I'm confused. I see a lot of sigs here and on similar boards that, to me, seem really unremarkable. It seems that a really simple background, a picture (with opacity reduced) and one or two words of text is considered to be a really good signature. I just don't get it. On several occaisions here I've tried things that are technically difficult only to be told that I need "a lot of work" while someone I'm competing against (no blending, no filters, no masks, occaisionally even no brushing) recieves high praise. I'm familiar with balance, and image composition, colour theory and whatnot but I can't wrap my brain around why a picture comprised of: a simple background, some text, all flattened and made uniformly the same colour, is so successful. I'm becoming discouraged. Can any seasoned people out there (please no l33t trash talking) give me some advice? I've looked at tutorials but Photoshop is so much more powerful than the limits tutorials go to. In addition to any advice you might have I'd really appreciate some answers to these questions: Why is a single colour sig more appealing than one with a well selected balance of colour? What is the most important single element in a sig for you (this will vary widely so please consider carefully)? Why is a grunge look of random brushing favourable to well blended images and clean lines? In your opinion why (in some cases) is taking a picture and just running it through 5 or 6 filters considered to be good graphical work? DISCLAIMER - I'm in no way trying to disrespect anyone's style or work with this post, I'm just trying to get more insight into the GR community. I'd like to be here for a while but without some guidence I think I'll cease to become interested in this facet of PS creativity. Thank you.
To tell you the truth I don't know what makes a good sig. I think they like the one with a single colour better b/c it seems more blended with the background. I have seen a couple of your sigs and I actually like the current one you have with the C4d render and the colors that are in there. I guess what makes a good sig is everything flows nicely and the image is blended well with the bg, IMO. By the way, I think you need to blend your text with the bg a little better...that's just me
hi creater, first of all welcome. second ... is "the meaning of life" your next question? beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so true. to ME a good sig is when everything "fits together nicely", that one item complements the rest and the rest embraces the one item. every single thing on the sig has to be as good as all the other parts. I've made all sorts of styles from minimalistic to loaded honestly, making grunge sigs is very "forgiving", I find it easier to whipe more things under the carpet. one of the latest battles was won by Stan, that was a great sig imo. it sets a mood http://www.gamerenders.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=9129 this was my comment (btw, coke's sig wasnt visible when I voted) font choice is also important, some make a great sig and then use a font that has been overused already or dont spent any time on the textlayer style. GR is about games, so subjects from games (the renders/cutouts/screenshots/wallpapers) I feel have a leg up on other subjects such as real life fotos, hitech renders or regular art. as to what is the best technic : the technics used are not important, the result is. again, welcome and I'm looking forward to enjoy your skills.
I appreciate the responses so far. Thanks stan, Overlord, and Guinness70 for your thoughts. I understand the comment about the font choice and I'll endevour to put more time into mine. STAN: Thanks for your comment. I just get a little frustrated when there has been no effort to ACTUALLY blend a picture (eraser, masks, layer effects, etc.) and everyone comments on how well it's "blended". To me, 'Luminosity' isn't blending. OVERLORD: I really like your red sig. There are a lot of elements in it and isn't something I'd classify as an "easy-ass sig" but I see your point. Guinness70: "the meaning of like" WAS my next question, but I thought it might scare off some users. I agree that the funal project must look "tight" but one thing I'm struggling with is that I seem to lose a significant level of quality in the transfer between my PS and the web. Everything looks smoother in PS and I'm often dissapointed at a 'graininess' that creeps in when I post on the web. I'm used to creating things for print/publishing. How can I keep my renders 'sharp' through to the final product? Even starting from a sharp hi-res pic the end result seems a little ragged (not because of rendering, it's somehting else). One thing I've been beating myself up about has been the losses in battles. I guess I shouldn't becasue most voters don't comment or justify their vote (despite a request to do so) and a lot of new members seem to vote on EVERYTHING just to increase their post count. Please more comments! At this point there are like 45 views and 3 replies.
