They all look decent but not much more than that. I don't like how everything feels crammed into the space so there's not much of a background with the exception of the last one which appears to be all background.
I'm not a pro, but I'll try. 2: There's a split focal between the promethean, the text, and thing on the left (very hard to make out). Try blurring him some more and moving the text a little closer to the left. Also, perhaps you could shrink the text a wee bit and lessen the space between letters.
I quite like the grave mind...just for the text.probaly my fav quote from halo 2(or some lines by arbiter)
I really like your sigs. The one with the gravemind has a nice text, it is a quote. I like it. Good job. I just finished making my own sig, check it out.
TBH the only person who gave me any sort of specific things on how to improve them was you, and even then, I am not sure how I would carry out your request. make him blurry?, what do you mean, he is already blurred out, also the "thing on the left" is still the promethean knight, just with his face shield drawn back. I tried to make the lettering more compact, but it just doesn't look right to me, so i'm just assuming that the error is in the framework itself, thus scrapped. [br][/br]Edited by merge: unscrapped for those who are interested
because the text is so far away from the focal (face shield dude), I'm also inclined to notice the promethean in the back where the text is located, thus creating three different things I am looking at. Try moving the text a little further to the left closer to the intended focal if you can Dimming the light on its head was a good idea by the way. They aren't bad at all, better than my first ones, haha. EDIT: I think the stock is a bit low quality, try sharpening it some. If you're using GIMP: Filter > Enhanced > Sharpen
the sigs were actually about 2x larger when I made them, the quality loss may have occurred when I uploaded them with imageshack [br][/br]Edited by merge: Made this because I was bored
In terms of improving the current ones, I would work at making singular focal point which the eye is drawn to, by using things in the rest of the signature to draw the eye to them, for instance; If you have the Promethean flaming skull face thing as your chosen focal, place the text almost in the same place so that they are seen at the same time more or less, and the eye does not have to travel back and forth between them. To further draw the eye towards that point, you could then add lighting that is strongest near the focal, and dims out as it gets further away, making the rest of the piece not draw the eye as much. Finally, you could then add lines, which could be in many many different forms, from C4Ds you add, objects in the background or any other such things, and have these lines either converge on that point, or move in a single direction, with the general focal point being pointed to by the lines in the most empty areas. All of these things will work together to make a better focal point, though of course there are other ways to do it. When someone said "Make it blurry" what they are referring to is using blur and sharpen to make the focal point seem more crisp, and the background to seem like a backdrop, rather than just another part of the image that has attention brought to it. Think in photography when you see a really good image, and the person or object that the picture is focused on is really clear, then the background is blurred out to the point where it doesn't at all interfere with the foreground image. As to general framework, the one thing I would say first would be that you did very little to the stock images to make the signature, and it leaves it feeling somewhat bland. I recommend trying out some tutorials, I know it doesn't sound all that useful, but there is almost always something you can find in there that will help you improve. We have a good collection of tutorials here, and you can always look up more of them. Some of my favourite things to do to stock images to make them look good are, one, to use gradient maps to change colors, setting an atmosphere for the image, and two playing around with mixing other images, set to different blending modes, or just mixed in, that are used to enhance the scene. There are tutorials that show how to do all sorts of things similar to this, and then you can develop your own style over time.
Just read this and I see the reasoning behind your previous decision SJ, sorry. Still, I wouldn't scrap them. EDIT: Use photobucket, it's much better. Macaroni, don't come in here with that bullshit.
here is an alternate at full resolution not sure I like the lettering over the eyes [br][/br]Edited by merge: new one [br][/br]Edited by merge: two new sigs