Well I have been out of the game for 4 some years. I joined the service and lost the drive to make signatures or be on a forum. Recently I became very active on a forum for Toyota Tacoma's and have been making signatures for their members little by little. I came here because I used to use this site to obtain new tricks and gain insight on how to become better. Below are the first signatures in years. The site I make them for love them however they never seen amazing signatures and wouldnt know how to give true feedback either. Can't wait to meet the new crowd here and begin improving my work. The one I am currently working on is this one below, not done just got tired and needed to let some time pass before making final touches, cleaning it up and added decent text. Feedback is welcomed but please be nice
Uhmm well the effects you got going on now are too much alike to be honest, every time its a picture with some filters put on it. Maybe experiment with some other techniques, try to make one without going to the filters gallery? I know you find the urge to add filters everytime you're stuck, but just try something else (textures, c4d, smudging, etc. etc..) To be honest they all look boring and plain now, have some more color in them, more rare effects that will wow them You can also use pictures that really show what those trucks are capable of?, As for your text, they are good but don't put it too far away otherwise you'll loose your focal which would be the truck Anyway, my advice is too just try different things, also maybe try different canvas sizes, maybe it'll look better I like the third one the most, cause there i can actually see you did something more than filters, thats good Good job, keep it up!
I like the look of the first one; I like how the car is really reflective/sharp, looks HQ; you should try to aim for that quality look in all the sigs. Like in your latest car looks faded at the edges etc. (not sure if you are purposefully trying to make it look like its a painting? Imo realistic look is better.) In terms of concept/work done the third is the best, agreed with Kovan there. But disagree on the adding C4D/smudging techs, cause those are techs I feel wouldnt match well with a car sig they way they do with gaming/artistic sigs (maybe Im mistaken). I do think you should experiment with more techniques, but I think there's two big directions you can take your sigs in: 1.There's two specific styles I think you should take the car sigs in direction of; one is a realistic photomanip style look with concepts like the third-car inside the cave. The idea would be to do different stuff, car in a snowstorm, being toss by a tornado, floating on water, with burning tires, etc. all the while trying to make it look really realistic - this is the key point here, trying ot make it a really HQ photomanip, making sure you cut out the cars from the pics using pen tool and masks, adding realistic depth using subtle blur, making sure to add shadows according to the light source, smoothing out the edges of the car with the bg. For that trying out pro tutorials from adobe and worth1000 and other photomanip sites. A tip would be to work with a bigger canvas, then resize down for the final sig version. For the text in this style, for some, I think it'd be cool if you made your text 3d/part of the scene. 2. Vector. If you vector the cars, (more work, sure, but if done well could yield nice results) then it'll be easier to incorporate techniques and elements of pop art/cutout/design. My 2 cents.
First off thanks alot guys. This is exactly what I wanted. One artist to another, great advice with just the right ammount of blunt in it! Ill try to work with those ideas. The first one is actually my truck. Being that I can see angles, backgrounds and overall picture, I am able to leave the picture near stock and enjoy the natural colors and views. That is very basic photo editing which I would love to do more but these guys want mountains and forests from cars parked in an urban setting or a driveway. I havent took the time to actually cut out the truck and properly place it in the background (more eraser nd blending filters) so on the next one I will cut out the truck and try to do it right. I do know how to vector and have done several large pieces in the past with it. I have a street truck in line for that and I am stoked. Alot of the guys are older males who dont enjoy pop art but it will look awesome with a lowered truck. Never did a vehicle though so that should be fun. @Kovan, the third signature was my favorite to work out. I used probably 6 different pictures to bring it all together, but he wanted a desert theme which brought the fourth one into production.
Once you get used to pen tool actually cutting out becomes pretty quick. Sometimes I get lazy and I'll use erasers/filters but ultimately I'm unhappy with the result and I end up pentooling it anyway And yeah, I was thinkign that, smudge/c4d might just be funky looking for some of these guys; just keep perfecting your blending and working on realistic particle/smoke/fire/water/reflections effects etc. If you're able to take their car, put it in a nature bg, and still make it look like the first one, where it almost looks like an original really well taken stock, that would be great.
