of a free hand artist/drawer, so i cant really give feedback on that but from the looks and appearance of them they look really good!

should be proud of them!
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Posted Imagealeony
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Monster Hunter
I really love the Pancham it looks great. I think the Moltres Mods also looks great however I think the S in Mods is places directly in front of the face which takes away some of the focus. If you can try to lower the size of the font and turn it and place it just above the left wing. Then go back to the original render and use the magic or magnetic or whatever scissors and try to highlight the left wing completely. Then copy the left wing and paste it on a new layer above the text. This gets the text to be above the wing however some little parts of it are under it which makes look real nice. Example:
Posted Image

For gradients you usually try to use them as a colour changer in the final sig. This means you put a few gradients on and set the layer to overlay or something that looks nice. This can change the look of the sig for the better. For example if any of you has played league you would know that Fizz is blue yet I used gradients and photo filters (on photoshop however its still the same thing.) to change the colour to something I thought looked better:
Posted Image

In my final days of Gimp I started using the rainbow gradient and that really works wonder on light colour sigs and just makes the something else. This pic below looked meh before the rainbow gradient was put into place and the rainbow gradient makes all the difference here. Example:
Posted Image

Also the way I do backgrounds is that I take my render and paste it in a different layer. So now you should have two layers exactly the same with your render on them. Hide the first layer and then simply copy paste your render multiple times on the second layer. After this you should have your first hidden layer with only your original render and your secnd layer with renders copying the whole screen. This makes it so the background colour matches the render colour as it really is the render itself. After that I usually start with a gaussian blur (I think I had it at size 20) to take away some of the specific details of the render filled background. At this point you can mess around with filters.

I also wanted to say I really love how you are surrounding your renders. The white gray lines around them are very nice and look great. I personally never thought of that, but the way I usually do it is that I copy my render layer so I have two exact layers with my renders on them then I take the bottom one and use gaussian blur at size 10 or 20 on it. This gives it a nice glow and looks well. Another way is to select your render layer (actually select not jsut go on) then press ctrl-I (invert so it selects everything you didn't select so in this case the background) Then feather it at size 5 or 10. I think the feather option is in the edit column though I really don't remember.
Btw the background on your Pancham sig is fabulous. Is there a filter that adds the grudge marks or was that done by hand?
Edited by aleony, Mar 17 2014, 04:17 AM.
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Posted Image Marc
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Thanks a lot. I liked the Pancham Sig a lot too, that's why I was so discontent about the Cloyster and Moltres.

I will try the tips you have suggested when I get home :P I'll show you the results, hopefully they'll not fail.

For the background of the pancham sig, I made it by hand. You can see on the right, the lines become less apparent because I was getting lazy xD. If you look closely at the Heatran one, you'll see I've done the same thing. I actually made it on Paint.net (I'm more familiar with that program) and played around with it.

I'm not sure how to highlight a certain part. But I'll definitely try putting the words under to give it a 3d feel. (Not too sure about how to manipulate scissors/magic/magnetic)

Btw, did you make this?
Posted Image
If you did, how did you make the background? I was actually aiming for something like that xD
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Posted Imagealeony
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Monster Hunter
I did not make it which is why I wanted to know how you made it. It is a style I like yet have never managed to learn that was made by Muncho I believe. Also highlight I mean as in the select tool where you make a rectangle and it selects what you have made. The lasso tool or the scissor tool they select parts of the picture.
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Posted Imagefrob
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FROB, The One & Only
Everyone here seems to have cool avatar and sigs lol :P
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Posted Imagealeony
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Monster Hunter
I'm thinking of getting Gimp again simply so I can work over spring break and because it was a really good software that was easy to use.
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Posted Image Marc
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Go for it! It's really useful and works well enough. I haven't had time to try out some of the tips you have suggested (schoolwork, etc.), but i'll post my results here as soon as possible.
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Posted Imagealeony
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Monster Hunter
Well I got gimp. First try at something: Posted Image
I need to get back in my old habits.
Spent an hour and a half making something. Took so long because I messed up a lot and had to restart a few times and in the end a problem happened that I still don't understand xD. Still happy with the result. I got the idea from the way you cover your renders Marc.
Posted Image
Nvm I found at the problem. I'll fix it later.
Edited by aleony, Mar 19 2014, 10:09 PM.
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Posted ImageAndrew
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The man your man could smell like
These signatures are really good! The first signatures I ever made were significantly lower quality than yours, even signatures I made at my "peek" of my signature career weren't as good as the ones you've made, although I didn't learn from people I tried to do things others didn't do and it looked really weird, haha. Anyway, I'm confident you'll be a REALLY good sig-maker, hopefully you can gain the skills to make them for lots of people, If there is a money system implemented I would buy one because personally I think these are really good. Keep up the good work, The more you try the better you'll get, That's really the only advice I can give, haha.
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Posted Imageptd2fan
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Head squirtle and just the prettiest person ever.
dang aleony that sig is amazing man,really good stuff maybe you should try to experiment with gimp,from what i heard from my artist friends and my brother who has a art major,they say gimp is a good website,for making an experimenting with stuff when bored,you should try to make like a pickachu shooting electricity.
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Posted Imagealeony
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Monster Hunter
Gimp is an editing program not a website. Also it really isn't that good. I prefer photoshop. Although gimp is easier to get used to, photoshop has much more possibilities to experiment with and such.
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Posted Image Marc
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Aleony, I experiemented with Gaussian blur, but I can't seem to get the same result for the background. What do you do on gimp?

