Okay, I have a new idea for us dreamers. Each of us has our own style of how we make sigs. What I'd like to make is an open thread for like.. little tutorials, of how you make your sigs or a specific piece.

Lately I've found myself in a rut, I keep making sigs with the same styles, techniques, effects, and I find myself just recycling old ideas. I know for the most part we all have our own style. So what I'd like to do, is have some people every now and then make a little tutorial on how they made their sigs to let US try and experiment with our own.

I know there are tutorials online, but I want this to be more of a personal, ask questions, make each other better sort of thing. So anybody who's down, just say so, or write a tutorial to add ill put some of mine up soon

I think this is a great idea. We all bring something unique to the table and we all have things we might need help on. I also seem to be recycling the same ideas over and over and i would def. be up for discussing things with fellow dreamers and mabye picking up on some ideas to expand my work..

great idea.. now if only i could remember what i do to make my sigs...

Wow, this would save my life with this program, haha. I’m definitely up for this, though I guarantee I’ll most likely be watching from the shadows than actually giving tutorials of my stuff. >.o. Really good idea though, Lagunna.

Well, actually, I do have a question (or two) to start with...

How does the pen/knife tool work? Also, how exactly do layer masks work?

Great idea. I suck and have no style so I can't help, but it would be very helpful to me.

Ehhh I don't know knife tool at all, but I DO know some bits of the pen tool.

The pen tool lets say has 2 MAIN points, the starting point and the ending point of the line. Then if you click on the line between these two points you can drag to create some sort of curve, and if you click again somewhere along the line you can pull it to make another curve.

If you click somewhere OFF the line then it creates a new point and automatically connects a line from that point to somewhere else (i cant remember), i usually just stick with a starting and ending point and making some curvy lines.

There's only one way I use the pen tool though. Here's what I do with it, and it's visible in some of my sigs that I'll show below.

1. Create a curvy line the way I said above.

2. Click the brush tool. Select a small pixel brush like size 2 or 3.

3. Window > Brushes > Shape Dynamics > Set everything to a pretty low percentage.

4. Click back on the pen tool. (Must do this).

5. Right click on the pen line you drew and go to "Stroke Line".

6. Select Pen Pressure, then okay.

7. Right click on pen line and "Delete Path"

What you should be left with is a neat little lien that fades out at the ends. Here are pieces where I've used this technique so you can see some ways to implement it:


(Pen tool along the bottom in those curvy lines and that kinda go diagonally from bottom right to top left. I've gone to Blending Options and set a glow to give the line an additional glow.)



(My Theme Battle piece, from the Harry Potter wand I've done some pen tool lines, also adding an outer glow from the blending options.)


(The lines wrapping around the MC and the shadow of Ryoji)


(Lines in background are pen tool)


(Finally, the sig that everybody said was their favorite. Many of the lines in the background are the pen tool)



Hope that was semi helpful. It's a tool that you can't really make as the basis of your sig (at least the way I've used it), but its definitely a way to add some nice subtle effect effects