A simple sig I made with gradients and stuff because I change my name. CnC por favor. Also, the quality isn't as good in my sig because I resized in in Photobucket's editing tool. I'll get around to fixing it soon.
It's very basic... and not appealing to me. Could've at least made the outside transparent instead of black. Not a fan but keep practicing
I haven't learned how to do transparency in GIMP unfortunately. I'm guessing you use Photoshop for your sigs.
Fortunately I got photoshop on a discount through my school. Often you can just leave the background transparent and save it as a png. I'm not familiar with GIMP though, so I don't know how that would work exactly (though my guess is it's the same process). My suggestions: Try manipulating the text a little more than just skewing it. Adding a gradient or a texture, etc, can surprisingly change a lot. Also, the colors are too random and remind me of a very offput rainbow. You've got four colors blending together which.. complicates the image and, quite frankly, looks ugly. Also, the border is overused. And there is no flow or depth and there's too much negative space (blank space). It, overall, looks flat and boring. Anyway, thought I could help by being more specific ;S Just constructive criticism Dun worry, it'll get easier, just need more practice.
I was thinking about using a texture, but is there a way I can save a picture as a texture? The standard ones don't appeal to anybody.
Textures can be applied in a number of different ways; patterns are not always the way to go, but they can be used. To make a texture you get from an image into a pattern, save it as a .pat file and add it into the folder containing the other patterns. (in photoshop it is slightly different, but you said you use GIMP, so that is how you do it in GIMP) Alternately, you can use blending modes to mix the texture with the image; typically overlay works well with textures, though you can play around with that.
I'm honestly not really sure what to tell you. As a long time GIMP user, I can probably answer any direct questions you have. But honestly, I would just sit down, google GIMP sig tutorials, and read. Read, lots.