Signature Battle VII [RESULTS!]

[DEMON]

What is everyone talking about? I don't even know what is CnC?

Comment and Critique.

DAMN IT!

Edited October 8, 2016 by DEMON

[cmgravekeeper]

Thanks for the CnC, I'm going to apply those tips into my next sig. The reason why I asked for CnC from you specifically because I was inspired by your first SB entry, I needed to understand how vertical works as I have never done a vertical signature before. 

 

I like to think that I make the best vertical signatures in IVC. I'm sure Demon agrees but I do have a long history of beating hers (SotM XXX, Grand Tournament II to name a few )

I appreciate that cause the rest of IVC doesn't appreciate the greatness in this signature.

 

http://i.imgur.com/7jgh0vY.png

 

Am I dreaming here? Did I really won? Alright I won!!!

 

Demon, I don't think you have to put the name of "Kamen Rider" on my entry... (-.-) just put my name NEV, I might change my name sometimes for fun..or perhaps every months. 

 

And I look forward to destroying you eventually in a Sig Battle Elite for taking away possible victory from me.

 

Would you like to just be called Nev then? Usually I use whatever your current forum name is but if you're going to be changing it all the time..

Also cmgravekeeper takin' my damn job. Good critiques but I'm all out of likes.

 

Thank you.   

Edited October 8, 2016 by cmgravekeeper

[DEMON]

I like to think that I make the best vertical signatures in IVC. I'm sure Demon agrees but I do have a long history of beating hers (SotM XXX, Grand Tournament II to name a few )

I appreciate that cause the rest of IVC doesn't appreciate the greatness in this signature.

 

http://i.imgur.com/7jgh0vY.png

I agreed to what?! Pfffft

And if only they knew what we known. The PSD of that still enrages me to this day.

He recieved really harsh critique from me.

[Dragon-Archon]

Your signature was rightfully in last place. The reason being you did 1 thing that the other signatures didn’t do, make the render’s face unclear and blurry. The quality of the render actually decreased in your signature, and therefore the quality of your signature automatically decreased. For my knowledge are you using Gimp or Photoshop?

It didn't even occur to me that's what caused the face to become unclear . Yeah, I'm using Gimp.

 

I like the fact that you thought outside the box, you were creative. Being creative is good cause you learn how to do different things that way. That being said, let’s look at the signature. You should have had the render much larger and sharper. If a render becomes a little blurry when it’s made smaller, do Sharpen Edges (if using Photoshop). Do Sharpen (or whatever Gimp has) if you used Gimp.

Thanks. As far as I know Gimp only has a Contrast & Brightness function to sharpen anything.

 

I like the idea of the green light, however it shouldn’t cover the render’s face. The center was too saturated, and you should gently erase the outer edges of the glowing orb with maybe a 15% opacity eraser brush. The edges shouldn’t be so strong. I see you tried to make the green glow on the render, but it wasn’t done properly. It should glow on her face, chest area that’s facing the glowing orb, not the back of her hair and the far shoulder/arm armor piece. I’m not sure how you did the glow, but I’d recommend instead adding a blank layer over the render and with a screen paint brush at 15% opacity, brush a little green on the parts you want to glow.

I don't know if it's possible to reduce the opacity of the eraser in Gimp, but I'll give it a try. I did try to make the energy orb less bright, but couldn't properly adjust all the saturation of the orb. The center was less bright, but the edges seemed the same, with some places even brighter than the center . The glow was done with a combination of the Lightning Effect filter and by using a brush. The Lightning Effect just recoloured the render to a green one instead of adding lighter and darker areas, so I only used a few parts of that one.

 

You had too much happening on the outside, both at the top and bottom. It’s distracting especially because it’s sharper than the render itself. Blur c4d’s so that they are not the focal point, and on the bottom maybe use a little less c4d’d. The signature would have looked better with more legs from the render than random red polygons floating around.

Weird, I blurred everything except for the render and the energy orb. Would you recommend to blur the orb too? Ok, I'll try that.

