Basics - Must read for novice's

DeletedUser

Guest
Okay so before I start I would like to say I am not amazing, I am still learning sig making and i know most intermediate and expert effects, but I am still learning usage of them.

But anyway,
I cruise this part of the forum everyday practically and I always see the same mistakes repeated over and over.

So I'm gonna try and give you the same crash course I gave my friend and make this as SHORT and EASY as possible :)

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1. RENDER
I am constantly seeing people choosing low quality renders or trying to render themselves. Now for beginners this can be hard. I have only just learnt to render fully and that takes loads of pentool work.

 So tips for choosing render:
QUALITY - no pixels or blurred edges
SIZE - dont worry about it
COLOUR - (yeh im British) look for something with few colours
ANIME - for beginners these are the best renders.

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2. BACKGROUND
Try using stocks to do with the render or simple gradient background and smudge the s*** out of it :) then try overlaying other stocks for effect, ie. stars or buildings.

If you dont know where to get stocks go here:
http://graphicscore.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=247

It may take a while to dload them but its worth it, especially for when you start making sigs straight from stocks.

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3. RENDER PLACEMENT
Rule of thirds (google it) never use symetry (sp?) or center

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4. FLOW
Look at the direction of the render and use pentooling to create depthflow.
If you look at this render (mine :p) the flow would follow the body shape from horn to tail. This is a bad example though, but it avoids copyright.
narwhal.png

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5. BLENDING AND LIGHTING
The most important thing to create realism.

Lighting is easy, using a 150-200px white brush click up to 3 times where the light source should be. Then set this to overlay or soft light.

rx7e.png

This tag of mine shows good use of light source in the top left. Also it shows what flow can be achieved with a pentool.

Blending is difficult so just start with some simple blendng methods, first make 2 copies of your render so you have 3 in total. The bottom one use a smudge brush (around 8px, scattered and seperated maybe with size change).
The second layer should be gaussion blurred (no more than about 2.0).

You can play around with the smudging and blurring once you are comfortable enough with it.

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6. TEXT
Please dont go writing half your life story, just a name and possibly keyword. Plus dont go making you text all flashy and bold, just one simple colour, with an effect like overlay or soft light.

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7. SIG SIZE
Almost forgot, this drives me crazy. MAKE LARGER SIGS, it will make your life alot easier. I understand some of you dont like spoilers but it is alot easier for you to make a good looking sig with 150x450 than anything at 80x700. Also makes render choices easier.

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8. FOCALS
ONLY use ONE focal guys. There are countless sigs with many focals on and its just not needed. If you look at my RX-7 sig ^^ the focal is the car and nothing else.
gc8.png

The focal is Snorlax, however the text is a bit obvious but this isnt bad in this sig due to the simplicity plus the text is the correct colour for the BG and it is slightly over the render so it doesnt draw the eye away from it.
Also from this sig you can see the blurred BG to create depth but that is a more intermediate skill (I may make a tut for that)

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I think thats the most major of the problems I see, again any questions mail me here on this forum, or respond in this thread.
If you want something in depth on any section just ask.

Basically have fun and ask if you have problems.


For a more indepth tut read through this:
 http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/2650/sigbasics1.png
Thanks to Digital Delusions
I am available for some mentoring too but the best place for some serious CnC is GC.
(graphicscore.co.uk)


Thanks
-GC
 
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nindel

Guest
Nice guide =D

And I agree, anime is the easiest for Beginners =P
 

DeletedUser

Guest
trust me its easiest, they have limited colours and 90% of the time obvious lighting. The just makes background choices and blending easier.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Wow, very nice.

I only seriously concur about rendering. One should start learning to render the day he/she gets the graphic program. Being able to extract an object from an image is one of the most valuable and versatile skills, ever. There are already enough poor souls out there that can't do a thing without a pre-cut render.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Thanks RW, I was just trying to state very simply to people who have never really done anything other than copy and paste.

If I do write an intermediate one ill make sure to include that :)
 

Repinski

Guest
I like your work green.cheese. If you get some spare time you should check out my request.

EDIT:

My request got completed.
 
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DeletedUser

Guest
I really admire your work :)
Great guide! :) I gotta try some of those techniques myself one day :p

About blurred edges on renders - sometimes this can be remedied by using the "Refine Edge" tool on PS. It may not give you the same product as a quality render, but at times we have to improvise, no? :p Should help when people come up with weird requests and you're forced to use something off Google Images :D

Out of curiosity, how much time do you spend generally on one sig? I'm sure you know how time-consuming it can be if you have requests lined up.. :p
 

DeletedUser

Guest
err... depends really, if im following a general style that im used to 30mins to 1h 30m (but thats if i just play around alot). For SOTW or TOTM stuff and other HQ, new techniques anything from 2h up to 4-5h.

This is why I dont take requests anymore :p I just experiment around with ideas for myself.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I wish I had this guide when I first started sig making. I must've annoyed the crap out of KOA Anubis :D
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I need to write a guide or a rant, too. I just physically feel the urge to do one every other month.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I have both GIMP and PS, but I really don't understand how to make a sig.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Just everything, mainly editing text and getting cool fonts. Say your sig says Sbrix and I wanted to replace that text with acekep12, how could I do it?
 

DeletedUser

Guest
acekep12 said:
Just everything, mainly editing text and getting cool fonts. Say your sig says Sbrix and I wanted to replace that text with acekep12, how could I do it?
Click to expand...

Well I'm not sure whether you mean adding text onto a different sig, or replacing mine with your name.

(This is for Photoshop btw, not sure about GIMP)

For adding text to a different sig;
Click on the text tool. Click anywhere on the sig. Type out something :icon_razz:
Usually the text looks better with a 1px black border around it. To do this, go to the "Layers" window (if you don't see it, go to Windows > Layers) and right click on the Text layer you just added, then click on Blending Options. At the bottom should be "Stroke". Tick the box and click on Stroke. Change it to 1 or 2 px, and set it to any colour you want :lol:

For replacing the words on my sig you'd either have to get the .psd from me (in which case you could easily change the text) or use the healing brush over my name, which doesn't always work well :icon_wink:
 

DeletedUser

Guest
SBrix said:
Well I'm not sure whether you mean adding text onto a different sig, or replacing mine with your name.

(This is for Photoshop btw, not sure about GIMP)

For adding text to a different sig;
Click on the text tool. Click anywhere on the sig. Type out something :icon_razz:
Usually the text looks better with a 1px black border around it. To do this, go to the "Layers" window (if you don't see it, go to Windows > Layers) and right click on the Text layer you just added, then click on Blending Options. At the bottom should be "Stroke". Tick the box and click on Stroke. Change it to 1 or 2 px, and set it to any colour you want :lol:

For replacing the words on my sig you'd either have to get the .psd from me (in which case you could easily change the text) or use the healing brush over my name, which doesn't always work well :icon_wink:
Click to expand...

Thanks very much, do you know how people get all the cool fonts?
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Oh and photoshop isn't working on my computer! Does anyone know how to do it in GIMP or Paint.Net?
 
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