Okay so I recently started having ago at making my own stuff and so I've had an attempt at making some avvys. CnC please, any comments and tips on how to improve would be greatly appiciated. 200x200: 150x150: And a sig I've made:
These are pretty nice, though it seems like you just cropped the avatars. I really love this one, though that little white line on the left shouldn't be too hard to fix. You have to be very careful about placement, as it's easy to leave an epty space on an avi (and either way, making the default background transparent would make it less noticeable). The thing about the sig is that the stock stands out a bit too much from the background. Smudging and other such things can help with that, though you're doing pretty well for having just started this sort of thing. It just takes time to get used to all of the different tools and functions; after that, you'll be well on your way.
These are great Midny! You're doing really well considering you just barely started! The stocks are really quite nice, and you've varied them nicely. They are nice to look at and certainly draw attention to themselves. Once you start getting more familiar with everything it wouldn't hurt to add in a few lighting effects and such next time! I can say the same for the sig too. Although the text kinda bugs me a bit. I don't know why but it just does :p Anyway, you're doing a wonderful job!
Your placement and so on isn't bad for your avatars; you seem to have that mostly down. You aren't centering them, at least. However, the coloration in them is kind of lacking. They could stand to be more vibrant and clearer. Try playing with the colors as curves or messing with duplicate layers on different filter settings with lower opacity. I can clearly see .JPG distortion in these two: Look for the edges if you do not see it. In the first one, pretty much the entire medallion is distorted. You can get rid of it by duplicating the stock and blurring the duplicate by a few pixels or whatever until the distortion is invisible and then lowering the opacity of the blurred layer so that it looks basically the same but the distortion is less noticeable. Then you can shrink it and put it into an avatar. It will look mostly flawless if you do that while it is full-size (assuming a large image) because shrinking it will get rid of the blurring but keep the lack of distortion. Your signature is very monotone. Because all that you have is a picture and a textured background, it has no flow and that makes it look rather slapdash. First of all you should add more colors than varying shades of yellow, and second of all your background should move with the render or stock. You should have something in there that leads the eye to a focal point. A focal point is a place in the image that the eye gravitates to. Think about it as the center of gravity of your signature. As it is, my eyes gravitate to the spot on the left side of her chin near her earring and more specifically the shadow under her chin. The contrast drags my eye there. If your focal point is not intentional, then you are probably doing something wrong. A very basic example of "flow" is a gradient. They look unprofessional in many cases, but they get the concept of flow across. When you put a gradient in a vertical or top-to-bottom direction, the eye automatically assumes that the signature's flow is either up or down and draws conclusions about which is which based on the rest of the image and possibly the colors in the gradient. If the gradient is in a horizontal or side-to-side direction, then the same thing applies but with the mind assuming that the flow is horizontal. And the same with either diagonal direction, or really any kind of flow you can think of. A flow can even happen in waves or spirals, singling in on a single point. In any case, you should always plan out your focal points intentionally when making any kind of artistic piece. I hope that was helpful to you.