 

For the text, use more solid text. I think you’re using overlay and exclusion settings for your text. Because you have so many colors in the background, the text isn’t going to be properly legible. Use a more solid text next time. I think golden yellow text would have worked well..

The white text was just a reduced opacity and put under the blurred layer. I believe the green one was Hard Light, but I'll have to check this. How do you decide on text colours? Wouldn't a golden/yellow text stand out too much? And what about the text placement, was that good?

 

Lastly I don’t like your border. It’s too think and it’s only noticeable in some locations of the signature, making it look a bit out of place. I’m not fond of borders that blur the signature behind it personally, I feel it hurts the signature.

 

Good ideas and approach, but execution for the signature use improvement. Also I just noticed the that you edited the hand. Good job on that, it helped your signature in what you were trying to do.

Ok, good to know. It was my first time trying a blurred border.

 

Thanks for taking the time to write this detailed CnC, I appreciate it. I'll edit the sig with these tips and try to create a better version.

I agreed to what?! Pfffft

And if only they knew what we known. The PSD of that still enrages me to this day.

He recieved really harsh critique from me.

Now I want to know the story, do share.

Edited October 8, 2016 by Dragon-Archon

[DEMON]

Now I want to know the story, do share.

The signature consisted of 10 layers and was something he put together within 10 minutes, the rest of IVC were just left going "wut" when it was winning. True story.

You can believe it got pretty harsh critique from the lot of us.

Edited October 8, 2016 by DEMON

[cmgravekeeper]

Weird, I blurred everything except for the render and the energy orb. Would you recommend to blur the orb too? Ok, I'll try that.

 

The white text was just a reduced opacity and put under the blurred layer. I believe the green one was Hard Light, but I'll have to check this. How do you decide on text colours? Wouldn't a golden/yellow text stand out too much? And what about the text placement, was that good?

Now I want to know the story, do share.

 

I would not recommend blurring the orb per say, but maybe the glowing streaks coming from the orb.

 

Well you want it to be legible and also flow with the colors already in the signature. Maybe not so bright that it stands out too much, but I do think yellow would have been optimal. Text placement is hard to say because I think the render should have been bigger, which affects text location. Though it's a decent location for what you have at the moment.

 

The story is classified.

[Avatar_Of_Battle]

Everyone who wants to can give CnC; doesn't matter if you have low skill or no skill with signatures at all, it's encouraged so long as you don't say "Your sig sucks" or say something that discourages the artist from trying again.

 

 

Your signature was rightfully in last place. The reason being you did 1 thing that the other signatures didn’t do, make the render’s face unclear and blurry. The quality of the render actually decreased in your signature, and therefore the quality of your signature automatically decreased. For my knowledge are you using Gimp or Photoshop?

 

I like the fact that you thought outside the box, you were creative. Being creative is good cause you learn how to do different things that way. That being said, let’s look at the signature. You should have had the render much larger and sharper. If a render becomes a little blurry when it’s made smaller, do Sharpen Edges (if using Photoshop). Do Sharpen (or whatever Gimp has) if you used Gimp.

 

I like the idea of the green light, however it shouldn’t cover the render’s face. The center was too saturated, and you should gently erase the outer edges of the glowing orb with maybe a 15% opacity eraser brush. The edges shouldn’t be so strong. I see you tried to make the green glow on the render, but it wasn’t done properly. It should glow on her face, chest area that’s facing the glowing orb, not the back of her hair and the far shoulder/arm armor piece. I’m not sure how you did the glow, but I’d recommend instead adding a blank layer over the render and with a screen paint brush at 15% opacity, brush a little green on the parts you want to glow.

 

You had too much happening on the outside, both at the top and bottom. It’s distracting especially because it’s sharper than the render itself. Blur c4d’s so that they are not the focal point, and on the bottom maybe use a little less c4d’d. The signature would have looked better with more legs from the render than random red polygons floating around.

 

For the text, use more solid text. I think you’re using overlay and exclusion settings for your text. Because you have so many colors in the background, the text isn’t going to be properly legible. Use a more solid text next time. I think golden yellow text would have worked well.

