[Showcase] Graphics Galore

tl;dr I lost my old account's password and couldn't recover with e-mail but now I found my old email and everything went cool so I'll repost this gallery on my old account.

Closed down.

Mods will lock soon.

Alrighty, not really here for a request but I'm just gonna go ahead and share my thoughts with regards to your works. don't delete this post, alex :B

There are a number of things you could do that would immensely help these works of yours, in my opinion. I'll comment on them one by one -

Make the focal stand out

From what I can see, almost all of these tags share one thing in common - The focal's drowned and barely stands out due to the multitude of effects you've used. They've been placed over the focal and they, in my opinion, serve as nothing but a distraction. The tag where the focal stands out a little more than others have to be the lelouch tag. But that's probably due to the render itself. But I digress. Anyway, my point is - a good tag should have a few effects that are 'above' the render but care has to be taken not to let the effects dominate the render. It is, generally, a good idea to use foreground effects. But a bad one if there's one too many of them. Another way to make the focal stand out is to sharpen it a bit. But then take care not to over-sharpen, hehe.

Increase depth

All of your tags look extremely flat, imo. You should work on depth of these tags. Depth is generally created by blurring out the background effects and sharpening the foreground ones. Helps give the tag a three dimensional look, you know? Depth really does wonders for tags and I think you should try to improve yourself on that front.

Avoid Low Quality stocks/renders

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/1151/terraxc.png
This one here looks REALLY LQ. LQ stocks hurt tags most of the time so it is a good idea to use high quality high res images. The lelouch render from the first tag is an example. Go for those kinds of sharp renders.

Make sure the text doesn't serve as a distraction

Try to place the text as close to the focal as possible so that it doesn't detract the viewer's eyes from the focal. Also, experiment with fonts. Try ones that you think would fit the 'mood' or the 'atmosphere' of the tag/LP.

And a few other things

Good lighting is important for a good tag. Soft brushes or gradient maps can be used to make effective light sources but try not to go overboard. The lighting is a little too heavy in the 'lighting tag'. Although you got the positioning of the light source right, the magnitude of the light is wayy too much. Then apart from lighting, another thing that you can try out right now is diversifying the kinds of effects you use in your works. Go for various c4ds or textures. Don't restrict yourself to one or two. You can also benefit a lot from adjusting the colors of your works once you're done with all the other stages of the creation of the tag. Good colors can, at times, make or break tags. Make use of selective colors, curves and gradient maps! They're awesome!

I've got more to say but I think this will suffice for now, I think. You can look at this thread here if you're having any problems with things like depth, lighting, color manipulation etc.

All in all, glad to have you here, mate. Hope you continue the good work! Best of luck with the shop - managing these is a pain in the ass. :p And yeah, my post was in no way intended to be hurtful. It was plain critique that I thought would help you out. Just my 2 cents. :]

Well changed the thread up a little @.@

Still accepting requests though.

Okay mods I will provide proper feedback this time. Most of the 500x225 ones are done well with distinct focal points and good lightning but some the former lack that, try some bokeh textures for cool lightning or soft brushes. Also some of the effects seem overdone.

Anyways good job.

Wow these are awesome work!

My favorites are Jaden and Sasuke I like how they look there! Great Job on this I hope to see more. :)

Okay, these are much better. You haven't gone overboard with foreground stuff and the renders are clearly visible so that's a good thing. :D Plus, the quality of your stocks seem to have sky-rocketed. Some of them, like Lucy and CC, look really high quality. <3; Still, there are a few things you can still do to improve. In my opinion, they are:

Try to avoid outer glow and shadows on the render
They do not really add to the tag. Instead of enhancing depth or blending like some people probably think they do, they generally make the render look a little out-of-place.

