Jpec's Thread O' CnC's

Okay, so I've decided to come out of CnC retirement. If you've got a signature or graphic that you'd like me to CnC for you in the extended way that I do, post it here. You'll get three paragraphs from me: the first is of things that I liked about the image, and what excellent qualities it has; the second is of things that I don't like; the third is suggestions of things that you can do to improve that graphic, and things that you can potentially incorporate into your future designs. These will be followed by a (usually slightly arbitrary) rating out of five.

As a rule, I'll do no more than three CnCs per day. The reason I retired was because I was trying to do upwards of fifteen a day in the old CnC thread, which I quickly learned I didn't have time for.

That said, let the graphics roll. ^_^

 

...so I guess I'm not following the three-paragraphs outline so much as I'm just writing whatever I feel like writing about the graphic. I'll still do the positives and the negatives, but if you throw up a piece of crap expect me to call it a piece of crap (good for fertilizer, but not much else).


Author: MLG Venom
Response: Well my first response is that it's lacking a distinct border. Sure the blue and black contrast well enough with the white of the old layout that I've got in my employ at the moment, serving to separate the graphic from the rest of the website, but how would this look on a predominantly black or blue forum? Typical to the graphics on this forum is a 3px or 5px solid border, which is a bit much for my tastes, but does a good job as a border. It looks as though you've used three shades of blue to add to the original design with Sonic and his Sword of Uberfail (since when does Sonic need a sword to pwn n00bs?): the dark blue with the more organic lines emanating from the corner, a lighter blue that's splotched with a different brush underneath it, and then a third tone that exists in the light flares that are in front of and behind that. The main problem with these is that none of these match the original color of the hedgehog himself. I can also decipher exactly what you did to the original image to get it to look like it does now, pointing to the fact that not too much work went into the image. There's also the fact that it's very hard to tell just where my eye is supposed to go on the image; do I look at the blue glob on the left, or at the blue hedgehog on the right?

I will say that you're doing something interesting with the lines. While some might call the overlayed criss-cross and organic lines rather schizophrenic, I consider the conceptual contrast interesting enough to work with, if it's a more modern piece. I'll also say that the graphic is very trendy, using a lot of gradients and solid colors and staying away from too much rasterized effects.

In terms of suggestions, I'll say that you should have a preset image in mind when constructing a graphic. Imagine the pieces you want to have intertwining with one another and how they'll play off one another, and plan around the lines, shapes, and colors to draw the eye through the image. I'll also say that you should definitely have a border around future images, and should try to bring any characters out more.
Rating: 2/5

Maybe more later. We'll see. It's first-come, first-serve...