 

Lastly I don’t like your border. It’s too think and it’s only noticeable in some locations of the signature, making it look a bit out of place. I’m not fond of borders that blur the signature behind it personally, I feel it hurts the signature.

 

Good ideas and approach, but execution for the signature use improvement. Also I just noticed the that you edited the hand. Good job on that, it helped your signature in what you were trying to do.

 

@Demon

Mainly I just get a bit nervous doing a C&C because I can't give legitimate pointers like how CMG did. Without knowing the terminology, especially how to sharpen/blur and the like, I kinda just bumble around saying things like "that stuff at the bottom" lol.

 

@CMG

A lot of what was said here is stuff I wanted to say but didn't/couldn't. Stuff about the glow interfering with the face and how it interacted with the rest of the character.

 

I'll say another thing. I've noticed sigs that are not dark around the subject tend to do worse in competitions when there is a bright spot in the center or around a face. If a sig is bright and there's a bright spot near a face instead of something like a light shining down, sorta like Demon and CMG's sigs, it tends to be pointed out.

[Xel]

The signature consisted of 10 layers and was something he put together within 10 minutes, the rest of IVC were just left going "wut" when it was winning. True story.

You can believe it got pretty harsh critique from the lot of us.

10 minutes?! Talk about efficiency. 

[cmgravekeeper]

@Demon

Mainly I just get a bit nervous doing a C&C because I can't give legitimate pointers like how CMG did. Without knowing the terminology, especially how to sharpen/blur and the like, I kinda just bumble around saying things like "that stuff at the bottom" lol.

 

@CMG

A lot of what was said here is stuff I wanted to say but didn't/couldn't. Stuff about the glow interfering with the face and how it interacted with the rest of the character.

 

I'll say another thing. I've noticed sigs that are not dark around the subject tend to do worse in competitions when there is a bright spot in the center or around a face. If a sig is bright and there's a bright spot near a face instead of something like a light shining down, sorta like Demon and CMG's sigs, it tends to be pointed out.

 

I'm sure you can point out flaws or things that can be improved, even without knowing all the terminology. Commenting on how exactly to improve them can be done in better depth by those who know Photoshop/Gimp pretty well.

 

I'm a little confused by what you mean by bright spot.

[Dragon-Archon]

The signature consisted of 10 layers and was something he put together within 10 minutes, the rest of IVC were just left going "wut" when it was winning. True story.

You can believe it got pretty harsh critique from the lot of us.

T-t-ten layers .... only 10 minutes   ...... damn . That's really impressive Cmg. 

 

I would not recommend blurring the orb per say, but maybe the glowing streaks coming from the orb.

 

Well you want it to be legible and also flow with the colors already in the signature. Maybe not so bright that it stands out too much, but I do think yellow would have been optimal. Text placement is hard to say because I think the render should have been bigger, which affects text location. Though it's a decent location for what you have at the moment.

 

The story is classified.

Ok.

 

Deciding on text colours and fonts is still very hard for me. I tried to use the Rule of Thirds for vertical sigs too, but it was my first time creating one. 

 

We can all learn something from IVC's stories ... and I'm really curious now .

[thegirlruka]

I'll say another thing. I've noticed sigs that are not dark around the subject tend to do worse in competitions when there is a bright spot in the center or around a face. If a sig is bright and there's a bright spot near a face instead of something like a light shining down, sorta like Demon and CMG's sigs, it tends to be pointed out.

Do you mean this thing?

[NEV]

Would you like to just be called Nev then? Usually I use whatever your current forum name is but if you're going to be changing it all the time..

Also cmgravekeeper takin' my damn job. Good critiques but I'm all out of likes.

 

So then you don't mind if you use whatever names I change? If you do...you can put my name Nev in parentheses next to whatever my name is.

Like this: Kamen Rider Ghost (Nev)

 

 

Comments and critiques for the signatures.

 

Comment and Critique.

DAMN IT!

 

Oh...   never know that...

 

 

 

And I look forward to destroying you eventually in a Sig Battle Elite for taking away possible victory from me.