Don't let the text hog all the limelight
I realize I'm sort of repeating myself, haha. But no, your text has gotten better. Just that I still think you can work on it. In other words, don't make it too big. Try to have compact text that doesn't take too much canvas space. If it does, it'll end up serving as a distraction. And yeah, placement - try to place it as close to the render as possible. You're already trying that, I think, so that's good. You'll get better at placement with practice, trust me. And, if possible, avoid boxes behind those. Again, I can see you have some box-less tags in there so that's good! :D

And, the most important tip of them all -

Try to visualize the tag as a 3d entity and work on it accordingly
Your tags, as of now, are a mixture of ones with too much blurred out c4ds, too less of them and some others where they just serve as backgrounds over which the render has been placed (jaden yuki, CC and Lucy tag serve as examples). Try to place c4ds/effects both in background and foreground. Then try to think of the tag as a 3 dimensional entity andblur out the c4ds according to their corresponding distance from your eye.For example, the c4d which, according to you, is situated at the farthest distance from the render has to be blurred out the most. The other c4ds, as they come closer to the render, should be blurred out progressively lesser in comparison to the preceding c4d. Similarly, since the foreground effects are situated at a distance closer to the eye than the background c4ds and the render, try not to blur them much. Blurring them out does look good at times but generally they're supposed to look sharp because they're situated in front of the render.

You'll probably be able to enhance the depth in your tags quite a bit if you do what I suggested. But yeah, just my 2 cents. Glad to see you improve, man. They're, honestly, big improvements.

Beautiful signatures! I really love the Kingdra signature <3 water types

Derozio said:

Okay, these are much better. You haven't gone overboard with foreground stuff and the renders are clearly visible so that's a good thing. ;D Plus, the quality of your stocks seem to have sky-rocketed. Some of them, like Lucy and CC, look really high quality. <3; Still, there are a few things you can still do to improve. In my opinion, they are:

Try to avoid outer glow and shadows on the render
They do not really add to the tag. Instead of enhancing depth or blending like some people probably think they do, they generally make the render look a little out-of-place.

Don't let the text hog all the limelight
I realize I'm sort of repeating myself, haha. But no, your text has gotten better. Just that I still think you can work on it. In other words, don't make it too big. Try to have compact text that doesn't take too much canvas space. If it does, it'll end up serving as a distraction. And yeah, placement - try to place it as close to the render as possible. You're already trying that, I think, so that's good. You'll get better at placement with practice, trust me. And, if possible, avoid boxes behind those. Again, I can see you have some box-less tags in there so that's good! ;D

And, the most important tip of them all -

Try to visualize the tag as a 3d entity and work on it accordingly
Your tags, as of now, are a mixture of ones with too much blurred out c4ds, too less of them and some others where they just serve as backgrounds over which the render has been placed (jaden yuki, CC and Lucy tag serve as examples). Try to place c4ds/effects both in background and foreground. Then try to think of the tag as a 3 dimensional entity andblur out the c4ds according to their corresponding distance from your eye.For example, the c4d which, according to you, is situated at the farthest distance from the render has to be blurred out the most. The other c4ds, as they come closer to the render, should be blurred out progressively lesser in comparison to the preceding c4d. Similarly, since the foreground effects are situated at a distance closer to the eye than the background c4ds and the render, try not to blur them much. Blurring them out does look good at times but generally they're supposed to look sharp because they're situated in front of the render.

You'll probably be able to enhance the depth in your tags quite a bit if you do what I suggested. But yeah, just my 2 cents. Glad to see you improve, man. They're, honestly, big improvements.

Click to expand...

I knew the outer glow was a bad idea but on the Sasuke one I was lost on how to make him stick out. Blurring and sharpening did little to help there but I can see where you're coming from. Perhaps a different background/effects would be better.

I thought the text didn't look too disruptive but now that you mention it I can see where you're coming from. Generally it's pretty small and I hide parts of it behind effects.

And yes I agree with the depth thing, it's something I really need to work on in the future. Which tag had the best 3D depth in your opinion? I'll use that as a basis and try build more depth using what I did there.

Shadowraze said:

Wow these are awesome work!

My favorites are Jaden and Sasuke I like how they look there! Great Job on this I hope to see more. :)

Click to expand...

Cheers.

Noob123 said:

Okay mods I will provide proper feedback this time. Most of the 500x225 ones are done well with distinct focal points and good lightning but some the former lack that, try some bokeh textures for cool lightning or soft brushes. Also some of the effects seem overdone.

Anyways good job.

Click to expand...

Thanks.

Hiroki Okazaki said:

Beautiful signatures! I really love the Kingdra signature <3 water types

Click to expand...

Thank you.

