[Help] Making a good signiture

[Thermal]

I wondered if an experienced graphical member could spare the time to tell us how they made one of there most successful signatures, to help members like me & slurricane who presently make relatively boring or cheap looking signatures presently, were eager to learn but just don't know how to.

I'm not asking anyone to tell us a step by step of there work, that would give your edge away, but just the just of how to make a really cool sig


rep will make it's way to those that can think of ways I can improve my ability, please bare in mind I have Gimp, not photoshop.

I think my only signature I'm actually even marginally happy with is the one I have now, but I hate most my stuff.

[LuckyNinja]

Well I can;t give you exact tutorials (I can't remember how toi make mine exactly) but I'll make a tut for you. I could also forward you some links to good resources. I know one good one done in GIMP.

(also you should be able to do most stuff in GIMP that you can do in photoshop, if not....be creative bend the process slightly).


Now I'm too tired and I havenn't got enough time time to make a tutorial for roughly how I make my sigs, but if you can wait a day or so, I'll most certainly make one for you (that is, if you want me to )


EDIT: I have had an idea. I shall make a tutorial for my GC #17 entry and then post it up, BEFORE the competition ends. Hopefully this might make something interesting....

[Astaroth]

I think the best things you can do to improve are practicing and reading tutorials. A few tutorials for GIMP can for example be found here.

In general, I believe it's important to remember a few things:

• Borders improve most signatures significantly. Try to play around with smaller or bigger borders and with different opacities and colors.
• Try to avoid both blurriness and jagged edges at any cost. If you resize an image, try to keep the width-height ratio similar to the one in the original picture. Also, if you cut out things, do not do it in a rush and blur the borders a bit if necessary.
• I personally think that bigger signatures are not necessarily better. Often, smaller ones look just as good, if not better. I for my part prefer signatures that are significantly wider than high.
• Use the "grow" feature (select --> grow) to create outlines for text or objects. Create a new layer behind your original one, select the alpha channel, then go to the newly created layer, apply "grow" and fill it with black or white for example. In order to make it even better, apply Gaussian Blur on it as well.
• Brushes can really improve your images. Here are some good ones for GIMP.
• Text is very important. Try to avoid fonts that do not fit to the signature and improve the text e.g. with an outline (see above).

These are just a few basic tips. In the end, the best you can do is practice. Simply make as many signatures as possible and do not give up easily. I hope I could help a bit.

[Thermal]

Thank you Astaroth

Also, I'm glad of the offer Lucky Ninja and I like your work, but I don't require you to make me a signature, just tips

[LuckyNinja]

No, no. You misunderstand. You asked if someone can make a a tutorial of their work. When I make my submission for GC#17 I'll also make a tutorial of it, and I'll try to provide tips on certain steps, like how said step helps with this, how it works, when to use it etc....

Oh and another thing I can tell you know is flow. See where teh flow is. If you're using a render, then look for where the flow of that render goes, and base the background off of that

[Thermal]

I see thanks, Hun's how do on his space entry was handy so I'm sure yours will be too.

[TAG]

-flow
-focus
-simple text

Use those to master sig work. (I think tutorial is needed to explain those)