 

 

Yeah, I'll be waiting for you, can't wait battling with you. >: )

[Dragon-Archon]

A lot of what was said here is stuff I wanted to say but didn't/couldn't. Stuff about the glow interfering with the face and how it interacted with the rest of the character.

Don't hold back, I can take it.

[thegirlruka]

Deciding on text colours and fonts is still very hard for me. I tried to use the Rule of Thirds for vertical sigs too, but it was my first time creating one. 

I usually try to use one of the colors from one of the smaller details of the render. In this case I used the gold from the arm.

[Dragon-Archon]

I usually try to use one of the colors from one of the smaller details of the render. In this case I used the gold from the arm.

That's a good tip, thanks .

[Avatar_Of_Battle]

I'm sure you can point out flaws or things that can be improved, even without knowing all the terminology. Commenting on how exactly to improve them can be done in better depth by those who know Photoshop/Gimp pretty well.

 

I'm a little confused by what you mean by bright spot.

 

A lot of the brightness in the sigs, to me, seems to come from a light shining down.

In Dragon's sig the brightness, I called it a bright spot ,  emanates from the glowing ball. In a lot of competitions I've seen, not just on this site, shining down on a subject generally does better than a light shining into a subject's face. Unless it's a completely black sig with a light illuminating a subject.

 

Do you mean this thing?

 

Yup that's it lol.

 

Don't hold back, I can take it.

 

It's not a matter of holding back so much as I don't know how to word it so a lot of times I'll leave it out.

[cmgravekeeper]

10 minutes?! Talk about efficiency. 

 

T-t-ten layers  .... only 10 minutes    ...... damn   . That's really impressive Cmg. 

I made that signature because I felt obligated to enter. So I quickly through a bunch of things that looked good together and submitted it last minute. I get a lot of hate for it. Simple signature, but everything did work out really well together.

 

10 layers isn't a lot, you should see some of our really complicated signatures.

 

Deciding on text colours and fonts is still very hard for me. I tried to use the Rule of Thirds for vertical sigs too, but it was my first time creating one. 

 

We can all learn something from IVC's stories ... and I'm really curious now .

 

Vertical signatures work a bit differently than horizontal signatures. I don't think rule of thirds applies the same way. I never use rule of thirds in vertical signatures, I just make sure that the render maximizes the space. The whole point of a vertical signature is because you want to show off as much of a vertical render as possible.

 

Don't hold back, I can take it.

 

That's what she said.

A lot of the brightness in the sigs, to me, seems to come from a light shining down.

In Dragon's sig the brightness, I called it a bright spot ,  emanates from the glowing ball. In a lot of competitions I've seen, not just on this site, shining down on a subject generally does better than a light shining into a subject's face. Unless it's a completely black sig with a light illuminating a subject.

 

I agree with that. I've only done it a few times, as seen below, but I think I only did a really good job on it in my Rayquaza signature, and maybe my Snape signature. I would say one should learn regular lighting before really trying lighting coming from a light source from the center of a signature.

 

http://i.imgur.com/GsRtPek.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/kMjvWL3.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/9Q1Wya9.png

Edited October 8, 2016 by cmgravekeeper

[Dragon-Archon]

Dammit, ran out of likes .

 

I made that signature because I felt obligated to enter. So I quickly through a bunch of things that looked good together and submitted it last minute. I get a lot of hate for it. Simple signature, but everything did work out really well together. 
 
10 layers isn't a lot, you should see some of our really complicated signatures. 

Wow, that's a nice story, thanks for sharing .
 
I was impressed because there were so few layers. In comparison: changing the render took me 25 layers, the sig consisted of 86 layers, and there were 73 unused layers of rejected ideas and copies of other layers .... so yeah, lots of layers .
 
 

Vertical signatures work a bit differently than horizontal signatures. I don't think rule of thirds applies the same way. I never use rule of thirds in vertical signatures, I just make sure that the render maximizes the space. The whole point of a vertical signature is because you want to show off as much of a vertical render as possible.
 
That's what she said.

So basically screw the rules when it comes to vertical sigs? I can do that .

 

I walked right into that one .

 

 

 

What kind of border are you using for this sig, is it a green one with lowered opacity or something different?

