Silkroad Online Forums

--- New Style ; Real life focal
-- Alright its my first time with this kind of style
-- I insist,choose your favourite version
-- I'v notice I can't go as crazy(bright color,overdone effect) with Real focals,any techniques to suggest?

v1


v2(+ Motion Blur)


v3(+ Blurred Edges,Sharpened Center)


v4( + Invert,C4D,For Fun)

Weird, I told a guy something about this earlier today.

To be honest, it all comes down to the stock.
It's like 40% your creativity and 60% the stock.

In this case, that stock is terribly boring and unusable.
Try to choose stocks that have some flow and are interesting.

Good Luck

Too add on to your needs, I usually try to get stocks that have a plain background.
Or, cut the person I want out of a photo.
Or, smudge the bg.

But, that's for my style, some people use the existing bg to their advantage.
Experiment and see what you like.

Example

I'd still say it's a huge improvement from your other sigs. v1 is the best

Kraq wrote:Try to choose stocks that have some flow and are interesting.

Exactly what I was thinking.
Something I was taught a looooong time ago here (by dom i think) was that you should never put your focal right smack dab in the middle of the sig, especially when it is a square image with no angle to the shot.
So:

Next time you do a signature, instead of doing three or four variations of essentially the same signature, think of different layouts and then think of colors/sharpen/blur. You don't need to follow through with each, but just think about them a little and you'll find that your ideas will start to improve rapidly.

I agree with all the advice everyone has given you so far but I don't really understand what you were trying to do with this tag.

It looked like you used a render from this stock.


Then you put it on top of a fall road stock.
Something similar to this.


Then you turned it black and white and spammed a random brush and warning sign.

For the other versions you did exactly as you said.

The render, as said before, has no flow. Plus the background doesn't lend it self to create flow. If the render has no flow and the stock/background has no flow you will have a very difficult time creating flow.

Here are two examples of good flow. The first is one of Kraq's tags and the second is one of mine.


The flow in this tag starts from the tiger and flows outwards with the lightning type effects. This type of flow starts you at the focal and brings you through the rest of the tag.


The flow in this tag can be seen two different ways. Some may start at the focal and follow the arrows out. Some may start at the outsides and work in toward the focal.


Both those types of flow drag the viewer through the piece very smoothly.

Here is your tag.

The "flow" in this tag is all over the place. All the brushes you used draws the viewer away from the focal. As you can see the focal as no flow and the warning brush causes some conflict. The triangle point jams into the flow of the other brushes. Also the warning brush sticks out a lot and many times when I look at this tag I see the warning sign first.



For your next few tags I think it would be best if you worked on flow. Try to use more appropriate brushes and renders/stocks with some flow already in them.

Hopefully this helps.

Also a good tip is the 1/3 rule.
1/3-black
1/3-midtones
1/3-white
Or at lease try to keep it around there, it really helps make things look nicer.
I also try to keep away from just using a brush for full effect, instead use a brush to help create a part of it.