just starting to try my hand at sigs, comments suggestions appreciated

ok, so far this is my first, and only sig. after several hours hating myself trying to figure out photoshop CS4, I actually read through some more of seagoats tutorials, and figured things out, so, a huge thank you to seagoat for your tuts!!!



comments and suggestions are welcome and appreciated like stated above, this is my first, with hopefully many to come as I get better with photoshop.
This is one of my many lowbie alts

ok...and my second attempt

well, this is some fun stuff, nowhere near the level of so many of you sig crafters, but all good things in time

You're quite welcome!
You have a good start here...I have just a few thoughts:
Be careful about your foreground blending with your background. In #1, the text is kinda hard to read because the only things separating it from the background are the outlines of the letters. I like the effect you were trying to achieve, so you can try using partially transparent text in a contrasting color. That way, you can still see the background through the letters, but it should be easier to read.
In #2, same thing...the green text blends with the green in the background, and your character's black armor blends with the black in the background. Simply mirroring the background (if the void anchor is separate from it) -- so that the black is behind the green text, and the green is behind your character -- would work wonders for separating the foreground from the background.
Also be careful of using bevels on small/thin text. Even with a simple font, bevels can decrease readability to a surprising degree. In #2, the small beveled text will be ok if it has red and black behind it, but it's just something to keep in mind!

Thanks for the reply, and the tips, I definitely see what your saying with the blending and difficulties to read/differentiate text/char/bg. After reading that, I got a somewhat simpler design here I don't really like the look of it, with the colors/blending on the background, its just not as vibrant as I would like, but I did make sure to differentiate the colors for better legibility.

This is definitely my best so far...but I used minimal effects out of photoshop and instead used a seperate image cropped down and resized for the background.
Until I get around to makin sure the artist of the background work is ok with it, this ones temporarily out of service

it looks great, just lease be careful using images you find online, unless theyre labled as free stock or something. Many artists require permission for their photos, drawings or other artwork to be used. Otherwise its copyright infringement.

/sigh....I should be smart enough to know that lol, thanks for the reminder. Well, its been a few days, worked with photoshop some more...and I'm pretty sure i'm gonna be removing that last one, on account of its NOT my art work used in the background, and I don't need that drama, but I have managed to **** my photoshop with a variety of free addons, and I have already started working on something bigger better and more badass. But...its gonna have to wait on being posted until I can figure out why my wireless router stopped connecting. And thanks again for the feedback and tips, it means alot, and is VERY helpful.

You can often simply ask an artist if they would mind you using a bit of their art for a sig image like these. Explain what you want, show them a draft version of what you have in mind.
As long as it's a small detail and not the substance of their work, many artists are very flattered that you like their stuff and are happy enough to let it be used for something small-scale and non-commercial like this.
But asking is important!

OK, got a few new ones made up, one for myself and 2 more for a guildmate, minor difference between the 2




These are all original work, backgrounds done with a large variety of brushes in photoshop, downloaded from brushesdownload.com HUGE amount of free brush downloads.

http://www.obsidiandawn.com/

one of my favorite free brushes people.
She allows her products to be used for free, unless you will be profiting off them in some way then then you can purchase the rights to use them commercially.

I wanted to ask if you may have a bit of color vision deficiency. I have mild tritanomoly myself, but I was wondering if your color choices might be influenced by some degree of deuteranopia.
One tool I use extensively are the Visibone reference charts. The gold-blue square in the lower left corner is how the colors in the main chart look if you have red-green colorblindness.

many thanks for the linky Phat, once I started with the new brushes..its like an addiction, I find it hard to stop lol.

And Sig, so far as I'm aware, and as of my last vision test, I have no color vision deficiencies or blindness, I am however a big fan of bright vibrant colors, and on a contrast very dark, and deep hues and colors, not so much on the in between tho, my color theory teacher in school hates it!!!
Biggest thing to me tho is, is it visually appealing?? does it seem too busy?? is it too static??
I'm workin alot on playin with different things in the photoshop and different ideas; so far, only done work for myself and one guildmate, tho I have another guildmate with a request in, not sure if its a plus or minus but neither one has given me much of an idea on what they would like for a background, just "whatever looks good" lol

My personal opinion would be to stick with just two or three colors. maybe two similar and one contrasting, (like orange and yellow with a touch of blue, for instance) but thats just my opinion and my personal taste. Youll notice alot of mine are pretty monochromatic, and I envy people who arent afraid to step outside the box and make things truly bright and vibrant.
but you also dont want to make it too busy or gaudy, so limiting yourself to a certain number of colors, or just two (or so) color ranges might help there.
In the end its up to you to find your own style and what you think looks the best to you.

So with the color thing being up to you, my only advice really is to practice with your text work.. download masses of fonts, and work on improving your screenshot quality.
http://www.dafont.com/top.php

Edit: When you take screenshots, first of course make sure your quality is set as high as your computer allows, then also be as close to your target as you can.. the surrounding background isnt important.. and most times below the waist also isnt important. Since you cut those poertions out. Set your monitor resolution for the most pixels possible, and that ought to give you a larger image and much more versatile screenshot to work with. An image resizes smaller much better than bigger, with far less distortion.

Aye, fortunately I'm able to set my PC up to max settings for screenshots, and, as long as its not an overly busy zone, it doesn't lag me out...usually. Always fun when you go to take a super high quality screen shot and get reduced to 1-3 FPS for twenty minutes while you try and kill the settings. lol
Thanks for the tips, I'm gonna have to see what I can do managing to try something a bit more monochromatic, I find it difficult personally as I like the variety. But I believe in trying new things and trying to do them right.

Don't forget to take everything we say with a grain of salt. Everyone has their own style!
This sig Reilena just posted is a great example of using lots of colors in a way that isn't overwhelming:
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...=367097#5019932
Notice that all of the colors used in the background can be found somewhere on the character. I find that the character image is what gives me inspiration when it comes to picking a color palette for a sig (if one isn't specified). Using the same handful of colors over and over again within an image helps to unify the sig and tie all its elements together.

Aye, definitely taking it with a grain of salt, but also interesting in trying out suggestions, I feel it is helping me alot with my own style development.

Heres what I came up with for my wifes trouby, and playin around with a more monochromatic color scheme

ok...non-supersized. lol, originally posted way too large.

my first attempt at animated sig....heres hoping
/sigh fail......

ok....after redoing it...and deleting the fail....

Well, I feel like with this one I've finally taken a strong step in understanding and working with my photoshop animator and making animated sigs. so, without further ado, here is the siggy I have made, after many grueling hours at the keyboard and mouse, for my beloved Berserker.

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i687.photobucket.com/albums/vv231/Erszebeth_AB/ErszebethBathory.gif" border="0" alt="Erszebeth"></a>

its a bit long of an animation but any faster and it felt too rushed.
and as always, feedback appreciated.