Sigs and Avi showcase

[Lucaris]

I'm recently new to making sigs and avatars, been at it for about a year now. I've made a handful of them though.

EARLY STUFF:

First one I made, and it show :P

 

I made this one shortly after.

 

This one I made for a friend

 

LATER STUFF:

The one i'm currently using, first time I started messing around with creating my own backgrounds.

 

Nothing to say about this one really

 

This one I used to mess around with text animations, turned out kinda neat.

 

This one was made for the same friend the samus one was for

 

Made this one day when I was bored

 

Nothing much to say about this one either.

 

Most recent thing I made, for skoodle ditty actually.

 

[Astral_Mage]

You got some neat work out there, I pretty much like them, I like how you used the animations and the colour consistency.
You got talent, keep honing your skills.
I would like to see more of you

[.:neuko:.]

Wow that's a lot of sigs and avis! I'll just CnC some of your later sigs, kay?

I do recommend you read all of my post for best results, but if you're not into reading walls of text you can just skip to the tl;dr paragraphs, which I've highlighted in bold.




The main subject (2-birds symbol) has some nice details but looks cramped at the top and bottom bounds of the canvas. I would recommend shrinking it a skosh just to give it some breathing space.

The blood spatter has a pleasingly natural colour and I like how it appears to be soaked into the canvas with its slightly softened edges. It's just a shame that it's confined to one corner of the sig.

Font-wise the text suits the theme somewhat but doesn't exactly follow the contours of the textured canvas. It also looks somewhat disconnected from the main subject and blood spatter colour-wise. The fading animation is a nice touch though.

Summary: Overall this sig is not bad, but I feel that more could have been done with the delivery of an otherwise interesting concept.




I love the main subject (girl with bad-a$$ bow), the costume details especially. I have some criticisms, but they are minor: The alignment of the main subject is okay but since she takes up about the half the space of the canvas and there's no asset to bridge her and the text, the whole sig looks divided into two distinct segments and the beautiful background doesn't quite flow as well as it could. I would recommend extending the canvas from the left of the sig and then continuing the background pattern. To restore balance I'd then bring the text slightly inward toward the main subject, which should also make it look less disconnected. My second criticism might make little difference as to the overall perceived quality of the sig if resolved, but you might find it worthy of note if you plan to enter any graphics contests in the future. The main subject looks lovely, but I do notice a minor fringe around her and this somewhat makes her look like she's made of cardboard. Fortunately it's thin enough to avoid being a distraction, but in a contest such artefacts are often the difference between winning and losing.

The text is a good font, and again the animation is a nice touch. Mind you, the unnaturally slow speed of the text makes reading more laboured than it has to be. Also it's unnecessarily too large and its brightness undermines the presence of the main subject.

Summary: Though it looks a little unpolished, this sig is a significant improvement over the last and you're on the right track design-wise. However, you need to be more aware of compositional flow and choose cleaner stocks (or otherwise clean them up yourself before applying them to your work) as overlooking these matters can lead to harsh criticism at the contest level.




The Moogle looks very clean; I'm curious to know where you got that. But anyway, it's also a decent size; not too big or small. Personally though, I think it's a shame that his antennae (for want of a better name) is cropped since this is one his most distinctive features. As I said though, he is a decent size, so in this case I would consider re-editing the sig to make his red bobble stick out of the canvas bounds. Generally this approach is not recommended as it doesn't work too well with most subjects and plenty of people are critical of sigs that are shaped anything other than an absolute rectangle; but there are exceptions where canvas-breaching works very well with challenging subjects like this Moogle here.

The text is a good font and basing its colours on the Moogle is a smart choice as it retains the flow of the design. Just one small criticism I have here though: the heart-shaped part of the exclamation mark looks a little frizzly (pixellated) when scaled up, which spoils an otherwise polished piece of work.

The background is a nice design in general. The minimalistic spiral pattern works very well and does a fine job of drawing the viewer's attention to the heart of the sig. The brightness is of a sensible level; it does enough to complement the Moogle without undermining its presence.

