(advice?) My amateur attempt with Photoshop Elements.

Suggestions... please?
Ok, first I'll put my current sig in the body of this message so it doesn't go away when I change my actual sig....

I've been looking at some of the guides, and it appears that I need to do a lot of homework if I really want to do this right. Let me describe how I got here...
1. I found a screenshot that I thought might be nice for a background.
2. I took individual screenshots of my toon and his deity pet with a solid color backdrop (a wall in guild hall.)
3. Using the polygonal lasso, I meticulously cut out the characters over a solid adjustment layer.
4. I placed the deity pet on the actual background, keeping her darker and sizing her smaller to (hopefully) give the effect that she was behind my dwarf.
5. I placed my dwarf next, placing him slighly overlapping the pet, brightened him up a bit, and sizing him to make him appear in the foreground.
6. I placed an eqII logo on the background. I used a embossing effect and lowered the opacity a bit. Then I used the clone tool to blend the area around the logo into the background.
7. I placed the main text with my name and guild. I spent an hour playing with fonts, effects, and colors trying to find something that would be readable without being NEON. I finally used an inner ridge effect with a color I pulled from his armor. I resized that text to be more readable with the 'enhancements' I'd added.
8. I placed the remaining text using a similar shade, opting to go simple with no effects because of the background in that area.
So, after seeing the sigs you guys/gals out out, and some of the guides posted here, I'm wondering if I really need to dig deeper into this. If so, what would you suggest for an amateur like me that wants to make a nice sig?

Its a great first attempt, great work cutting out the figures.. I dont see any missed crevices or added pixels on their outlines.

I would never tell anyone their first try at anything was as good as it can get, always practice makes improvement and youll learn alot the more you try and the more you figure out your program.
I do have a few suggestions, if you care for them, they are only tips and personal opinion, so if you dont like it, dont mind me hehe ><

The pet(?) seems a little bit washed out.. I would suggest brightening her up a touch and maybe adjusting her brightness/contrast
Im afraid I cant really tell what is in the background..it looks awfuly barren and bland except for the angular objects in the forground. Perhas another background or something thats more identifiable.. or perhaps even just adjusting the hue or size to make it more attractive?
I dont care for the bevel on the logo hehe, it makes it difficult to read and does not enhance the original image in any way really. For text, with Photoshop you can download Styles on Adobe website as well as other sites that can apply some really great text effects, you might look some up to play with and see what you can do
Shading: You can use your burn/dodge tool or lighten/darken to shade edges and brighten areas that need brightened, to help give your 2d images a bit more depth.
Smudging: Smudge tool is great for smoothing angles and flaws, making round bits round and pixely bits or collisions smoother.
Another tip is to start with the biggest screenshot of your character that you can get, and d reduce it down once you have all of the cleaning and touching up done that you want, til it looks satisfactory, then scale it down to the size you need for your signature. Add text last, do not scale or reduce it in size because it will distort.

heres a site that was designed especially for and by signature and mmo gamer artists, its great for learning, tutorials and discussions on all of this stuff and then some http://www.studiommo.com/studio/portal.php. You might be particularily interested in the Screenshot and Photo manipulation forum

Ok.. looking at some of your suggestions, I made some changes. I have not yet had a chance to look at the link you provided. I wanted to play with it some more before I get into deep reading on this. Bear in mind that I have Photoshop Elements, not a pro version. So, I give you version two of noob graphics...

Now, given the short time I had to devote to this, I'm not expecting much. Here's what I changed:
1. Obviously, the background has changed.
2. Took out the EQII logo... (couldn't get it to look like I wanted it to.)
3. I re-cut the characters. I was even more meticulous, and found a better way to import the layer.
3a. I played with some of the blur/sharpen and burn options and brightened things up a bit.
3b. I did the editing before placing the layer into the signature. (I did it in the sig the first time.)
4. I played with fonts some more. I tried looking at some text tricks online, but found that PS Elements does not have some of the blending options mentioned in those tutorials.

