Recent Content by otterling

Looks good to me. I think you've got it spot on this time. I have no real complaint left. I think it's an excellent sig.

The ball looks much better but it seems like you changed the background a tad. It looks darker in the bottom one. I think I like the top background with the bottom figure and ball. Make sense? I just liked the contast in lighting from the top background more.

I picked Axel. Big surpirse there, right? *insert sarcasm* I just really like his character and of all the Org members he was the only one I thought showed real promise for maybe getting his heart back one day. He died in an honorable way and he was one of the only ones who cared about the other members. He was sneaky and manipulative in getting what he wanted from Marluxia and that crew from COM which to me just shows that he had more depth as a character than a lot of the others.

But yeah, Demyx is my sencond choice 'cause, really, killing him is like kicking puppies; there's just no SPORT to it....

Nice. Ok, the background here is well chosen and if you created the whole thing then you did really well. It is subtle but evocative. I like the subtle color shift from one side to the other which helps put the character forward off the background. I like the change in light and opacity on the background leg but for some reason it looks a tad too thin to me. The figure is otherwise well cut out and the movement across the image by the figure is well done. The eye is drawn across by the leg, up by the ball and then back over by they darker lines of the background on the right side. This keeps the eye moving in a circle and puts the majority of the focus on the ball. The brightness of the ball adds to that. The ball is a bit too light though in my opinion. Perhaps you could try taking down the lightness just a touch and upping the contrast or saturation. The ball should still stay light but I think it would be so much more powerful if the color wasn't entirely drained from it. The rest of the image is in shadow and it is sucha a great play of light and dark that putting the ball in as a bit more saturated will help that idea of the ball being important. Also, there is a light blue line just under the ball to the right which should either become an action blur of some sort or be removed. Right now, it is just sort of distracting and doesn't seem to serve a purpose.

Ok, to start, I DO like your Sasuke sig. I think it works with this theme more than the Roxas one because the red background is more fitting to his character than the blue to Roxas and because the red is dark enough that it doesn't fight for visual dominance in the image. The light swoop you have across the top also works due to the fact that Sasuke's name is in white as well and is long enough to help balance out the lighter portion of the pic. With the Roxas image I think the idea was sound but unfortunately it needs some adjustments to work for this new character. The blue is a tad too sharp and bright and is thus overpowering the viewer as soon as we look at it. It's sort of the first thing we see when we look at the sig. The strange design over the top of it doesn't help. It's a bit distracting. The image of Roxas was really well done though. You separated it well from what ever stock you got that from so it really could work well with a different background. It sits right at a good spot between the top and bottom edges of the sig and should stay right there in my opinion.

If you make that background a touch softer or perhaps something less overwhelming, then I think you've got a solid start here. Instead of making the light swoop across the top the way you did with Sasule, perhaps you could find a different way to bring in that element. Maybe a vertical swoop on the opposite side from Roxas to balance out his image without hiding it. That would also give you a great place to put that text. The lighter area would help the text stand out more and would give that light part a definitive purpose for being there. Try making the name larger as well. It gets a touch swallowed in all the rest that is going on.

The text version is the better one in my opinion. I like the black and white color scheme. You have some good drawings on there but the one on the right side is a tad bigger than the one on the left. Try making it a touch smaller so the two images are symmetrical in size. That will give more balance to the work as a whole and allow you to keep the main attention on the text instead of the text looking like an afterthought. This will make the whole thing look more like a single cohesive piece.

As for the blending of the two art works into the the piece a bit more, I think it's because of the sharp edges to the pieces that they look so much like they were pasted on. Try smoothing out those edges with the smudge tool set to a smaller size or you can try making a separate layer with both pieces on it. Place that layer under the top one and apply a small Gaussian Blur to it. Then, select the top layer with the original two drawings on it and do a Select - Modify - Contract. Contract by about 1 or 2 pixels, then select the inverse and delete those one or two pixels from the outside of the image. Final step. Go back into Select - Modify and this time pick "Feather". Feather the images by whatever you contracted them. Thus if you removed one pixel from the outside edge, then feather the rest of the pic by one pixel. The end result is that the top image with blend smoothly into the gaussian blurred one underneath. This allows the whole thing to look soft around the edges and thus more like it belongs to the background.

I hope some of that makes some sense. Feel free to PM me if you want clarification. Also, just so you know, I like the background you've chosen due to the fact that it doesn't detract from the main images that much. Good choice.