Okay I decided to make a new thread for my new Photoshop works, only because the other one was getting so long and muddled with them. Plus, I wanted my other thread for just any old "stuff" i did with PS, now I want this one purely for sigs. Not only that, but I've come a LONG way since my original sigs and pictures in that thread, and it's time I made a new thread to host my new works.


This one was inspired when I saw someone make two sigs and blend them into one. I wanted to do one with black and white because they're so easy to contrast, and instantly Riku came to my mind. So I decided to try to blend the Light into the Dark, much like Riku does in KH1 and 2. Most fun thing about this? I took two different pics of Riku when he's motioning with the wave behind him, one with his original costume to represent his innocence, and the other half being his Heartless outfit to symbolize his darkness. The pictures were nearly identical so it wasn't too hard to put together, just took a little work to blend the two halves of the face together, but here it is:





Biggest things I want tips for:

1. Border. I wanted to have the border go from Black to White like each half, but I don't know if it looks good with this forum background being black, because one half of the fade doesn't show up in the sig. Any suggestions for that?

2. Riku's hand: I wanted to make this look as 3D as POSSIBLE. I want it to look like Riku's really stretching his hand OUT of the sig. I duplicated the arm and the hand and used some blending modes, changed contrasts, and added drop shadows to make the hand look as 3D from the rest of the body as possible. Did it work? U guys tell me

ok ill make a comment on the two things you wanted them about..

1. on the border, i think it might look better if you let the black go on alittle bit more before it faded into the white. I dont know just throwing out suggestions.. or you could switch the sides, have the white on the left and the black on the right..it looks ok, i dont think im liking the border all that much though..

2. the hand looks good to me, i actually felt a slight pinch on my nipple and for a second i thought it was riku

overall very good sig though, i especially like what you did with the two sigs coming together..another thing, mabye its just me but the images on the right and left could be blended in alittle bit better with the backgrounds..

Okay I tried something new with the border, not sure how it'll look but here it is (And I reduced the visibility of the other stocks in the background):

i think i liked it better without the white border, seems to cramp it i think.

the hand is cool though

i think there isnt much more you can do with the blending considering the placement of his body

overall very well done

i like the changes, good choice on the border

New sig in dedication to one of my favorite football players, Terrell Owens:

that looks smexy bro.. very nice

I am not too keen on the Riku sig. I don't know what it is, I just don't like it as much as others do. It doesn't look finished to me.
I can't provide you with help on making the hand look 3D, which to me doesn't, because I am not into 3D things, or haven't tried any of it yet.

The second looks better, although the stock in the middle should be polished a bit more, he looks just like he was stuck on there and nothing seems to be done with it.
Try blending it more, or at least make the edges go away. Erasing the stock with a soft brush at 30% on both fill and opacity might do the trick. Keep in mind that I talk about the brush opacity/fill and not the opacity/fill of the stock.

Cowboys FTW. Nice job!

Should I change the avatar??? I mean it fits the theme well, but it doesn't seem to have the same aura as the sig.

Thanks a bunch for the reviews though, this is one of my favorites because of the left side the way the light like, burns into his white, it just glows gorgeously.

And Pes, I know what you're saying about him seeming to be "stuck" right on there. But I tried everything I could. I went through every combination of blending layer, then made TWO different layers and tried the combinations of blending, changed brightnesses and contrasts, and ultimately everything looked retarded becase of the stuff that's behind him.

His body would like, be see-through, and it just looked disguisting, not to mention some of the burn effects and whatnot made him look WAY too contrast-y, and it looked dumb. So finally what I just decided, was to fill another blue layer on top of it all and blend THAT, so it gave him more of a blue-ish tint at least.

it doesnt have the same flash as the sig but i still think it fits just fine

Well, if you want a half naked guy as your avatar, be my guest. Personally, I would change it.

And LW, to make it more blended, try what I said in my previous post.

ah yeha thats what i meant to ask:



What do you mean by both fill and opacity? I don't think I've seen that option to change the brush. Unless I just like "know what it is", just didnt ever know that's what it was called.

When you select a soft brush (in basic brushes), on the top of your photoshop window, you get a few other options, including to change the opacity and fill of your brush, making it erase less noticably and making it look like it is blended more.
It works amazing on edges and is an easy way to blend in pictures, without having brushes all over your stock. Basically, I used that technique in my current sig, as well as most other sigs I made recently.
You can use this with both brushes, as well as the eraser. Considering you want to look your stock to be more blended, I'd say grab the eraser, pick a soft brush and put in any setting you like (I use 30-35) and just erase the edges. You probably have to erase multiple times on the same spot, to make it noticable, but it does work.

Hmmm.. see I knew what you were talking about with the Opacity of the brush, but I still don't see how you "fill" the brush.... sry man

Same as in the normal way, you can change the opacity and fill of your layers. The same you can do with the brushes, though I think it is called flow, it is the second option next to the opacity anyway.

see on the eraser tool, next to opacity at the topit says "flow" like the brush, nothing bout fill haha

And my newest sig... Greg from Wild Arms 5:

Really nice sig, Laguna, really nice. I think I like that one the best over all the other ones you have done. The color scheme and blending is fantastic in my opinion. The sig sort of radiates that old western feel =p Great work =)

Oh wowww I'm glad you feel that it's one of my best. I REALLY like it a lot, it just doesn't seem like there's a lot of contrast, i.e. nothing really stands out from it. I don't think it's really supposed to though, cause it IS supposed to have that Western feel.

