New Zab Signatures

[lf2TimmE1]

@es: do sth. better!

@zab: pretty nice signatures u got there...first one is my fav cause the interaction of the colours looks quite nice..and i also like how he fuses with the darker part on the left side of sig

[Yakui]

signatures with fancypants photoshop effects are pretty lame on the long run

[Zabobula]

The blue lighting on the left of the stickman is really off-putting.

lol oh for a second I thought it was "lightning". Oh I see what you mean. Everyone seems to like the first one so much. I think I'll change my current one to the first then.

Lol, I liked the last one the most.. But it seems u already put it in your sig so it doesn't matter anymore I guess

OF COURSE IT MATTERS. This is me hosting some more attempts at trying to becoming a better digital graphic designer (also the major I'm going for in school rite now) and I'm asking for a simple critique so like i said...it matters.

Lightning is incredibly off.

Oh so it is lightning? Um...there is no lightning in the picture. If you meant lighting like what Cirno said then yeah I got it.

@to Cirno's most recent post:

I agree. I'm doing my best without taking the eZ way out and downloading all sorts of abstract and grunge brushes. And I'm taking the classes for all this stuff 2. (Art Institute ftw)

[Evil Sonidow]

lf2TimmE1 (Click to View)

It's far from good, but it's already miles ahead of Zab's.

Also, it's the combination of everything that makes a good sig, whether you use brushes or not.

[Zabobula]

Wow, that was unexpected. Can we like dial down this so-called "rivalry"? I'm not trying to compete with you anymore.

EDIT: and one question. Can you guys explain to me more why you like the first one better than the others? What draws your eyes to it?

[Evil Sonidow]

It isn't meant to compete with you. It's an answer to this:

@es: do sth. better!

[Silverthorn]

bla.

Alright, we've these three sigs to judge. Not bad to choose the best in first place. There's just one thing that I don't like. (For those who haven't seen it yet) The foreground pic is the same all the time! OMG!
Nah, let's get a little more serious.... I assume you drew the foreground by hand/mouse/whatever, so I'm just wondering why you didn't do that with the background, too. The first one looks like a simple gradient applied to it, the other two have the PS-internal clouds-filter applied to it. I wonder.... why didn't you draw a background yourself. There are so many mysterious sceneries that you could make; a castle, graveyard, anything with the correct lighting.

As for the foreground, I don't see much anti-alias. Many elements remind me from MS-Paint, a 2-color shading as a beginning with no transitions and then an later-added PS-fuzzy-brush. The 1px-brush in PS is your friend, use it! It gives images a certain amount of sharpness without looking cheaply. Quoting ES again, there's really something wrong with the lighting. It is hard to find out where the light-source is at. When you look at the head, the source seems to be 2ft over your head (bah, 3d-descriptions are much worse than 2d). But when you look at the upper body then, the shading doesn't look right. The darker areas should be at other places; and, like I said, anti-aliasing isn't there for not using it. Coming back the the background, when you apply a certain lighting to the foreground, it is essential that you also keep it for the background. A gradient from red to black helps establishing a light-source at the red side.

Don't take this personal, I just gave you some advice

[Lauli]

Other than that, when you already shaded a picture, and then overlay it with black shadow, the shading looks even more f'd up.

[Yakui]

ES' signature appears to be rather boring and lame.

but hey, don't listen to me, I can't do signatures worth a crap in comparison to what makes a "good" signature, but I'm glad I don't since I completely fail to see the point of signatures anyways.

I do recall some of the sigs a swedish friend of mine made though, those were amazing but also devoid of what most signature makers would call QUALITY CONTENT
Here's one of his: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v449/Y...igJen1.jpg, and a second: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v449/Ylle/guus.jpg

also

I agree. I'm doing my best without taking the eZ way out and downloading all sorts of abstract and grunge brushes. And I'm taking the classes for all this stuff 2. (Art Institute ftw)

Art Institute? What do they offer and how does it work over there? I see little artistic merit in photoshop effects around something people would call a "render".

I'm more one for collage (no, not college, COLLAGE) artwork anyways, if it is computer made.

I hope you're not going to go into advertisement because then I might just end up spraying a mocking stencil over your poster for some random gimmicky product or service out of anti-consumerist reasons.

If I ever see it, that is

:)

[Zabobula]

signatures with fancypants photoshop effects are pretty lame on the long run

bla.

Alright, we've these three sigs to judge. Not bad to choose the best in first place. There's just one thing that I don't like. (For those who haven't seen it yet) The foreground pic is the same all the time! OMG!
Nah, let's get a little more serious.... I assume you drew the foreground by hand/mouse/whatever, so I'm just wondering why you didn't do that with the background, too. The first one looks like a simple gradient applied to it, the other two have the PS-internal clouds-filter applied to it. I wonder.... why didn't you draw a background yourself. There are so many mysterious sceneries that you could make; a castle, graveyard, anything with the correct lighting.

As for the foreground, I don't see much anti-alias. Many elements remind me from MS-Paint, a 2-color shading as a beginning with no transitions and then an later-added PS-fuzzy-brush. The 1px-brush in PS is your friend, use it! It gives images a certain amount of sharpness without looking cheaply. Quoting ES again, there's really something wrong with the lighting. It is hard to find out where the light-source is at. When you look at the head, the source seems to be 2ft over your head (bah, 3d-descriptions are much worse than 2d). But when you look at the upper body then, the shading doesn't look right. The darker areas should be at other places; and, like I said, anti-aliasing isn't there for not using it. Coming back the the background, when you apply a certain lighting to the foreground, it is essential that you also keep it for the background. A gradient from red to black helps establishing a light-source at the red side.

Don't take this personal, I just gave you some advice

That's more like it. Thats what I meant when I said "critique". And BP, I'm too lazy to draw my own bg and even if i wanted to, I'd rather do it with a tablet and not with a mouse. I'm not as experienced with bgs as you are and all of your heavenly fantastical imagery. :P

ES' signature appears to be rather boring and lame.

but hey, don't listen to me, I can't do signatures worth a crap in comparison to what makes a "good" signature, but I'm glad I don't since I completely fail to see the point of signatures anyways.

I do recall some of the sigs a swedish friend of mine made though, those were amazing but also devoid of what most signature makers would call QUALITY CONTENT
Here's one of his: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v449/Y...igJen1.jpg, and a second: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v449/Ylle/guus.jpg

also

I agree. I'm doing my best without taking the eZ way out and downloading all sorts of abstract and grunge brushes. And I'm taking the classes for all this stuff 2. (Art Institute ftw)

Art Institute? What do they offer and how does it work over there? I see little artistic merit in photoshop effects around something people would call a "render".

I'm more one for collage (no, not college, COLLAGE) artwork anyways, if it is computer made.

I hope you're not going to go into advertisement because then I might just end up spraying a mocking stencil over your poster for some random gimmicky product or service out of anti-consumerist reasons.

If I ever see it, that is

They have all kinds of classes from, Art History to Typography. (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Quark Xpress, and Flash all included as well) The pay in is $50,000. The pay out is a degree and enough experience to go into just about any design field.


I actually thought about advertising but...I really dont know what the Hell I wanna do.