My Work

For only 6 months you are doing pretty good, i remember when I only had been using it 6 months, mine were just god-awful

Yes you are learning really quick andd it shows in your works. Blending needs a tiny bit more work. Text has to be smaller, more subtle, blend in more. Lighting is petty bad but it tass time. I took awhile to learn all these concepts. I particullarily like the last one because its a really good concept. And the 3rd one down is almost like Phantom of the Opera kind of thing good job my friend.

thanx alot guy's. i think im going to look up some text and lighting tutorials next maybe a bit of blending and ill try the next SOTW. i realy respect all your comments thanx

You will be able to learn alot here, I know I certainly have only been visiting this site for a month or so.

I have been with 3 sites so far and they all were really good so... I'm hoping this site stands out amongst the rest.

me to there is nothing better than joining a community with people with real knowlage of photoshop to comment on your work. ive been on a few sites and if your new they just ignore you but hear is better

YOur best is by far your red and orange spiderman one. However since I have my coffee im just gonna do a critique for all of 'em.

1st sig - I've never been very much of a fan of popout sigs. This one is pretty well down as far as popout wise. I hate seeing popout sigs and the render is all choppy and looks liek garbage. This looks pretty neat.
When you make a border it's main purpose serves to separate the sig from what is around it - whether it be a forum or you desktop background. With popout sigs You have your render going over your border which pretty much defeats it's purpose of being there. IMO (in my opinion) I think you should get rid of the borders.

The Background(BG - remember BG because i use the term a lot) is pretty nice It goes well with the render and has some nice colors.
However I'm kind of curious how you made it. It seem to me it could either be a series of grunge brushes mixed with some blending and then a few filters and what not, but I'm really not sure. It looks nice and grunge brushes are cool to use, however when making sigs you have to remember to use everything in moderation. IMO you almost have to much filtering. i would try to dull it down just a bit so we can see more detail in the BG, rather than just swirlyies :P.

The lighting is really pretty good. I would say its probabaly your high point in the sig...aside from color, you really nailed the coloring.
However your lighting is off by just a tiny bit. If you look at the renders highlights its coming more from the left. I would say probabaly about 20-30 PX to the left. I know it's kind of hard to edit that know but if you can try and move it a bit. If not just remember to look at your highlights next time.

Your blending..I gotta be completly honest, I don't see any. :P
I would try out a few tutorials to see how they blended their sigs. You might pick up some useful tips. Blending cane be done with smudging or erasing or just overlapping some of the BG onto the render. If you want some in depth help with it just add me on MSN and I can teach ya.

Finally your text though it's a good start there are a few things you want to remember.
1. Keep it small. It's supposed to blend with your sig so as not to distract away from the focal (in this case the blue guy/girl - can't tell which). So just keep it small so it kind of blends in more.
2. Don't use blending options. No outerglow, bevel and emboss, innershadow. None of it. It just makes it really hard for blending with the sig and tends to be the mark of a begginer.
3. Try to use default fonts until you get your berrings with it. I've bene making sigs for well..about a year and a half and I just started figureing out text not tooo long ago :P. Try to use fonts like arial, tahoma, eurose(if you have it).

I highly reccomend checkking out Dark method's text tutorial here:
DarkMethod's Text basics


I suggest you also check out a few other sig tuts, to see how the blend things and create thier BG's. Daemons are quite popular, You could also try mine which have some pretty great feedback.

Okay so that was a long critique go get an apple or somehting because the rest is gonna be a long one.

Got your food? OKay now lets keep goin.

Sig number 2 - Throughout your sig set I can see your style developing. The first two are very very alike as far as text placement, BG, coloring, popout, blending etc. Because of that i'm just going to move onto number three because pretty much everything i said goes teh same for this sig too.

SIg 3 - This is very cool! I love how you really started to use the render/stock for your Background. I use mine to create my background too. The use of those little streamer things is cool. One thing to be aware of though is that in a sig you only want one focal (focal = main attraction in this case your render or the girls face). If you have more that one focal then peoples eyes are bouncing around everywhere. Nice job though blending wise.

The coloring on this one is a bit off. It's very monotone and almost deep sea blue (although i don't know why they call the sea blue because every beach i went to like virginia beach is actually kind of sea foam green.:P) Next time when you are coloring use gradient maps and photo filters and stuff on light opacities and blending options like: softlight and hue. This will minimize monotone coloring.

I like the border on this sig. I'm usually not a fan of the black and white 1px sandwhich border, but it kind of works on this sig, though I can't help and wonder what it would be like with a 3-4 px black border. Nice job though.

The text on this is a lot better. However I caution you, watch out for those colors on your text, There really isn't any red in the sig so the red in your text isn't really blending. IMO the red would be cool as like a light blue. But the actual font is pretty nice (though it isn't a default it still works).

SIg 4 - The first thing that stands out to me on this one is a very heavy purple/orange gradient map. And though graident maps are awesome and work great for coloring, you gotta use it in moderation. I would change teh opacity on that to like 5-10% and set it to like soft light. That way you can preserve some of the natural color but still add our own flair.

Text - Remember to use default fonts and no blending options. Your text is very close to blending well but the blending options is killing it for me.

BG(background..remember? :P) - It seems to me you created this with grunge brushes. WHich is nice but you should definitly try to read a few tuts to get your bearing son the BG's.

Border - The border is nice however I would try to stay away from the sandwhich borders, they very rarley go well with sigs and it is a lot easier to use a solid black or white border that will look as good or better.

Lighting - If you look at the render on here cheek you can see a highlight showing a dead giveaway that the ligting should be from the left Or straight below her (check he neck/torso area). As far as lighting goes to make it I usually do the following:
1. Create a black layer and set it to linear dodge.
2. Get out a BIG (100 px?) brush and set it to 0% hardness.
3. Either use white or get a bright color from the sig, and while making sure you have your brush on a low opacity 30-55% brush lightly where your lighting should be.

This technique will create a glowing effect. Try it, I use it on every sig.

Now I would do the rest of the sigs however one I'm tired of critiqueing. And two they all have a similar style so I would just be repeating myself. SO for that I'm not really going to keep going.

However i must say on your red spiderman sig the coloring is pretty nice and i really like the effects underneath him, looks very nice.

SO I hope you take my above critique well, and take what you learned into your next sig. Because if you learn from what I said you will be making awesome sigs in no time.

Haha now here comes the apologetic type warning...
PLease Do not take my critique the wrong way! :P. Your sigs are very good especailly for only 6 months PSing. I just do very indepth critiques and sometimes people think their sigs are horrible after it, but they aren't I'm just pointing as many things out as i can find so you can get better. So please take all of this with the grain of salt.

OMfg..i just wrote a paper..

Sry i wrote so much...But happy reading..:P

lol thats awesome that you are willing to help him that much lol

Wow thanx there is alot there to help me and now that its pointed out instead of people saying there good i understand where im going wrong and cant quite grasp why i did half of them thing's. All the BG's in these sigs are from the renders with grundge brushes and smudg tool mainly. Just like to say thanx alot im realy gratefull