New sig or wallpaper? show it off here!

[Alhuin]

I liked Ark's recent enough that I tried copying the style/idea. I originally thought he just maneuvered the stock image and added some effects himself, so I tried doing that as well, but with my own twist. It was for practice, since I'm not used to forming sigs using a stock image and no render. After I completed it and showed it to him, I found out he actually rendered most of Angel himself, and thus I practiced in a way that was not used. Nevertheless, I think my outcome was quite good, and I was able to add my own style to an already excellent sig. The only thing I was not able to imitate was the font for "tenshi".



Now that that introduction is over, I took my practice of working with a stock image and applied it to my own creation.



I didn't do any erasing/blending that was needed in my practice example, but I did manipulate the image in a number of ways. I can probably go back and do some smudging/erasing to achieve a different blend result, but I like the way this turned out as it is. My name might need a bit of work, or I can just remove it entirely, but I wanted some comments about stock-image sig-making; whether or not these look good or bad.

[Archangel]

More Tenshi goodness

I actually had a whole lot planned for this sig but i decided that in this case less was more

[Buffalobiian]

My bone to pick has more to do with the actual drawing more than anything. The expression doesn't look like her. :S

[Alhuin]

I'm not going to lie, Arch... I don't like it. In addition to Bill's comment about the drawing itself (with the expression not resembling a typical Kanade expression), I also don't like the lens flare effect. It probably stems from comments about the use of lens flare being a typical "noob"/overused filter, so it was looked down upon when I started working in PS. I was criticized pretty harshly for using it in something (though I have since lost whatever it was... probably wasn't that good anyways).

However, I do like the idea of "less is more", and, if the drawing was better suited to her personality, alongside the removal of lens-flare (in favour of maybe "rendering" the butterfly, then duplicating/blurring/filtering it so it has more of a glow effect like you were trying to do), then I think the sig would be great. I'd probably even add in some more "glowing orbs".

Glad to see you becoming more active in PS though =P.

[shinta|hikari]

New set.

Needless to say, it is a style not really used much here.

[Buffalobiian]

Humorous. I had a good chuckle at that.

Where did the avatar shot come from? And is that another man's hand she's holding onto?!

[shinta|hikari]

Oh, she is holding her knee in the original image. I got it from what I think is official art.

[Buffalobiian]

Oh, she is holding her knee in the original image. I got it from what I think is official art.

/lowers fist

[Archangel]

It's Tenshimania on gotwoot \o/



Too many glowing orbs?

[Buffalobiian]

It's Tenshimania on gotwoot \o/



Too many glowing orbs?

Yeah, especially in the foreground.

Have you tried transparent orbs?

[Alhuin]

@shinta: Where or how did you get the style for your sig. I had something in mind one day with using the Angel Beats logo, but couldn't find a transparent "render" of one to use, and had no idea how to make it myself.

@Arch: Your glowing orbs are too... round... and don't fade into the background well... I'm not sure how to explain it. But take a soft round brush.... probably around 13-15px, set it to white, and then just click once, and you will see a difference in the way it blends. The ones in the top right look decent, close to vertical edge. The orbs going over her are fine, in my opinion, but the ones on the left need to be smaller, and spaced out a bit more. You want the butterfly to be the main focal for the glowing.

[shinta|hikari]

I just used a screenshot logo of angel beats and edited it a bit. I could not find the exact font they used, so I had to make the text myself. Luckily, a lot of the letters in angel beats are also in my handle.

[shinta|hikari]

Sorry for the double post.

New set, my current as usual.

For those who are wondering, she is Naoto from Dogs.

Again, I went with the contrasting styles and colour themes for the avatar and sig. The avatar has a simple vectored look, while the sig has a rough noisy finish.

The Japanese on the sig says Naoto and Blade Maiden.

EDIT: Just viewed this at my work computer, and realized that the noise I added on the black text is quite excessive. It didn't show on my home PC because it has a darker display compared to most monitors. I will reduce the noise later.

EDIT2: Here are two new versions.

This one has less noise on the text.


This one has no noise on the text, and the image has been slightly blurred to remove most of the noise in the entire thing.


Which of the 3, including my current sig, looks best?

[Alhuin]

I definitely like no noise on the text... but I don't think the person should be blurred (the background blurred is fine). Other than that, I really like it, even though I haven't seen that anime.

[Buffalobiian]

I like either "less noise" or "default noise", it gives the image its rough look.

I had to look down from an elevated angle to see the noise though... so I might have a monitor that's more like Shinta's home one, though I don't consider it to be "dark" myself.

[shinta|hikari]

I changed it to the less noise version. I like the one without noise too, but I was originally going for the rough look so I will stick with it. Thanks for the input.

[Alhuin]

Well, you haven't posted here about it yet, but I like your current shinta. The only thing I'm sketchy on is the quality of the image in the sig. It might not hurt to try some "image enhancing" techniques in PS, if you want. I like the contrast of "cuteness" and "badassness" though.

[shinta|hikari]

The reason why I didn't post about it is because I didn't really do much aside from cropping the images and placing them.

[Archangel]

The sig image is pretty low quality, you could have filtered it a bit better

[Alhuin]

Haven't posted any sigs for awhile, so I'll throw up one I messed around with earlier.



It's a work in progress, but I haven't spent too much time in PS recently, so it might not be finished anytime soon.

EDIT: Realized after I posted that shinta's new one is Asuka as well. Thought that was funny =].

Also, I forgot to add a border, but if I ever finish it, there will be one.