Okay well I've been Photoshopping for less than a year now, and I'm still finding my own "style". I've gone through different tutorials to learn tricks and techniques, and I've made various styles of sigs. So now, I want your help telling me what LOOKS the best. I've made a poll so u guys can tell me, but i really need your opinion because half the time what I think looks good, really doesn't hahaha. So here it goes: (Multiple answers can be picked)

Original Sin

Knight in Shining Armor

Memento Mori

Steve Fox

Help Me.

Longest Day of my Life

Strength

The way it's supposed to be

Perdition

G-Unit

Avril

Fereydoon

Getcha Popcorn Ready!

Love

Hero

Jade Dragoon

Fallen Hero: Mahavira

Chaos

LagunaWannabe

Memory

well here are my favorites.

Knight in Shining Armor
Perdition
Fereydoon
Fallen Hero: Mahavira
Chaos

my least favorites are..

Help Me. (looks just a bit too messy for me)
Longest Day of my Life
Jade Dragoon (too much green)
LagunaWannabe (the face on image stands out a bit too much, i think it could use some blending)

I definitely still think the Mahavira sig is your best yet. Everything is virtually perfect in it. Otherwise, the style you used to create the Avril/Fereydoon sigs, and also the Persona "Help Me" sigs are pretty good as well. The others are alright, but you did the best with the afore mentioned ones in my opinion.

I think the fallen hero one is your best by far

I was scrolling down, and they were good, and i was kinda debating against which one I liked best, but fallen hero definitely stands out

As the votes obviously say, Fallen Hero = Epic. That sig is so full of win. I must give you kudos for it.

Faves (and reason):

Fallen Hero - ...Well there's not much to say about it, it's just awesome.
The way it's supposed to be - The only thing I don't like about this sig is the border, besides that, the effects and techniques look great.
Jade Dragoon - Because it's a similar style as Fallen Hero, if the stock was a bit more clearer I think people could see past the "greenness" of it and unlike Fallen Hero it has too much texture and noise which is the reason I prefer Hero over it because it seems much more crisper and tidier. xD
Chaos - The animation is awesome, however in the middle section that red thing covering his face makes it a little less appealing, still a good sig style and very awesome and flashy XD
Memory - Just an overall awesome sig, only thing that took away a few points was the random black grunge brushes over the top...it just seems to be there and not interacting with the sig as much as it should be.

In the middle (reason):

Avril and Fereydoon - The style works well, however there are a few flaws. With Fereydoon there's too much noise over the whole thing, it's good for a bit of "roughness" but to cover the entire thing is unappealing (to me personally) That stock with Avril could have done a bit better, I don't like sigs where you can see the sharp edges of where it was cut out and the effects covering it are off putting.
Perdition - This one speaks for itself, everything is awesome and well thought out but it's the fact that it's impossible to see what's IN it that makes it less then what it could be.
LagunaWannabe - words can't explain how awesome the background is lol! Just the stock let it down, that's all.
Strength - If this style was a little more perfected you wouldn't have let it down with the stock, the background is awesome, however.


And most of the rest are ok, but not the best.


Overall I think (Damn..I keep looking at Fallen Hero and I just think "WOW, that is one f*cking awesome sig") you've presented a lot of pleasing results And only you can really develop and work your style. The only major sig style I didn't see up there was tech. I think you should give that a try too

Well thank you all again so much, I appreciate the feed back so far, and I agree with many of you on favorites and whatnot. So it seems like the Mahavira sig is hands down the best one, so I made another sig to tr and recreate the style I used in that one.. tell me if it worked and if it looks good:

The best style is to have many styles.

You have a 'base' style and other styles to fall back on to mix things up.

Sticking with one style sorta limits you.

Most people don't even notice they have a style until they one day decide to look at all their stuff and then figure it out themselves, or people just tell them xD.

I remember people telling me that I had a nack for adding too much contrast to images and that became sort of my "style" for a while then. Tony has a rather blurry retro style methinks...

You don't really choose what kind of "style" you are, yourself. You just see it. Otherwise, you'll find your own style further on when you feel you've gotten even better with photoshop and want to try something new, at that point you should have a routine you might do all the time when you make something.

But from what I can tell from your banners, I'd say you tend to make your banners in high contrast and also have a "fuzzy" thing going on. The last few banners reminds me of Tony's stuff oddly, enough x_X'.