Edited October 8, 2016 by Dragon-Archon

[Avatar_Of_Battle]

I agree with that. I've only done it a few times, as seen below, but I think I only did a really good job on it in my Rayquaza signature, and maybe my Snape signature. I would say one should learn regular lighting before really trying lighting coming from a light source from the center of a signature.

 

http://i.imgur.com/GsRtPek.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/kMjvWL3.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/9Q1Wya9.png

 

I think I voted for that Rayquaza sig lol.

But yeah these sigs are what I'm talking about. The light in the center is balanced by the darkness surrounding the subject.

Even the 2nd one which is brighter has 4 dark corners that seem to hint at a greater darkness beyond that really brings the subject out more.

[cmgravekeeper]

I was impressed because there were so few layers. In comparison: changing the render took me 25 layers, the sig consisted of 86 layers, and there were 73 unused layers of rejected ideas and copies of other layers .... so yeah, lots of layers .

 

What kind of border are you using for this sig, is it a green one with lowered opacity or something different?

 

That's a lot of layers, more than my entry this time around too.

 

Inside Stroke, Linear Dodge Blend with Green Color. That's using Photoshop.

 

I think I voted for that Rayquaza sig lol.

But yeah these sigs are what I'm talking about. The light in the center is balanced by the darkness surrounding the subject.

Even the 2nd one which is brighter has 4 dark corners that seem to hint at a greater darkness beyond that really brings the subject out more.

 

Yeah you have to darken the rest of the signature for that style to work.

[FallenElysion]

Pro 2, I voted for you but the font is yucky. I'm a fan of everything else going on in that sig though.

 

Yeah, the font choice was half-assed, that's for sure. Maybe I should've put more thought into it, but then again anything text-related was never my strong point. And thanks.

 

Also, congrats to the winners. There were a lot of good entries this month.

[Dragon-Archon]

That's a lot of layers, more than my entry this time around too.

 

Inside Stroke, Linear Dodge Blend with Green Color. That's using Photoshop.

Want to know a secret: that's pretty much average for me  .

 

Nice, I'll keep that in mind.

[DEMON]

Congrats to the winners .

 

I'd like some CnC for my sig please.

I kept wondering about this for the past few days: is that a person in the lower right corner of your sig's background?

 

I'll have to say, this signature is definitely showing off the technique you have been learning since you started Dragon.  There is improvement being shown in each one of your signatures as you at least try new things, you are likely to fail though the first time you try something new, which you kind of did here.  Not going to go back on my word though and not say it wasn't one of the better signatures you made, but there is a lot of errors in it that could be fixed and you'll end up with a pretty solid signature.  I find all you kids these days with your tutorials are so lucky as I'll tell you now when I started Photoshop way back in the day, I was on my fucking lone when it came to learning what everything did.  So it's good at you do look at tutorials and try new things and don't throw them to the side like so many others do too soon.

 

Anyways, I'm going to go through the rest of this quick as that cmgravekeeper pretty much went and said most of what I was going to say.

 

I know you use GIMP and I'm really just going to recommend you this, don't overdo it with FX on that software, it isn't as good as Photoshop when it comes to piling it on.  As well as that, I think you're going too fast for yourself, like I said, it's great you're constantly challenging yourself by trying new things, but stick to some more simple stuff for a while.  Download different brush tools for GIMP (you can find them off sites like DeviantART, just make sure they are for GIMP, PS ones won't work), try and make a signature like this:

 

 

As you can see, there's nothing too much going on there and I would have to say it was the best signature I actually made in that god awful software.. yep I really hate GIMP as you can probably tell. lol  You probably will too if you ever move onto Photoshop.  It could also depend how you're saving the work, I do think I did tell you to save signatures with max settings as .PNG though as the size of signatures doesn't matter..

