Made a new sig for myself, cause I felt like I needed a new one. Decided to make one of Jen Ledger, drummer from skillet. I know it doesn't look all that great, but give me some CnC will ya, please and thank you!
Very nice. :3 I like the stock image itself a lot. Plus she is attractive which ups the sig like 80x. ;D I like the effect you did around her and thing that overall the placement if pretty good. The colour overlay makes it duller, though, and the text is ineffective. Using more colours and blending the text to the image could improve this.
I would say my major gripe is the text. While they can work in some cases, using overly complicated/stylized fonts is difficult to pull off. Ones like Times New Roman, Georgia, Palatino Linotype, Cambria, etc. (for serif fonts) or Arial, Helvectica, Century Gothic, etc. (for sans-serif) are often a lot cleaner and more versatile. It's not bad to experiment at all, but bear in mind how the font relates to the tag itself. The one you chose is a bit swirly and girlish, whereas the stock has a kind of Powerful Woman Musician vibe (gotta be to be a drummer). Just some food for thought, for the future. Consider placement as well, try not to shove it in the corners of the tag. Also, vary your colors up a bit. :) Right now everything was drowned in the blue/black color scheme--don't limit yourself to just two colors like that! I like that you kept it simple, though, and this is the first I've seen from you in a while (though I may have just missed previous tags haha). Keep it up!
Thank you both for you Critique. I will do my best to work harder and make better! My original plan was to get it to be like a black and white color, but have the drum sticks, to be their original color. Do to my impatience and skill level of doing tags, this was the end result.
Color splashes are actually a rather simple technique! Really the easiest way is to just apply image, make that layer B&W, and erase where you want color. I would recommend (if you're using Photoshop) to add a B&W adjustment layer and edit the layer mask to not affect the areas you want in color, but whatever works best for you. =]
REDUX!! Went watched a couple of videos on youtube, used the help functions in photoshop. Took the advice of misty and rhyme and here is what I got now. CnC please and thank you!
Definitely a big improvement! The drumsticks become a more clear focal point, while in the previous version(s) my eye was more drawn to the text. The text also is an improvement, it's really tricky to get exactly right but there's definitely progress in here. =] I'd nonetheless recommend giving some text tutorials a read, though--it's an extremely finicky part of graphics, I find, and I've always struggled a lot with it.
I will be sure to do that. Do you have any recommended reads for text tuts? And it took me forever to figure out how to do black&white and have color. I was about to rip out my dang hair. And I think I went a little bit over board with the effects around the drumsticks this time around. It came out differently in the last one and I don't know why :(. I like this one a whole lot better. And it's thanks to you and Rhyme.
This is probably the most comprehensive and impressive tutorial I've found. I really think anyone interested in graphics should take a look at it. I do have some other text tutorials laying around though, I'll try to track them down. =]