Like, I was inspired by the WA3 art of Virgina, where it's just brown pencil of her on the faded yellow color, which looks REALLY nice. So this one I tried to blend some gradients and textures, and this is what I came up with.


And here is another sig I came up with.... I can't decide which effect I like best though. There's this one layer that alters everything, but I can't tell which one is best:

i like the last version simply for the black/green coming in from the bottom, very nice

I agree, and I think the one before that is your best also.

Dear lord, you didn't had to post THAT many diffirent version, where the diffirence was minimal.
All in all, apart from the last one, they almost look identical. So, I say that the last one looks the best out of them, simply because it has contrast and it looks better than the others.

Please stop using just one colour for your signatures. I mean once, sure, but you do it over and over again.
You have the entire colour spectrum to choose from, why would you limit yourself to one colour, it just makes the pieces look mono-tonal.

If you are making something red, try using browns, purples, pinks in it, even just a little would look better.
If you're making something yellow, try using oranges and reds, or greens and blues if you want to go to that sidwe of the spectrum.
Etc...

I can't say which is your best, but I can definately say my personal favourite of yours would definately not be one of the ones in which all I see is an overuse of a single colour. And I'm certain your stocks don't start out being a single colour, so why not use some of the colours in the stock for the background? Thats what I do when I create signatures, unless I want to completely change the colour scheme, but even then I make sure it has some degree of colour contrast.

If nothing else, this is the one thing I really advise you to work on.

Actually, its really only one version of the same sig that uses that trick, his current signature and his Riku one, as well as the previous Greg banner, have a pretty good amount of contrast

And given he just posted several versions of the same sig that doesn't use much contrast, I'd say he's alright on this one.

I really like your Greg banner, the one you posted before the flood of different versions. It has a nice shape, contrast, and basically everything is cool about it.

Your newest one has some pretty nice effects, and as I can tell a TON of detail in the background. I'm personally not too fond of the text if anything, but I do like the contrast and detail in the last version. Keep up the good work.

Yeah u were right about posting so many.. but here's my newest (Still trying to keep the color theme somewhat monotone with contrast in between)

I don't know Laguna. I like the composition, but I again miss the colours. I see different stock, all in the same colour with a yellow outer glow.
I think with a bit more variation, it could look much better.

I like this one a lot. More than the following versions. Nice mix of colors and effects. Looks like it's made on an old western wanted poster, which fits the theme of the character.

Yeah I hear ya Pes and you're right. The "feel" I wanted was pulled off in my first sig (which Athrun mentioned having a Western feel, which is what I wanted), but it's just not working in the other two. I'll keep playing around with things, but ur right, im starting to put too much stock into it

Not specifically too much stock, rather too much stock in the same colour. As I said, I like the composition, but everything is in 1 colour.
For a western feel, try using some brown or yellow in your sig, or some beige colour. That is what I suggesting, try more combinations of colours.

Well... This is the last attempt at the feeling I'm trying to get for Greg. I used less stock in this. Tried a LITTLE more contrast. Kept the glowing background on the low, went more for a grunge feel. Also threw in some more Western style things. And tried to keep the color stock of him on the right part of the original color:

Adding Greg’s face to the background was a nice touch, but the stock to the right seems...almost too dull. It has color, but it almost looks too smudged/darkened. I dunno. I like the background though =)

My newest sig, needed to take a break from the Greg themed sig, so I figured I'd go with Dean. I used a lot of blue themed sigs when I was creating Persona 3 Main Character sigs so I just took some of my ideas from that. But with this one, I wanted to make the background look like the night sky. The stock on the right originally in the picture is during sunset, and I wanted to change that, but yeah, thats the final product.




eDIT:

And my newest one of Fereydoon from WA5:

Hmm, not too fond of the Dean sig, it looks somewhat.... flat, empty, basic, bad background stock? Not sure, it's something that's irking me about it though. It might be that white line border. It works some times, some times it doesn't.
The Fereydoon sig looks freakin awesome though. It's perfect. Matching blue color theme, and well blended. The text font somewhat reminds me of the Devil May Cry font.

Nice, thanks Athrun. Yeah lookin back on the Dean sig it's rather simple and plain.