 

I feel you overdid it a bit with the orb you did.  While you got some of the lighting of it done correctly, why it goes onto the pony tail and covers her already blurred face I don't know.  You should never prevent the face of your focal from being seen clearly.  The lighting should have just been very minimal around there.  You should look up tutorials of lighting source, even drawing a circle and shading it in relating to a light source can help you learn lighting easier.  Technically, if light is coming from the right hand side, then your left hand side should be darker to show this.  Like cmgravekeeper has said, learn how to use Burn/Dodge tool, but don't overdo it with these and maybe make sure to play around with the settings so they aren't too strong, I find GIMP is always set to a default that overdoes these kind of things.. but tbh I'm not even sure if it has these functions, I haven't used it in a while and it's not even in my PC.  The green was kind of ugly too, it's like that 6-bit green.. maybe don't go so vibrant next time.

 

Anyways, about your signature using 70+ layers.. I reckon, towards the end, you are lagging alot? That can't be helping either and there's really no reason why these signatures you make should be going to that height of layers.  I recommend trying to use less of them, but you should use less of them if you go more at your own pace when it comes to learning techniques.

 

For the border, I think you knew this yourself that it was too thick as you were a bit too late for resubmitting your entry; like I'm just going to warn everyone here, if you have any reworks, get them in before due date, because once the voting has started, I can no longer take reworks.  Although, even if I did take your rework, I don't think it was going to make much of a difference anyway.

 

As for the text, the placement was okay (like cmgravekeeper has said and I say on my text tutorial, with vertical signatures, you can screw most of the rules when it comes to text and Rule of the Thirds is definitely not a thing with those).  But I had a hard time seeing it; it was blended in too much, I say start doing more interesting stuff with your text, use layer effects like drop shadow/stroke etc, still don't over do it, but you know what I mean, your text just looks a little bit basic compared to everything else in this signature.

 

The C4D.. now this was a bit that jumped out at me..  the bit below her chest, you didn't try to blend that out and it was just cutted off, you should use a soft erase tool on ends like that, it would have helped that C4D blend.  Overall though, the rest of the C4D work looked fine.

 

Like I said, you are definitely improving but try and slow down the pace when it comes to trying new things, look for more simple ways that will help you learn these glowing orb techniques and the arm being reposistioned was one of the first things I spotted myself when it came to your signature and was pretty impressed by that.  I don't really understand why it took like 15 layers to do but I can tell you for all the signatures you have made, that's a really advanced technique you used and you pulled it off.  I can only guess you were inspired by the winners of the Dragon month.

 

Looks like the placings changed some since I last looked, congrats to Kamen (just noticed you were Nevec ) & Xeliot!

If we're going by font, I should probably be thrown into novice myself, that's always been (& probably will be) my worst area.

 

I know you aren't a Novice; but it wasn't actually the text this time that let you down.  I actually liked the text in your signature this time, it was good.  It was the fact you kind of overexposed the actual signature work, you need to be careful when you're working with Curves/Levels if that is what caused it.

 

Congratulations to the winners!

 

I'll take C&C on my sig if anyone is willing.

 

Overall, I think your signature was nice but there is some errors.

 

The text is the main one, and I think we have told you before not to really do this with text.  The "Something of the Elves" text could have been done without completely, it was just distracting from the focal point if anything and it's really best not to warp your text unless you are trying to apply it to the character's clothes or skin as a tattoo.  Same with PSNP, it is also kind of warped but just not as bad.  The color of the text is fine, you usually can't go wrong with bright yellow as your text.  So to summarise, you need to work mostly on text and I think you have seen my text tutorial so I'll not bother linking it, but if you want to reread it, just find the link to the thread within my signature.

 

As for the C4D used, I feel like it differs too much in the color.  Why does one use a purple color and the other just plain black and red?  I think you would have benefited without the purple bits since there was no purple shown on your focal point so it just jumps out really.  I also don't really like how some of the C4D effects are seen over the character's render.  Like on her boobs mainly, it looks like stretch marks to me which isn't exactly a good thing.  You should have erased these parts.

 

I think the concept of your signature looks good, but color theory and text is something you should look into.

 

Can I request C&C from gravekeeper?

 

Also not sure if anyone else noticed, but good job in making the render narrower. I don’t think anyone else did that, and it makes the render look a lot better and fit in the signature space better.

