loshon

Apply jitter.

Yes, you did. All you need to do is bring out the focal more.

Smudging is often confused as blending. But it's also good.

My opinion on blurring is that it should only be used to make a focal. However, I'm not saying you should never blur the focal.

All my recent signatures use gradient maps, so yea. Try to look up tutorials on how to use it.

Colors>Map>Gradient

Mess around with that. Make sure you use the regular gradient tool as the settings. You can duplicate the layers, and set them to colors and crap. But no, I don't know any good tutorials. I just use the lighting filters and gradient maps.

Not necessarily. You still need to blend the effects when using a stock. Though it's easiest just to use a gradient map for that.

It's achieved by adding lighting and colors. So it's probably easiest to do signatures with a stock. Because you already have a blended picture.

Basically, it's what makes everything look like it belongs together.

Blending!

Yea, that's pretty darn good for flow. When I creat flow, I just randomly place effects on the render, and make sure none of the effects contradict each other.

Flow can go in many directions, as long as they don't run up against each other. That's why flow is usually just one or two directions. Don't forget that the render also contains flow, so don't have the flow against it.

Yes. Signature should require good flow.

[IMG]

Flow here is exactly like how I explained it in the definition. Other examples of flow are like this:

[IMG]

Here, the render is treated like an Island. The water is all around it.

[IMG]

Here the flow is treated as making a splash against a rock. The water sprays upwards a little, but not too much.

Now sometimes flow can consist of multiple things.

[IMG]

The flow here is arrows.

Sometimes the flow will be light. Now light isn't the most flow producing, so it relies on the render to pull out the rest of the flow. Such as here:

[IMG]

Tell me if you don't understand some things.

Haha. Flow is basically the direction everything goes. So basically most of your effects will go in one or two directions. Like a river. It starts in one point, but it flows smoothly to the end, where all water ends up: the body of water. Sometimes the render can be the rocks in them. So the effects will flow around it.

See what I'm saying?

Ah. All you really need to know are the basics. Now, let's work on flow. You know what flow is?

Don't mind it. Go ahead and send me some of your art, and we'll start by correcting those.

A few things first. How active are you? If you just want a quick over-view, then I can do that. Or would you like an in-depth explanation of the tools. (This includes teaching you about lighting, colors, and etc. Warning, it can get boring.)

I'm interested!

I can help you with your signature problem. Reply if you're interested.