Your Lenneth one does look good as well. Though, it has a bit of that “grainy” stuff/noise in there (like Winnie had said, though she used the word fuzzy >.o), whereas Mahavira was smooth (sort of). So yeah, you did recreate that style, but you also kept the other part of the style you’ve been using =p. Looks good though =).

Yes the new sig looks pretty awesome too. I don't see it too "grainy" or "fuzzy" o_O Only thing I find weird with it, is the border. One end is smooth and rounded whereas the other is squared off. Good job.

I say it's grainy, because the background isn't smooth, but it has that grainy (light grain, mind) appearance. The stock is smooth, but the background didn't seem to hold up to the "sleek" appearance. It just seemed smooth to me, yet at the same time held that style he's been using. Then again, I see a lot of things usually that aren't there, so I guess this isn't an exception, haha. I dunno. >.o

Yea I cant see what you mean. Comparingwise, it looks a lot like my Memento Mori sig than my Mahavira sig, for those "non-grainy" effects that you.ve mentioned. think that was a different kind of brush than I used recently, so Illl check it

sry the typing, im drunk hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

What you did to the borders on this one, should have been done to the one in the quote. The egde on the right is clearly visible =o.

Another topic?
Oh well...


I basically agree with Winnie here. You make what you make, that is it. Think outside the box. I used to make grunge signatures, but I have developed my own thing, which is a little bit of some styles.
When I started, I basically used grunge, as it attracted me most and to learn the basics, but nowadays, I just make what I like and am not bothered with "style" or anything.

Even though I find grunge easy in theory (not in practice because I suck at grunge) I've never liked it because to me it just seemed like mindless brushing and filters etc etc. Nothing seems to have a purpose but to just BE there. It's hard to explain....But it just doesn't seem like a whole lot of thought goes on behind a grunge sig (there are only maybe 2 examples of grunge I've EVER seen where all the elements of the sig had a purpose and fit together perfectly and weren't just...there) Which is why I prefer something more like vector. But that's what I like about these sigs is that even if it's grunge, it doesn't all just seem to sitting there (Blended or not) most of them have flow, which is cool 8-D

Iunno...maybe it's our different browsers, graphics cards/ etc that contribute to some of us seeing something different to others xD...However when I do look closer I understand how the Lenneth sig does seem to be a lot...sharper in the background lol, but I wouldn't put it as grainy. Memento Mori is grainy to me.

Mentioning the Memento Mori sig, does anybody happen to see the symbolism in it?? It's my current sig not cause i think it looks best, but I love all the implied symbolism in it, there's a tonnn there

@ KC: Actually, I think it has more or less to do with me and my poor word choices, haha. =). Grainy was the only thing I could think of to sort of describe the difference, but I can see how it would seem...well, not the best choice of words in this instance. Sharper/more defined was basically what I meant, I just didn’t know how to say it exactly that would...make sense. =).

And Laguna, since I haven’t played P3, I wouldn’t exactly be able to tell what symbolism you’ve added in. I mean, I might be able to guess at some of it, but without playing the game, it’s a tad hard. It’s still a nice sig though. =p.

Hahah no you wouldn't get the symbolism in it unless you played the game. ANybody else see the symbolic things in it??


btw, a new one, I think it's a semi-masterpiece for me because I used some semi-advanced techniques I've never really used before in a sig:

I love the background. Something seems off about it though (the sig as a whole), but I don't know what it is. It might be nothing at all, haha. But yeah, until I think of what's bothering me about it, it looks great. =).

Hehe I completely understand, I do that sometimes...I even make up my own words that make perfect sense to me but seem complete garbage to others haha.

And I agree with you. Since I haven't played it myself the symbolic value is lost on me



This sig is fantastic! Lol I love it! Haha my eyes nearly orgasmed. The only thing that throws off the orgasmicalness of the sig is his head...It got cut off O_____O I'm not sure he likes how that feels lol. The background is cool, though personally I think you could soften the grain a tad bit as it look pixelish/low quality. Other then those minor points, great job

I guess I'm stuck with the grungy look... its all i know how to do, especially evident in my newer works. I just like the textured feeling o them better. So here's the newet from the new MMORPG Lunia I've been playing nonstop:





Although today I did create a new "art like" sig, something a little different from me:



And a FF13 one:

The backgrounds look nice in your FFXIII and Dainn sig. However, for the FFXIII one, the stock doesn’t quite blend in (and the rock things to the right just sort of stick out). I’m not sure if you were going for an actual collage effect where things *would* look cut/pasted (and therefore not matching, etc.), but I think you could have worked on the placement of the things in the bottom right corner (I’ll just call them rocks, because I really don’t know if that’s what they are or not), just because they stand out a lot. Compared to the left side (which is smooth, etc.), you have the right half of the sig that looks kinda slopped on.