Not sure if I would say that was a good thing, making the render narrower/distorting the anatomy, was what mainly made my vote go to ruffedgz, like I had said in my original post when I give my reasons for picking the signatures I did, that was the one thing I couldn't actually stand in Xeliot's signature.  I believed it to be a mistake of some sort that he didn't mean to do it, when you're using CTRL + T (or Transform > Scale) to size down a render Xeliot, make sure to be holding Shift key as well so you don't chance distorting it.  It's a minor detail but it annoyed me enough about the signature.. that's just the artist side of me showing through though.   Also, it's almost best to recieve CnC from a variety of people, we all have different opinions on your entry, although cmgravekeeper covered pretty much everything I would have wanted to say about yours except the narrowing part since obviously me and cmgravekeeper disagree about that.  I also thought the colors looked a little washed out.

 

As for the 10 layer signature that cmgravekeeper made, that isn't exactly a good thing, 10 layer signatures are very simple and almost require no work, he just got very lucky everything worked well enough together for the win.  It's actually happened the other ways too, I remember the Animal theme in SOTM which I won in, way back when I was using GIMP (terrible software, limited in so many ways, I did come from PS though.. so that's maybe why I hated it so much).

 

 

I can't exactly remember how many layers I used in this? Like maybe 6? Basically I find if you overdid stuff in GIMP, that's when the quality started to get reduced, there is already quality reduction seen in this signature.

 

My usual signatures now in PS are 25-50+ layers plus adjustment layers and I'll say that's the same for the rest of IVC so you can tell how we were all pissed off about cmgravekeeper's last minute rushed signature (which he didn't think was that good himself) won.  You'll probably start to see how much work is done with signatures and how much isn't when you all improve and start to see the little details that we can see.

 

For example, this signature was well over 50 layers and cmgravekeeper actually seen the PSD of it and said there was some things even outside his understanding.. and that kind of thing isn't the kind of stuff I can teach you in a tutorial, to make a signature like this one, you're going to want a good several years of practice.  I also used my cintiq for this one for some of the finer lighting details.

 

Edited October 8, 2016 by DEMON

[Xel]

Not sure if I would say that was a good thing, making the render narrower/distorting the anatomy, was what mainly made my vote go to ruffedgz, like I had said in my original post when I give my reasons for picking the signatures I did, that was the one thing I couldn't actually stand in Xeliot's signature.  I believed it to be a mistake of some sort that he didn't mean to do it, when you're using CTRL + T (or Transform > Scale) to size down a render Xeliot, make sure to be holding Shift key as well so you don't chance distorting it.  It's a minor detail but it annoyed me enough about the signature.. that's just the artist side of me showing through though.   Also, it's almost best to recieve CnC from a variety of people, we all have different opinions on your entry, although cmgravekeeper covered pretty much everything I would have wanted to say about yours except the narrowing part since obviously me and cmgravekeeper disagree about that.  I also thought the colors looked a little washed out.

 

Believe it or not, my initial decision was to go with vivid colors.

The thing is, when I saw the pro entries I noticed that everyone has a unique style. I'm still in the experimentation phase. You often see me mimic a technique or method from signature X or Y. I have to find my style.

Edited October 8, 2016 by Xeliot

[Dragon-Archon]

I'll have to say, this signature is definitely showing off the technique you have been learning since you started Dragon.  There is improvement being shown in each one of your signatures as you at least try new things, you are likely to fail though the first time you try something new, which you kind of did here.  Not going to go back on my word though and not say it wasn't one of the better signatures you made, but there is a lot of errors in it that could be fixed and you'll end up with a pretty solid signature.  I find all you kids these days with your tutorials are so lucky as I'll tell you now when I started Photoshop way back in the day, I was on my fucking lone when it came to learning what everything did.  So it's good at you do look at tutorials and try new things and don't throw them to the side like so many others do too soon.

 

Anyways, I'm going to go through the rest of this quick as that cmgravekeeper pretty much went and said most of what I was going to say.

