It's been how long since my last one...2 hrs, clearly I have too much time on my hands. Don't mistake this one for the one I mentioned I would do in my last thread, that one is still undergoing, this one I primarily did for a laugh.
Just saying, if you plan on making multiple sigs in quick succession, wait till your done and post them in one thread, as to not flood the forum. And your sigs so far (I looked at the other ones you've posted) are pretty simple, and large. Try starting off with a size of 600x140, or 500x200 pixels, or somewhere around there. Also, as far as an artistically drawn opinion, theres really not much I can say, simple sigs, nothing to it to make it pleasing to look at, and don't take that in the wrong way. My first sig I brushed a few strokes of different colors and smudged them lol. I know this wasn't a serious sig, but I'll critique it in a serious manner, not to sound rude when I do so, and give you some pointers, because I use to be disgustingly bad with photoshop, and now I know my way, and I'm only moderately bad haha. (and again I'll critique in a harsh manner, not to sound rude at all, sorry if I do.) The focal (the main subject of the photo) isn't designated and confuses the eyes. The text is overly distracting, to large, to long, two separated texts (which is not always a bad thing), and sticks out like a sore thumb. It also covers samurai jack, adding to the confusion. The colors are bland and boring. And the sig is simply too big. Finding good quality stocks can be a long and deterring process, however helps out in the long run. You want to really extract the focal, and make it noticeable. With a good quality stock, blurring the background, and sharpening the focal usually helps, as well as blending and depth. Blending and depth are two ways to bring out the focal, and make the image easy to look at. Depth is basically bringing out the focal, or putting it farther in, as if the image is a 3d plane. This is an example I'll use, it's not very good, but you can sort of see how the finger, and the focal seem to be closer to you in a 3d plane. Blurring the background, and sharpening to focal are usually go to ways that I use to create depth. Overall, depth just makes the image more interesting to look at, rather than a flat image. Blending can be a little tricky, at least it is for me, and I'm still not very good at it. Blending is what it sounds like, blending the focal point with the image, which sounds like it would eliminate depth. But you want to blend in unimportant or uninteresting parts of the focal. This can be done with the smudge tool, the blurring tool, and many other ways including c4d's, lighting, coloring, etc. Ill use another one of my sigs to example. The lighting and effects I used, aswell as the colors, help make it look like the focal is still part of the picture, even though he is brought out of it. Next thing to know is lighting and colors, Lighting can help create depth, and make a picture more interesting, aswell as realistic. Lighting can be confusing and annoying though. However it's pretty easy to do. The simplest way I usually go by is to find where light is coming from in the stock/render (harder to tell with render, but can be done) make a new layer and make one of the soft circles really large (but not to big lol) color it white, and just do one click to make one circle. Then set the layer to lighten, or overlay, or color dodge, and lower the opacity. Colors are easy to distinguish and can make or break an image. Having a bunch of random colors makes it look sloppy and annoying, and to bland of colors will make it boring. Find out the overall color scheme of the image within 3 colors. Or make a new layer, and put a gradient on that looks good, lower the opacity and mess with the layer type till it looks good. If theres only a select few colors you want to bring out, make a gradient with those colors, and mess with the opacity and layer type. While that's a rough description of coloring, you will learn as you do more sigs, or graphics in general. TL;DR: Sorry for the really long post, but I still remember starting to mess around with it in 08, and being confused out of my mind, so just trying to help. Looking up tutorials is also a great way to learn, and you can pick some methods up from each tutorial you read. Hope to see you keep doing graphics!
I know my sigs are simple, personally I like simple, I do however value your opinion and I am appreciative of the advice you've given me. Your sigs are most impressive, I'll definitely be looking at the tutorials and implement what I learn in my future projects.
Thank you, but I never said simple was wrong, I like simple to. Simple pictures are simply easier to look at. But sometimes, making simple look good, is simply complex, especially when it comes to graphics. But don't trouble yourself with overbearing tutorials. Don't worry about stuff like clipping masks, layer masks, etc. Keep it simple until you feel comfortable with the program your using. I didn't do that and it was hard for me to embrace Photoshop when I first got it. Good luck.
What I find with tutorials is that there is almost always something you will learn from them, and it is usually quite different from what is being shown in the tutorial; it will be some technique, some interesting way of doing something that you will take and apply somewhere else. Tutorials are always useful for this reason, and you should take what you get from them.