Summary: This sig certainly has the cute factor and there's a nice blend of harmony and pop in terms of colour and shapes. Although not quite perfect, the arrangement of assets is a notable improvement over the aforementioned sigs.




Overall I have very little to complain about with this sig. Great choice of subject matter (I love the Squid Sisters personally) and very relevant. The only things I would point out is that the Squid Sisters could use a little more pop as parts of them seem to nearly blend into the background. Flipping the background horizontally or dimming it a bit might remedy this without spoiling the flow however. My second point is more a matter of preference. The sig is by no means bland but some trivial text would have been nice as it looks just a tad incomplete without it.


Conclusion: For your first attempt you have a lot of nice works here and it's good that you are experimenting with many different ideas.

There are some things to be addressed however: I have noticed that most of your sigs don't seem to venture beyond two are three layers of content; some have minor blending issues and others could use more flow between assets. For your first attempt this is to be expected, but at the competitive level there's more to designing a sig than combining a nice subject, fancy font and textured background. There needs to be some evidence of effort and technical skill as well. All elements must work well together and say something about their main subject. Special effects can also help to fill in bland areas and enhance continuity; in short they can make a sig look like a seamless design as opposed to a mish-mash of assets pulled from different sources. Be sure to use effects only when it is called for though as it's easy to get carried away. When making your next set of sigs keep these points in mind.

I really look forward to seeing more of your works. You clearly have potential. Just keep at it and always be open to learning new ideas and techniques.

[Lucaris]

Thank you for taking the time to critique my stuff, I will definitely take into consideration the stuff you've said while I work on other pieces.

Wow that's a lot of sigs and avis! I'll just CnC some of your later sigs, kay?

I do recommend you read all of my post for best results, but if you're not into reading walls of text you can just skip to the tl;dr paragraphs, which I've highlighted in bold.




The main subject (2-birds symbol) has some nice details but looks cramped at the top and bottom bounds of the canvas. I would recommend shrinking it a skosh just to give it some breathing space.

The blood spatter has a pleasingly natural colour and I like how it appears to be soaked into the canvas with its slightly softened edges. It's just a shame that it's confined to one corner of the sig.

Font-wise the text suits the theme somewhat but doesn't exactly follow the contours of the textured canvas. It also looks somewhat disconnected from the main subject and blood spatter colour-wise. The fading animation is a nice touch though.

Summary: Overall this sig is not bad, but I feel that more could have been done with the delivery of an otherwise interesting concept.

Perhaps when I have the time I will try and re-work this sig. This one was made a while ago, beginning of February I think, so I should be able to make some improvements.

I love the main subject (girl with bad-a$$ bow), the costume details especially. I have some criticisms, but they are minor: The alignment of the main subject is okay but since she takes up about the half the space of the canvas and there's no asset to bridge her and the text, the whole sig looks divided into two distinct segments and the beautiful background doesn't quite flow as well as it could. I would recommend extending the canvas from the left of the sig and then continuing the background pattern. To restore balance I'd then bring the text slightly inward toward the main subject, which should also make it look less disconnected. My second criticism might make little difference as to the overall perceived quality of the sig if resolved, but you might find it worthy of note if you plan to enter any graphics contests in the future. The main subject looks lovely, but I do notice a minor fringe around her and this somewhat makes her look like she's made of cardboard. Fortunately it's thin enough to avoid being a distraction, but in a contest such artefacts are often the difference between winning and losing.

The text is a good font, and again the animation is a nice touch. Mind you, the unnaturally slow speed of the text makes reading more laboured than it has to be. Also it's unnecessarily too large and its brightness undermines the presence of the main subject.

Summary: Though it looks a little unpolished, this sig is a significant improvement over the last and you're on the right track design-wise. However, you need to be more aware of compositional flow and choose cleaner stocks (or otherwise clean them up yourself before applying them to your work) as overlooking these matters can lead to harsh criticism at the contest level.