So, there's Ver. 2, of a work in progress. Thoughts?

Ok. . I actually like the first one better. The second one looks a bit too "busy", but . .who am to talk. . . . . . however I do like the color change to blue.
Maybe it's the white shadow around the lettering that is making it look like too much. Often times I will use the Bright and Contrast adjustment and the Black and White adjustment to get the colors to come out.
All in all I think they look great and the only thing to remember is to have your own style. . . .you dont want anyone to be thinking, "when you've seen one sig you've seen them all" because everyones art starts to llook the same. Get a "signature look" to your sigs. . and dont let anyone deter you from that. If you like it. . .GO FOR IT!

Sutures@Antonia Bayle wrote:

haha, when I started out I was using base photo editing program.. really all it did was cut paste and some basic text.. it was horrible! ><

As far as the changes, I think thnew background is great, its not too bright or busy, but still interesting. I am with Quirra though on the text. Its a bit much for the space its in, dont be afraid to try out colors or use different fonts, they dont all have to be the same though I wouldnt use more than, say, three hehe. I really think its the bright glow that takes the most away from it.

The name is biggest, thats great, you always want your name to be the main point of attraction in text, the other information is just gravy. What I might do different is pick out some of the other colors that are already in the sig ( or one) and use a shade of it (can be darker or light) It is my personal opinion though..
Take a look at others' sigs you like on this site.. or did you check out StudioMMO yet (gogo!) ? There too, and see what you like about those sigs, what you dont, and what you might do differently to them, then apply those ideas to your own work

Yeah.. after I posted that I thought it looked busy too.
I agree that I have to have my own style. I'm just looking for tips and tricks to make it look good. I hope to dig into the link you gave me tonight to get more ideas.
I want to have all that information in there, but with the max size limit I fear that I may have to have less text to remedy the 'busy' look I'm getting.

I get inspiration from everywhere, and there are so many other artists that I look at their stuff and ask myself "how did they get that effect" or "I would have done this differently" or something along those lines. You can use others for inspiration or tips or advice, without losing your own originality

Nice attempts so far, Sutures. I'm gonna give my own thoughts, and they may or may not echo what other folks have already mentioned.
First sig:
Your character and pet look pretty good, but the background and text are very plain...they don't do the character justice! That being said, the difference between the background and the character does make the character and text stand out, which is a good thing.
You also may want to consider a border to help "frame" the sig contents. You'd be amazed at the polish a basic border can give.
*****
Second sig:
The background in this sig is a vast improvement, but now it competes with your character. I recommend either adding a colored semi-transparent layer over the background to dull it a bit and/or adding drop-shadows or glows to your characters to make them stand out a bit more.
The text in this one is better, but now it threatens to overpower your character. Remember that you don't have to cover every pixel of the sig with your character or text, especially if you use an interesting background like this one. Experiment with different fonts, and remember that the more simple the font is, the smaller you can make it and still retain readability, freeing up room for more important stuff.
And ditto what I said earlier about the border.
Hope this helps!

I like selecting interesting fonts that fit the character. A good font site is http://www.dafont.com/

Version 3 !


Changes made based on some of the suggestions you guys have offered and one thing I wanted to try from the provided URL. I can't tell you how thankful I am to those willing to offer help here.
I applied a very slight color filter over the background. I added some drop shadows to the characters, which I can see I need practice at. I again tried using lighting, burn, dodge, and color correction to enhance the characters. (Most notably, since the shadows are down and to the right, I moved the shimmer of the armor to the other side for realism.) You may also notice that I made Sutures larger to bring him more to the front. The name is a more basic font with a small, purple drop shadow that I applied to make it stand on top of the background. The guild name is a script font in the bottom corner to appear like an autograph. Other text entries were omitted to open up the background.
It's still a work in progress, but I've got it to a point were I may go ahead and apply it as my sig for the time being.