Ok im new here, but this is what I think. A great sig (which i have still failed to make) is a signature that grabs your attention above the rest. There is some element in the sig that is your focus point, and everything else flows from it/to it, and compliments it. This technique is used for many sigs, and I also think your current sig with the 3D render does this. The other type of great sig is one that all blends without having that one thing to grab the eye, without that one element in the picture to bring your focus to, so your eyes go wild when you see it. You dont know what to look at first, and you have to take a few minutes out of your life and just stare at the signature, sucking all the information in. Thats my opinion on what makes a signature 'better' than others.
i think anything can make a sig look good... as long as the final product looks nice its a great signature... usually when i make a sig i usually try to find a nice render cause thats the main part of the sig...a good render = good sig.... and also sometimes a sig with 1 colour looks nice and which is the easiest way of coloring a sig...then the diffrent color thing is a little harder and which i recently learned.... but final....ITS ALL ABOUT THE FINAL PRODUCT.
i don't belive in good sigs any more but something that i suppose would make a good sig is something different, unique, or rebellious.
A good sig... hmm a good sig is undefinable... a sig can vary from different style to different style... hearing about your background, it seems as if you are a very intelligent worker in this subject, but here is what i think makes a good sig its how it flows... less time is more... its how you put things together without having to "try." a signature was first meant to be a representation of urself, then came along the images. everyone puts what they see in their mind onto the image - and so they leave it at that... simplicity.... i myself look for good brushing and blending of sigs, without having to colourize them or hue/sat, or color balance, it should be blended with just the brush colors and the render color... nothing should be changed.. grunge is a style of brush, a spongey brush, not necessarily the way of blending a sig, there is no clean lines in grunge, becuase it is very dissapated, and spread out... a true grunge sig is one that is "sponged" all over, rather than just a grunge bg with some tech brushes on it or something. Grunge is not the opposite of something that is well blended... grunge is well blending... what most people say is that it all boils down to an image, a few brushes, and a few lines of text. the whole thing of the sig is the overall arrangement, THE FLOW. ~peace
when I start a sig CTRL+N its a canvas with resolution 150/RGB color/transp bg, not the 72/75dpi gif comes in. and then drag the images in the new canvas rather then open an existing image and crop. I do always save sigs and tars as gif, for banners sometimes as jpg. sigs and tars are small images dimension wise and unless its has a largly spread out color gradient in it, I dont bother with the larger kb jpg. so when I save as gif its with a 256color palette. in the Save for Web menu, dont preview the image in the "Original" tab but rather in the "Optimized" tab coz that's how it will look on the web. in the 2 up tab you can compare the Original to the Optimized and in the 4up tab PS shows how the image would look if kbsize is more important then quality. altho sometimes there is little to no noticable difference. and if a 120kb image looks exactly the same as its 30kb version, why waste 90kb... go with the 30kb version.
Guinness70 thanks for the advice, I do use new backgrounds with 200 dpi, but I haven't been saving for the web, which I suspect may have something to do with my difficulty. i just can't seem to get the 'cut' lines I see on some sigs. practice... practice... practice I guess. I agree that flow is the most important component in a sig. No argument here. I'd like to pull examples off battles but I'm afraid of starting some sort of flame war. Everyone here has given well articulated rationale for what makes a good sig, I just haven't seen this same rationale put into practice in some of the judging (not necessairily by posters here, but generally). Any other comments?
what you mean by "cut lines"? the sharp cutout "renders" ? we got some specialists here! as for the judging, I think it has changed in the recent SOTWs.
No, not the renders themselves, I can do that pretty easily, I mean that for instance I see some images that have really defined "sharp" details but after applying that image to a sig I still find that the image blurs slightly. THis happens even if I start with a high res image, use 200dpi for the sig and only reduce the size of the image in even incremets. I'm not sure why this is happening. I'm tempted to just redraw the renders using vectored lines but that would take forever.