Generally I make my sigs 400x150 pixels I learned from two other people from a different site and when they learned the sig limit was 400x150 so that's what they're used to and taught me. I've made slightly larger ones but the bigger the canvas size goes the more I have trouble trying to figure out how I want to place everything. It's something that I need work on.

The text animation on this was an interesting experience, there's 180 layers of the text each with part of it slightly more erased than the last layer and then had the frames reversed. I think the slowness of it probably comes from inconsistencies while I was erasing.
[/quote]

The Moogle looks very clean; I'm curious to know where you got that. But anyway, it's also a decent size; not too big or small. Personally though, I think it's a shame that his antennae (for want of a better name) is cropped since this is one his most distinctive features. As I said though, he is a decent size, so in this case I would consider re-editing the sig to make his red bobble stick out of the canvas bounds. Generally this approach is not recommended as it doesn't work too well with most subjects and plenty of people are critical of sigs that are shaped anything other than an absolute rectangle; but there are exceptions where canvas-breaching works very well with challenging subjects like this Moogle here.

The text is a good font and basing its colours on the Moogle is a smart choice as it retains the flow of the design. Just one small criticism I have here though: the heart-shaped part of the exclamation mark looks a little frizzly (pixellated) when scaled up, which spoils an otherwise polished piece of work.

The background is a nice design in general. The minimalistic spiral pattern works very well though and does a fine job of drawing the viewer's attention to the heart of the sig. The brightness is of a sensible level; it does enough to complement the Moogle without undermining its presence.

Summary: This sig certainly has the cute factor and there's a nice blend of harmony and pop in terms of colour and shapes. Although not quite perfect, the arrangement of assets is a notable improvement over the aforementioned sigs.

i'm not sure where the moogle came from. The person asking me to make the sig provided it. i'm pretty sure they just got it off a google search.

and thanks for mentioning the heart, I never really noticed that.
[/quote]

Overall I have very little to complain about with this sig. Great choice of subject matter (I love the Squid Sisters personally) and very relevant. The only things I would point out is that the Squid Sisters could use a little more pop as parts of them seem to nearly blend into the background. Flipping the background horizontally or dimming it a bit might remedy this without spoiling the flow however. My second point is more a matter of preference. The sig is by no means bland but some trivial text would have been nice as it looks just a tad incomplete without it.

I may be adding some text to it still, i'm not sure on what though.


Conclusion: For your first attempt you have a lot of nice works here and it's good that you are experimenting with many different ideas.

There are some things to be addressed however: I have noticed that most of your sigs don't seem to venture beyond two are three layers of content; some have minor blending issues and others could use more flow between assets. For your first attempt this is to be expected, but at the competitive level there's more to designing a sig than combining a nice subject, fancy font and textured background. There needs to be some evidence of effort and technical skill as well. All elements must work well together and say something about their main subject. Special effects can also help to fill in bland areas and enhance continuity; in short they can make a sig look like a seamless design as opposed to a mish-mash of assets pulled from different sources. Be sure to use effects only when it is called for though as it's easy to get carried away. When making your next set of sigs keep these points in mind.

I really look forward to seeing more of your works. You clearly have potential. Just keep at it and always be open to learning new ideas and techniques.[/QUOTE]

[.:neuko:.]

Thank you for taking the time to critique my stuff

Thank you for taking the time to read my comments.

Regarding the second sig (girl with bad-a$$ bow). I had forgotten about the 400x150 pixel thing. Though it's not a hard rule, I understand that many people find sigs beyond that size too unsightly and others with slower computers aren't too keen on them since they tend to consume more bandwidth; so I perfectly understand if you don't want to go beyond that size should you choose to extend the background.

As an alternative then, I recommend you bring in the main subject to the right by about 15-20 pixels (assuming you've kept all your layers in the design) and then the text toward the left by about the same amount. If the text overlaps the subject, try shrinking it down as necessary until the overlap is gone and there's a small gap between the text and subject. You will end up with more background space, but it's not like the background is bland so all things considered your sig should look okay only less segmented.