Btw, the Spinda looks nice xD
Yea aleony. Photoshop has much more potential but its really hard to use. The main reason I chose gimp over photoshop was because I kinda wanted something solid first.
Edited by Marc, Mar 20 2014, 10:26 AM.
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Posted Imageptd2fan
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Head squirtle and just the prettiest person ever.
Lol also my I'm a noob at art give me a break xD.
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Posted Image Marc
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Ok, worked on something.

"Fail" Signature


The theme was... You'll see.

Not the best but it was something I tried to do. Perhaps I should have increased the contrast of the grungy bg, or did something with the lighting. Anyhow, what do you think?
Worked on something else.
Now this is something I'm proud of.


I really liked it. What do you think?

Credits to Minimii for helping me with this!
Edited by Marc, Mar 22 2014, 06:10 PM.
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Posted Imageptd2fan
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Head squirtle and just the prettiest person ever.
i like the taimer who made the yveltal? That is also good
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Posted Image Marc
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What taimer? And minimii made the Yvetal, he gave me the idea for the Trainer sig.
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Posted Imageminimii
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Arceus
Looks really nice marc glad I could help you :)
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Posted Imageptd2fan
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Head squirtle and just the prettiest person ever.
*trainer,also I love how the trainer looks 3D
*trainer,also I love how the trainer looks 3D
Edited by ptd2fan, Mar 22 2014, 10:35 PM.
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Posted Imagealeony
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Monster Hunter
The fail sig is ok it is jsut that nothing stand out enough correctly. The grunge is too hard to see and the lightning around the probass takes a lot of attention that it shouldn't be attracting too much. Tone down the lightning and make the grunge more visible. I like the trainer one especially that it has a colour pallet under the second version. The render outline that was smudged looks awesome too good job with that. My old computer got fixed so I managed to get my files out of there before my Dad formatted it so now I'm working on a big project I started two years ago that is absolutely massive. When it is done I'll post the result here (hint hint it will be my new avatar :P) I think at the rate I'm going (3-4 hours a day) It should be done in a few days.
Edited by aleony, Mar 22 2014, 11:45 PM.
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Posted Image Marc
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Aleony, do you think I should have increased the contrast between the smudged outlines and the render?

Thanks a lot. I think i could have done better with the fail sig - It was the first time I used some kind of lighting.
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Posted Imagealeony
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Monster Hunter
As I don't do Grunge sigs I wouldn't really know. However I think that with grunge sigs the smudged outline looks better is the colour is stale. Try to add a grey or black layer on top and put it to overlay it might help. Also I think the text is really off-putting. Myself, I like to make the text small and more or less insignificant and the background to be more apparent. The font is also very wavy which counter reacts with Probass and his sharp edges and the very nature of most grunge sigs. I think if you used a more blocky text and made it a bit smaller it might fit better. Another thing, a lot of grunge sigs I have seen that have looked great, try to limit the amount of colours outside the render. Try to make everything a dark grey/black colour and simply tint it to whatever colour you want it to be. (Make the same layer twice one grey/black and the other the actual colour and then simply put one over the other (try both idk what will look best) and put the one on top too overlay.) Hope I helped!
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Posted Image Marc
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Ah ok. I'll try that next time. I think I'm gonna give grunge a rest and try out this new style.

Posted Image

Hasn't been finished yet. Do you think a more luminous background would to the sig good? What font should I use? (I have no idea what font to use ;/)
Alright, I just found some kind of font and finished it.
Posted Image

Not too hyped about how everything turned out. I'm still not too sure what I'm doing wrong.

Alright, that lined thingy didn't work out so well. Might as well ditch it.
Posted Image
Edited by Marc, Mar 23 2014, 06:59 AM.
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