You're definitely getting there! Not everyone who asks for advice here is so willing to take constructive criticism and run with it, so you're already a step ahead of most folks.

Sutures@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I really like this one! You have a background that is interesting, yet because it's all in one color palette of soft blues, it doesn't distract from your foreground figures. Your character name is bold and readable, and adding the other info in a smaller more subtle font lets it be present on the sig without overwhelming other elements.
VERY nice!

Been watching this forum and I just wanted to say the improvments are wonderful, that latest one looks very very nice! The colors are all blending really well, and the text is nice, simple and easy to read, but also noticable. I'd be proud to have a signature like that.

Thank you for all the kind words and advice. I'm going to take a day or two off of this and come at it fresh later. For now, I have applied the current version as my signature.
Question:
For those that have given me advice here... are the characters in your sigs drawn from scratch, or are you taking a character model and applying various modifications like I'm trying to do? I'm certain that I don't have enough artistic talent to draw anything in photoshop, but I'm curious on how some of you get such smooth features on your faces and such.

Oh, and I played with the pro version of photoshop at work. I would love it if I had blending options in PS elements like the pro version has. To make drop shadows, I have to make a duplicate layer drop the lighting, apply a gaussian blur, and drop the opacity... then position and size that layer manually. I did it in three clicks on the pro version at work.

I start with a screenshot and add layers of different effects to clean it or soften it up a bit. Check out my Comparisons page to see examples of befores and afters.

I take screen shots, and do a bajillion layers of editing, blurring, coloring over, re-doing eyes, burning, and redrawing hair, smudging. It's really simple once you know where everything is

Ok, you people are turning me into a crackhead here! I told myself that I needed to take a break from this, and then my EQ2 took too long to patch and.....



Seeing all the smoothing and smudging you all do got me started. I blame you, ya know!
This one was all about smooth and simplistic. Ninety percent of the time spent on this was in the smoothing and smudging on the avatar. I took about 10 minutes to download and install about 15 new fonts, one of which you see here with my manual drop shadow style 3D modification. I put a very simple border in per a previous suggestion. The background was purposely left as a simple texture because I need to goto bed and don't have time to do anything fancy there...

I shouldn't be enabling you, but the next thing you will want to play with are Photoshop Plug-ins, of which there are tons of really good yet free plug-ins available.
Plug-ins can do a lot of different things. There are some that give your selection the look of glass or metal. There are plug-ins to do clouds, or raid, or smoke, or flames.
The bad news is that once you get used to playing with plug-ins, you may become aware of some of the pricy but fabulous plug-ins available commercially!
(The first step is admitting that you have an addiction to plug-ins and fonts, I remind myself...)

Youre doing great hun!

I looked through some of my old stuff to see if I could find any before and afters to show, its been so long since I did any manipulation, I like to think I can do better now if I tried it again hehe ><
I did find one though for eq2, its probably one of the last manips I did before switching over to 3d. I did it for a winter 2006 art exchange thing on another forum. Of course I dont have the original screenshot, so this one shows where I first started tracing out what I wanted to do and shading it in, and cloning over the bits of clothing and stuff I didnt want shown, then Ill post the finished below it..




I completely repainted her dress, first time ever repainting anyhing liek that lol >< Changed the size of her mouth, painted her hair, added sparklies to her skin, covered over her old dress, smoothed rough lines.. there were abillion layers to this one. Even now I can see things that I should have done to improve it though lol. I am always learning, always trying to get better. Never satisfied with my own stuff lol

I'm a card-carrying lifetime member of Brushes-Fonts-Plugins-Tubes Anonymous.
I can't begin to count how many of each I have. I'm addicted to DaFont's "new fonts" section...every time they add more, so do I! I download new picture tubes (a Paint Shop Pro thing) every month or two, and when I go looking for a particular brush for a project, I inevitably download a dozen or more that I stumble across and fall in love with. I'm up to 3 plugin menus in my PSP.