I can totally see what you mean when you said that you had to do it in the Sasuke tag. But nothing's forcing you to have a dark/gloomy background that blends in so well with the render, really. You can have a different background too. That or just throw some different colored C4Ds in there (colors that don't **** up the overall color scheme. For example, a green would obviously be a bad idea while a little bit of red won't hurt) behind sasuke and over the background. He'll automatically stand out. Suitable use of c4ds can work wonders for a tag.

As for the tag with the most depth...hmm, none of them look like they have much depth, to be honest. But I guess the rosa tag is a little better than the rest when it comes down to it. Although the positioning of the render is kinda awkward (you should follow rule of the thirds if possible), I can still appreciate the fact that the effects behind her are relatively blurry. Adds to the depth, I guess. Though the foreground effect being so blurry kills it for me, nevertheless. ;(

Might be a good idea to start incorporating some flow in your tags too. They add depth as well.

Derozio said:

I can totally see what you mean when you said that you had to do it in the Sasuke tag. But nothing's forcing you to have a dark/gloomy background that blends in so well with the render, really. You can have a different background too. That or just throw some different colored C4Ds in there (colors that don't **** up the overall color scheme. For example, a green would obviously be a bad idea while a little bit of red won't hurt) behind sasuke and over the background. He'll automatically stand out. Suitable use of c4ds can work wonders for a tag.

As for the tag with the most depth...hmm, none of them look like they have much depth, to be honest. But I guess the rosa tag is a little better than the rest when it comes down to it. Although the positioning of the render is kinda awkward (you should follow rule of the thirds if possible), I can still appreciate the fact that the effects behind her are relatively blurry. Adds to the depth, I guess. Though the foreground effect being so blurry kills it for me, nevertheless. ;(

Might be a good idea to start incorporating some flow in your tags too. They add depth as well.

Click to expand...

Yeah I knew I was kicking myself in the face when I added that Susanoo (the guardian deity thing) behind him but it was just too...awesome not to add. Yeah I'll take that into account next time.

I see, well I'll see what I can do about that.

Flow? I have a pretty good idea what that is but would you happen to have a tutorial/guide link anywhere so I can have a look. Cheers.

I know about Sasuke's defensive ability that is Susanoo, haha. But wow, it just didn't look like it. :o As for flow and the other basics, you can take a look here. It doesn't really have a tutorial, per say, but it covers things nicely. If you still want me to look for some tutorials after going through that, I'll be glad to. :)

Well overall i like your style but i would like to agree with Derozio on some of the points she made.

Color
In a lot of your signatures you seem to be sticking to one color, i've found personally that my signatures stick out more when i use complementary colors or primary and secondary colors. [For example with the Itachi sig maybe include some more yellow and violet colors or red yellow orange].

Focal
Now with one step you can increase the depth, focal point, and lighting in a signature. By making a layer on top of the others and using a black soft brush in areas you want darker and on another layer do the opposite using a white brush to brighten the area near the focal point. Obviously you would set those layers to a soft light setting or whatever looks good on that tag and toggle the opacity.

Text
This is my weakest area in my opinion so I actually like the style you use with your text but i think there is one small step that would help tremendously. Simply decreasing the size of the text can help you not distract from the focal point of the signature. Also if you are going to put a stroke on the text make it a little thinner.

Size
Making the signature shorter could help as well. Decreasing the size of a sig at least height wise can help in the fact that you don't have to fill up so much space. I usualy have my signatures somewhere between 400x200 to 400x 150 which over the years I have been making bigger tags than most so any bigger than those two and I respect the amount of work you're doing.

Those are just some pointers I know I still have a lot of room for improvement but i thought i'd share some ideas. :) Good work keep chugging along

Good post, Zanekin. Agreed with almost everything. Well, except the fact that he should try going for a smaller canvas. I don't really agree with that. Sure, it does make things easier for the artist to fill space up but that just seems like, I don't know, an easy way out. Tried out making tags with smaller canvas myself a while ago and yeah, they're easy to make. But they won't really help you develop as much. In fact, I believe we all should work on as many LPs as possible because they're what test our capabilities as graphic artists!

Thread owner has requested that this gallery be closed. Hope you make the other one asap, man.