Now, I’m exaggerating when I say slopped on, as it really doesn’t look that bad (I actually like how the woman is placed on/fits in), but it just doesn’t really seem to fit as a whole piece. It’s almost as if you switched styles half-way through. ...If that makes sense. I don’t know if it does or not, so I apologize for being entirely unhelpful and spouting gibberish, haha...

I like the Dainn sig, except for the text. However, that’s just because I don’t like the font, though as a whole it fits together. So yeah, that probably wasn’t even worth mentioning, but whatever, haha. It really does look nice in my opinion (except for the text...). Maybe you should have made it smaller? It just seems to take up too much space, really. I guess the font doesn’t bother me, it’s just that it takes up so much of the sig, especially since it’s one of the duller fonts (if you know what I mean by that).Yeah, I dunno. Maybe it’s just me that thinks that, haha. =).

As for the Sieg signature, I don’t have much to say. It looks good.

Keep up the good work, Laguna. =).

Thanks man, yeah the FF13 sig doesn't look very blended looking back now and the reason why is cause I'm mixing CG/anime with real life pictures. It's something new I'm tryin to do, and it works by Filter > Artistic the ##### out of a layer and blend them together.

So like, the Dainn one worked really well cause that hill and the clouds are from a real picture, so I used some art effects to make it look more like paint strokes so that it worked well with the anime picture which I then blurred and smudged.

But yeah, the FF13 sig I layered things awkwardly so the blending didn't work out the way I wanted to, hence the rock sticks out really bad


EDIT: MY 3rd sig made today, im on a f*cking roll hahaa

I like it. There isn’t much I can really say to critique it. Compared to some of your others, it’s on more of the “simplistic” side, but it’s still nicely done in my opinion. =).

New Compilations of this week's sigs:














Love my new Sephiroth one!

That Angel one is sick dude! That's all I have to say xD

The one after that is pretty awesome too now that I look at it, but without the text it's lacking a bit. The Dainn one is really good too, cept as someone mentioned the font doesn't seem to work o_o Once again, fantastic job

I love the way the Angel/Sephiroth one came out. I don’t really have much to add other than that, haha. It’s just the way the text goes with the background really stands out most to me. I dunno. Good work. =).

Never done something like this before really where I try to ENHANCE a picture, rahter then create something abstract from scratch. Picture of me with my ethnic backgrounds:





And my April SoTm

And how well it's blended and what not =)

Thanks for the comment, and a new Aerith one I made:



And a dedication piece to my new favorite video game character: Zack Fair





DIdn't know exactly what I wanted from this sig at first, but after I created the background it looked kinda plain. So I hand made the Advent Children tile design to the corners, and tried to recreate a "Lifestream" sort of feeling, like Zack is watching from the great beyond. Comment please

The sigs are really my style (the Aerith + Zack), but they aren’t bad. The Zack one looks probably the best, in my opinion. I don’t really get the vibe that he’s watching from afar, but more like...I don’t really know. It just...works. I guess.

On an off-note, I really like the avatar. Looks very cool. =).

But yeah...Sorry I don’t have much else to say this time, and that what I did say was somewhat unhelpful, haha...=). They do look fine though. Looking forward to seeing more. =).

And a new little something I threw together for kicks.. didnt really have any point to it, just wanted to experiment

I personally think it would look better with just the animation on the bottom (though while keeping the look the one on the left has when it isn’t playing - you just see that white outlined box). Otherwise it’s not too bad, I don’t think, but I’m not very good with animations so I don’t know what’s good or not, haha...=).

One thing I'd like to say, if you use animation, make it a looping one. Yours stops and then starts over, which doesn't look that good.
Also, the left Vincent one doesn't match with the background, as in the colours conflict and it looks out of place to me.
Oh, also remove black bars from your clips =P.
The background looks nice though.

Yeah I think im just gonna take the animation out, I had trouble with it so it didnt work the way I wanted it to... the newest Vincent one anyways (Just started playing DIrge of Cerberus)

This latest one is nice. However, the only thing that bothers me when I look at it, is that there is some sort of grainy/too contrasted red dots/grains around the text and whatnot (maybe you know what I’m talking about? It’s mostly around ‘Nightmare’). To me it doesn’t seem to blend in, but that’s just me. Otherwise I really like it.

Keep it up. =).