 

I know you use GIMP and I'm really just going to recommend you this, don't overdo it with FX on that software, it isn't as good as Photoshop when it comes to piling it on.  As well as that, I think you're going too fast for yourself, like I said, it's great you're constantly challenging yourself by trying new things, but stick to some more simple stuff for a while.  Download different brush tools for GIMP (you can find them off sites like DeviantART, just make sure they are for GIMP, PS ones won't work), try and make a signature like this:

 

 

As you can see, there's nothing too much going on there and I would have to say it was the best signature I actually made in that god awful software.. yep I really hate GIMP as you can probably tell. lol  You probably will too if you ever move onto Photoshop.  It could also depend how you're saving the work, I do think I did tell you to save signatures with max settings as .PNG though as the size of signatures doesn't matter..

 

I feel you overdid it a bit with the orb you did.  While you got some of the lighting of it done correctly, why it goes onto the pony tail and covers her already blurred face I don't know.  You should never prevent the face of your focal from being seen clearly.  The lighting should have just been very minimal around there.  You should look up tutorials of lighting source, even drawing a circle and shading it in relating to a light source can help you learn lighting easier.  Technically, if light is coming from the right hand side, then your left hand side should be darker to show this.  Like cmgravekeeper has said, learn how to use Burn/Dodge tool, but don't overdo it with these and maybe make sure to play around with the settings so they aren't too strong, I find GIMP is always set to a default that overdoes these kind of things.. but tbh I'm not even sure if it has these functions, I haven't used it in a while and it's not even in my PC.  The green was kind of ugly too, it's like that 6-bit green.. maybe don't go so vibrant next time.

 

Anyways, about your signature using 70+ layers.. I reckon, towards the end, you are lagging alot? That can't be helping either and there's really no reason why these signatures you make should be going to that height of layers.  I recommend trying to use less of them, but you should use less of them if you go more at your own pace when it comes to learning techniques.

 

For the border, I think you knew this yourself that it was too thick as you were a bit too late for resubmitting your entry; like I'm just going to warn everyone here, if you have any reworks, get them in before due date, because once the voting has started, I can no longer take reworks.  Although, even if I did take your rework, I don't think it was going to make much of a difference anyway.

 

As for the text, the placement was okay (like cmgravekeeper has said and I say on my text tutorial, with vertical signatures, you can screw most of the rules when it comes to text and Rule of the Thirds is definitely not a thing with those).  But I had a hard time seeing it; it was blended in too much, I say start doing more interesting stuff with your text, use layer effects like drop shadow/stroke etc, still don't over do it, but you know what I mean, your text just looks a little bit basic compared to everything else in this signature.

 

The C4D.. now this was a bit that jumped out at me..  the bit below her chest, you didn't try to blend that out and it was just cutted off, you should use a soft erase tool on ends like that, it would have helped that C4D blend.  Overall though, the rest of the C4D work looked fine.

 

Like I said, you are definitely improving but try and slow down the pace when it comes to trying new things, look for more simple ways that will help you learn these glowing orb techniques and the arm being reposistioned was one of the first things I spotted myself when it came to your signature and was pretty impressed by that.  I don't really understand why it took like 15 layers to do but I can tell you for all the signatures you have made, that's a really advanced technique you used and you pulled it off.  I can only guess you were inspired by the winners of the Dragon month.

Thanks for the CnC Demon . 

 

I was using Paint.net before this, so Gimp seems like a pro editing program in comparison . 

 

As for the render taking about 25 layers to change, that was because I used a new layer every time when filling up gaps. For example when rotating the hand, the yellow decoration on the wrist had to be changed too, which meant that entire thing had to be rotated. That in turn created a new gap near the elbow. Same with the hand, which was originally in her hair and had lots of holes. I also created a new finger as it would seem strange to have a 3-fingered elf (this was before the energy orb was added, so I didn't know the fingers wouldn't be visible at the time). I also adjusted the lower arm's position, so had to make the shoulder/upper arm guard a bit longer to fill that gap. Then there are things like the hair and sword that I removed, so that part needed to be restored too. Same with the hair where the hand used to be.

 

 

 

I like this sig a lot.

Edited October 8, 2016 by Dragon-Archon