I'm rather impressed with my Fereydoon sig tho, I did some effects I don't usually use or even think of in that one. So, I was insipired to try and pull off a similar Avril one:


In the beginning of the game Minor WA5 Spoiler: When she holds the mirror de soto and glows that eerie cyan color I thought she looked completely badass, and was inspired to try and recreate that from the game. It was tough cause I wanted to maintain the color theme of green and silver (her clothes and hair), but ah well, this is what it is

I agree, the Dean sig seems a little empty. The Fereydoon sig is awesome though, as well as the Avril sig. They have a bit of a rougher look to them. Great job =)

I've been spittin these out faster than normal, doing all 3 within the past 24 hours, so here's an updated post with all three of my newest so they arent all scattered:





The third. Patrick Willis of the 49ers, Defensive Rookie of the year to be:

I like the Patrick Willis sig (especially more than the Terrell Owens one you have now, haha...sorry, not much of a fan of him). But yeah, the third sig looks really nice. Great work as usual =)

For the blue sig, I don't know if it's an effect you used, but it looks like it was saved at a lower resolution, you know? Looks a little pixelated. Plus the text is hard to read. It's difficult to use the same color text/outline as the sig itself. If it popped out a little more or matched with the sig, but was a different color, it would look better.
For the green sig, it looks nice, but again with the text. It's hard to read because it's around the same color as the sig, and it doesn't have a defined border. I can see a glow around it, but it doesn't help. :/ Maybe if you tried making a 1px border around it and then adding a glow, it would be more readable.
For the football sig, I like it. The only beef I have, again, is that the text is a tiny bit hard to read. With a black(or some color that would match) 1px border hugging the text, it would pop-out more and be more legible.
Overall, all 3 of them look nice and they'll keep getting better, I'm sure. :)

Newest in Honors of my hometown love for the Patriots:

That’s an awesome sig Laguna. I’m not a fan of the Patriots, but that’s still a really nice sig. I like the way you put it together; the separated pieces that form the sig in its entirety. The images in the individual screens fit together in a way also, so that makes it even better. But yeah, nice work =)

2 Newest Sigs: (From Kenshin)

Anji Sig:




Aoshi Sig:

The black “Anji” text is sort of hard to make out. If you look at it for a bit it’s easy to see sort of, but if it’s just a glance-over, the black background sort of gets in the way, making it hard to tell what the text says, or to even tell there is text there and that it’s not in the background. Then again, I seem to be having problem reading anybody’s text on their sigs if it’s dark like that, haha, so it’s probably just me having problems with my eyesight >.o

Both of the sigs look really nice though, Laguna. The second one is especially nice. Keep it up =).

Thought I'd mess around with Clipping Masks, so this was a tutorial sig with them:




And another new one just for kicks and experimenting:

I think those are both great, to be honest. Though, I love the Vincent Valentine one the best of the two (and maybe even most of your others...). It’s almost a little hard to differentiate between the background and the character, but I really think you did a good job on that one, definitely =). I don’t really know how I’d explain it all, but it just “flows” together well, what with the background, the blending, the color...Yeah. Dunno how I’d word it, haha...Anyway, they’re looking good, keep it up =).

I like the background colours in this piece. It looks really fiery. Unfortunatly, I do not like Irvine's face on the left, I dunno. I never been a big fan of multiple stock in 1 signature, I do like the blending mode though. Irvine looks a bit odd on the right as well. His coat looks fine, but his face looks a bit odd with the brush on top, the dots I mean.
Your border on the bottom doesn't look finished either.
So, overall it looks alright, just not really finished.




I am not too fond on this one. I have trouble seeing his face, all I can recognise is his gun. I like some of he brushes here, as well as the colour, but most of this is just everything piled together. This sig has no flow, whatsoever.
Because everything is so red, as well as the brushes going every direction, it is hard for me to see what is going on.
Maybe try using different tints of red, to have a bit more variation, or use a different blending mode for Vincent.

I'm probably done with the Irvine sig since it was just an experimental one, but thanks for the feedback.



I can see what you're saying. I made the sig yesturday, and I dunno maybe its just me, but I know when u look at the same sig for a while, u stop seeing the thing as a whole, but if u wait a day or two without seeing it, and then go back, u can usually find errors.

I'll try to use some different shades of red and probably a little more black. I tried to avoid using TOO much white because I like darker Vincent sigs, so I'll try some brighter shades of red instead. And I see what you mean with the stock, to me I see it perfectly, but that's only because I made the sig and I know what to look for, so ill fix that up as well

thanks

EDIT: Here it is

You know, after what Pesmerga mentioned, I see what he means about the other one being cluttered and not having that flow. I guess the only reason I’d say I liked it the best was the feel of the color (the crimson seemed a bit 3D...”warm”, if you get my meaning...Hard to describe) and some of the brush effects were cool. But I can see that since Vincent was too dark it would detract from being able to differentiate from his person and the background, making it seem cluttered.

Your revised one is much better in the sense you can see all of Vincent’s visage (mouth/nose), plus you can tell when it starts to turn into the background rather than his clothing or something thanks to that illumination (...I think that’s what it’d be...). The brushes are much more defined as well, more “crisp”.

I’d say it looks much better, but my word doesn’t stand for much, haha =). Good work as always, Laguna, it does look a lot better as a whole.

My newest, inspired by Durandal and his Clipping Mask sigs:



G-G-G-G-G-G-Unit babyyyyy

It looks better in my opinion, a lot clearer. Vincent's hair might look better if it is blended a bit more. Remember the brush thing I explained? =)



I disapprove of G-Unit, so that is a major flaw in my opinion. The design is alright, but G-Unit is wrong, really wrong.
I like the black lines though, it brings sort of a comic effect.