Locked and Loaded :: Grace's GFXing

[Zenister]

Hey guys. I'm new here. I'm a head moderator of a Graphics, Fiction, and Art section on another site, but I wanted some new opinions on my work, so I thought I'd look for a new forum site.

Critique is welcome, but so is praise . I'll post stock images if I have them, but I don't always save things.

Sigs:









SOTW Winners:

[FlashD]

This forum is for signatures and avatars only. Your other works have been moved to Dazzle Us and Wallpapers.

[Zenister]

My mistake.

[Kaname Shikara]

I really like them ^^ the 1st one is my favorite. Nice effects on all of them ^^

[Zenister]

Oh hey, I remember you =D. You were my random buddy when I broke the forum. XD

Thanks for stopping in! Glad you like the first sig. It's pretty old, actually (maybe a month or so?) from when I was first getting the hand of lighting effects.

[Kaname Shikara]

XD

You're pretty skilled at sig making o.o I'm still....eh-ish XD I should look at more tutorials and experiment more ^^ how long have you been making sigs?

[AnimeSaw]

I really liked the Blood one, I think it was very nicely done. Keep them coming.

[Zenister]

XD

You're pretty skilled at sig making o.o I'm still....eh-ish XD I should look at more tutorials and experiment more ^^ how long have you been making sigs?

Mmm... I'd say I've been doing this for about a year now. I work with Gimp, but I have to admit, I've only within the past month or so really gotten the hang of it. I found a great Gimp community that taught me a lot. If you ever want a sig, I'd be thrilled to make you one. =D

I really liked the Blood one, I think it was very nicely done. Keep them coming.

Thank you very much! I should have a new one within a day or so.

[Ellipsis]

Ehh. It's more of a personal taste, but they're too big to me. I like the one with the Witch best, and the text in the last one. I can't really give any cnc yet though, so I'll wait til you post more.

[Zenister]

Well thanks for the cnc that you did give. =]

My standard sig size is 500x200, but it depends on the stock. If I want to show more of the stock, I can go as big as 225 pixels tall. I've never liked really little sigs, but that's just my taste. I'll make something little just for you one of these days. =P

Until then, I made a new piece today:

[Jose]

I like them too, but you seems to make them too monochromatic for me. The purple one only has shades of purple, your latest one only has green and yellow. Experiment with different colors. =]

[Zenister]

I hate sigs with too many colors.

I pick three at the most and stick to my palette.

[Yurka]

I like your latest one the most. It looks more colorful than your other ones and seems to have a better use of lighting and flow. Though I have to agree with what some other people have said, they look kind of big. You don't really need that much space on a tag unless you're actually going to use it and you're mostly just ending up with unneeded negative space.

Experimenting with a little bit of more color would be nice too. Get out of your comfort zone.

[Zenister]

My sigs are pretty much always 500x200 pixels, but I know smaller ones are definitely more common. I just never had a taste for them because I like to get a lot of my stock image into the final product if I can. I used to make ones that were only 450 pixels wide, but on the forum site where I moderate, it's more popular for them to be bigger because our sig limit is 800x300. I guess I'm just in the habit from that.

As for the colors thing, I dunno what to tell you guys. I think most of your sigs with 5 - 6 colors in them have way too much going on. I could make something with a full rainbow in it, but I wouldn't like it. It's not really a matter of comfort for me, just personal taste.

I appreciate all the comments, though. If it'll make you guys happy, I will make a tiny, many-colored sig the next time I get a chance, and we'll see how it looks. (I actually had to make a much smaller one for the SOTW contest, which you guys will see once the thread is up.)

I wanted to show off my new piece today, but after all that, I almost don't want to XD. This isn't going to help with your colors and size arguments:



I was experiementing with text and grunge. I'll do the color and size thing another time. I plan to take the background blurry text stuff out, since I've decided I don't like it.

[Zenister]

Well, now that voting is over, I suppose I can post this:



Thanks to everyone who voted for my sig. I was so happy to win by vote, if not by judge choice.

[Ellipsis]

ooooOoOh pretty xD
Not much to say today, but it's a beautiful sig. The side-border could go though. I'm not a fan of the images-on-the-side thing. I personally think it'd look better without the side part. Everything else if good though. Make moar !

[Zenister]

Thanks a lot . I have made more, and there's one in particular that I really want to post, but I have to wait a little bit. XD

[Zenister]

Well, I won sig of the week again by votes, but the judges never pick me XD. I'm still so honored though.

[iAnime]

I like the third sig you have up there.
It seems like you haven't made too many sigs yet. Generally people start with brush reliant sigs so you may want to look into other tutorials to learn skills and apply them.

[X e Y U Z i O]

This one is my favorite http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/a...durrrrrr-1.png the only thing I don't like about it is the corners the seem to bold but other than that the sig is absolutely perfect

[Zenister]

iAnime: I've actually made 600+ sigs, I just don't bother to post the vast majority of them. Thanks for the tip, though.

4n1m3: Thank you!

What did you guys think of the latest sig I posted? The one that won SOTW?

[Cotaku]

Your tag for SOTW is great. Definitely would have been my second vote.
the colors are amazing and the small borders just add that subtle "completeness." (I can't explain it any better than that...)

The only thing I would recommend is maybe making the word "COLOR" a bit more easy to read. There are just certain letters that are a bit hard to read, and I know a rainbow effect will do this. But if there was a way, then that's all I can recommend.
Great job, and congratulations on all of your votes!

[Zenister]

Thank you very much! I agree with you about the text. I struggled with picking a font for a long time and then just kinda gave up, ha ha.

[X e Y U Z i O]

On the latest one, on the top of her face were the flowers are it looks a tad to bright an that really caught my eye but I really like the text

[Zenister]

Request for a friend. I like everything but the size and the text.

And another SOTW winner ^^: