I made some sigs the past few weeks and pretty much need new ideas or tips on improving. I use the same technique/brushes for most of my signatures and yea... They get a bit repeative for me. Any tips and tricks on making them a bit diverse would help me greatly.
Note - The ones with the Ragnarok Online game characters and things were requested to be made by people. (Cept the ones with the mini characters in them. My own ideas <3)
Hm, I think those are it for the ones I want opinions on o-o!
09-02-2006, 10:10 AM
Jeff
Note: This is not a 'few' sigs. This is more like 'a lot' of sigs, heh.
01, 02, 03, 04: All very similar, so as you've said they get repetitive. I don't like the transparent (or very close to) text on the first two, they're distracting. Usually something like 50-75% opaque white, or light purple, or pink works. The same goes for the overlay border; distracting because changes colors/brightness without warning (you typically want the border to be unnoticed at first and then do it's job when needed (don't mind the border in my sig; I was foolish and inexperienced)). The stocks seem like they were just slapped on the sig (and they were; you don't want this to be so apparent). Blending in and/or natural placement helps with this. However, I've not used sprites in sigs before so I wouldn't be a big help. At first glance I'm questioning whether it's even possible. But everying preceding is a critique of what would make it look more professional but it looks like you were going for a more fun(ny) look and in that you've succeeded. Take the critique then as you will, no need to listen to everything.
05: I like this one, but the stock needs focus. Also, the text is hard to read. Probably a combination of script font and clashing with the background.
06: Similar to 05, but the text is a little better. It may stand out too much against the stock because it's full white and nothing else is. Light blue may work better.
07: Not much wrong with this. Simple, but I like that. I you do want a problem though, it's that the background is similar to all others, but you knew that.
08: I'm not a fan of the grids; they don't really do anything for this. If you moved the grids behind the stock and lowered the opacity so that it was as close to 0% as possible but still being visible (which usually isn't 1%) then it would look better. That's what's known as depth, when you have things that aren't meant to be seen right away, and when the viewer can look at a sig and see something new after looking again. The same goes for all the white glowing things, their presence needs to be lowered a bit as to avoid clashing.
09: I like this. The flash is a little bright for my tastes but I can see why it was done the way it was. Again, the overlay border, but that's partly personal preference as well.
One thing I noticed that was genreally consistent throughout these is that text placement and lack of effects and word choice were all really damn good. Probably better than what I'm capable of, and that makes me sad. One thing a lot of new people do in photoshop is toss in as many layer styles as they possibly can without realizing that the final would have looked better with no layer styles at all. I don't know if you've simply passed this phase already (as I have), but if not then that is amazing. Good work.
09-02-2006, 03:31 PM
phantamines
ya, holy crap thats alot. jsoosiah hit alot of points, so im just give my 2 cents. things seem to look pretty good, but i would suggest working on one sig and try to bring out everything you know :) but i really like the sprite idea (but blending would be hard..)
09-03-2006, 11:49 PM
CherryDreams
Yea well.. I had time on my hands T_T;
The first two were basically requests with their details for it, but I can see where you're going with it. I actually kinda half assed them >_>; The text exclusion just seemed to go better with them. It looked funky with the whole thing with black text. I haven't tried your suggestion but I'll go back and check it out with the same fonts when I'm doing another sig. The border, I really have a thing with plain borders. Some sigs you need tem some you don't, these ones were probably just by my choice since I wanted the person(s) to keep on refering to me so I did the fancy stuff that they don't know. :> The stocks, yup I just slapped them on since I didn't feel like going over the placements too much. I'm not much of a perfectionist with them. The ones with the mini sprites took some time. Every little thing needed to be layered ontop of each other and it took some time. I really do like sigs with a purpose instead of randomness. Blending = nearly impossible without making it look strange in these sprites. ;(
The 05 one was one of my very first sigs. I really don't like the white in it, but I didn't really want it to match with the first saying's outline. I have the psd, so if I ever decide to use that one I'd probably go back and change it.
I half assed that 06. I left it white because I didn't want to go back and find the color to match. Though I probably should have before I uploaded it.
Hmm Yeaa I probably should have gotten rid of the grids. But her hair in the back had a lot of fuzziness that I wanted to cover up. I should lower the opacity of it but I'm afraid of the fuzziness that might come back.
That was for SOTW as you can see >>; The theme just had to be flash.... T__T I didn't have a choice since I didn't feel like grabbing a marvel character and using a bunch of bright reds.
And thank you for the compliment :> Your critique is just the thing I need for new ideas and things that I need to try. *Gives them a cookie*
Blitz, I do not know what you're refering to. :>
Working on one sig and bringing out eveything I know? o_o;..... I don't really think I would like to do that. ~.~; Making something like that wouldn't really be my cup of tea. It's too much ideas trying to fit into one sig. And wallpapers aren't really something I'd like to do. I might try one idea at a time though, so that's always an option. o.o;
