i tried..haha..my first sig

Nace · Post by **Nace** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 8:47 am

feel free to say whatever.
im open to suggestions/comments
always looking to improve =]

haha, i know it sucks..but i tried..ive never made a sig before..so yeah

Snudge · Post by **Snudge** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 9:05 am

Well, it's not that bad, seriously, it isn't

I did a lot worse on my first sig.

Well, to start off, and that what a lot of people are going to say, is that you need a border.
To create, create a new layer, press ctrl+a(or applesign+a if youre on a mac) then edit-stroke and then prefferably black, and on the inside, doesnt work when you select outside.

Second of all, is that you got a blank spot in your sig, which is at the bottom right corner.
It's fairly huge, so it now looks like you forgot some.
To get rid of that, just make the canvas size smaller, and fiddle with it untill you like it.

I think there's more, but someone else will point you to that I hope.

Keep 'em coming!

Moogie · Post by **Moogie** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 9:07 am

It actually looks like one little black mage standing out from a crowd of black mages... it's cute. :3

I won't go into detail with tips and suggestions and stuff, I'll just touch on some points briefly and then you can think about them when you start on something new.

1. Composition. This is making the best use of space, positioning key objects like a character or text someplace that makes good sense. Keeping all areas of the image balanced, so that the eye doesn't ignore huge areas of the picture, thus making them go to waste.

2. Redundancy. Try not to have large areas with no use. With your current example, you can quite safely chop off 50 pixels from the left and about 100 from the right, and not lose anything but patterned background. Simply put, to justify the height or width of your sig, it is best to make all areas important to the overall picture.

3. Text. And an additional 'must' rule when using outer glow: change the default colour, otherwise everybody recognises it and it stands out in a rather ugly fashion, even if that colour is what you intended. Even if you still want a yellow outer glow, change its shade from the default. Trust me on that. Besides the "outer glow rule", the position, size, and style of text is important. Place it in a space that doesn't look random - usual good text areas include the upper/lower border of the image at either the left or right side, or aligned to the middle of the vertical axis at either the left or right side. In signatures where there is little detail, larger text seems to look best. Otherwise, you may prefer it to be small and fit more with the details around it.

Hope this is helpful to you. Keep practicing and experimenting, and never be afraid to ask for comments and critisisms on your work. It is the only way anybody ever tunes their skills.

Keep up the effort!

(Edit: changed "horizontal" to "vertical". Basically I mean "in the middle of the top and bottom height of the image".

)

Snudge · Post by **Snudge** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 10:22 am

Ye, thats one more thing I'd like to add.

Your FF mage(I always loved that funny little fella

) looks to the left. and its positioned somewhere near the left-middle.
What I like to keep in mind is that, if a render looks to the left, put it on the right. Thus it looks more 'in balance'. (At least thats my opinion.)

CrimsonNuker · Post by **CrimsonNuker** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 11:10 am

pretty nice

you might want to add a boarder

your text doesnt really matter, as long as your viewers can read and understand it, i mean look at mine lol nice and simple

Bakemaster · Post by **Bakemaster** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 6:12 pm

Snudge wrote:What I like to keep in mind is that, if a render looks to the left, put it on the right. Thus it looks more 'in balance'. (At least thats my opinion.)

Yep, that's a pretty basic rule of photography/film/video framing. The audience/viewer wants to know what the subject is looking at, not what's behind him.