Silkroad Online Forums

Hey guys well for today's sig i took everyones advice and started using the smudge took for blending. I also worked very hard on flow and i used the letters from my title to add to this flow. Light source was also added. Btw i guess iam was being a little girl last time and started whining about the critique. But i realize i was wrong, so be brutal if you must.
Either way i hope to improve off of everyones comments. Kthxbye.
Character:Abe off of Hellboy
Title of Sig:Mind over Matter

Your BG Seems really bland and empty. I see you smudged! Good job. But make sure the smudging you do goes well with the flow of your sig. To me it seems a bit random. I like the creativity of the text, just took me a bit to realize that's what it was. The BG is really bright, i'd tone it down. Overlape some gradients and maybe use some photofilters too. Keep practicing though I like the improvements <3

thx a lot hollastir, ive only gotten better because of everyone that has helped me to improve by giving me helpful tips ect.

the blank space
i didnt really know what to put there so i tried to add more water splatters but this made the sig too redundant with water drops everywhere so i reduced the space of the sig. but next time i think i should add a c4d blending into the sig to eliminate blank space? would that be the correct thing to do?

Questions
what does overlapping gradients achieve?
what are photofilters?

Overlaping gradients can add more contrast and more color to your sig. For example: On my "serenity" sig, It was too bright going from my tanish orange to a grey, So I put a black to white gradient on top of it and set it to overlay I think, and it gave it a bit darker contrast that I was looking for. On top of that I do Layer-->New Adjustment Layer-->Brightness/Contrast to go a step further. I do it for just about every sig I make. Photofilters bring out colors and can give you more of a "warm" feeling/color to the sig or vice versa. Go to Layer --> New Adjustment Layer --> Photofilter. Try one and you'll see what I mean. You can try adding a C4D into your sig, make sure it flows with what your going for.

wow thx hollastir
+1

c4ds can be either the best or worst thing you can do to a sig. when tastefully used they can be a really interesting, cool, or nice effect. when abused they can be gaudy, wreck your flow, or dominate the sig in a way that you did not intend. make sure you pick a c4d that matches your style and colors, that's a good start.


as for the sig, even though the smudging is a bit random, i like what you have started out to achieve. another way to tone the whole sig's brightness down is to go to Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Gradient Map and set it to black and white. then put that layer on overlay and lower the opacity until it darkens everything to the point where you want it. it's gonna give you a similar effect to holla's brightness/contrast layer, but the cool thing about the way i described is that if you want, you can leave the layer on normal blending and higher opacity and just erase parts of it where you want color to really shine forth and leave it b&w in places you want to be more subtle. i used to use that trick a lot before i started experimenting w/ other things.

thx sg
^^