-pokes head out of manhole-
Heh, haven't been here in a while, thought I'd remind fellow graphics persons I exist. :3 Starting with...
Mostuko Live:
You and your awesome sense for matching colours. ;; Honestly, I think the colours on this banner are great, relatively speaking, btw. (I don't have a fetish for pink, or anything. >_<;) However, there seems to be lots of empty space [especially on those pink swirl things, is that the pen-tooling? O:], that you could have perhaps filled with more vector-effects~ like, for those pink swirls, I would personally add a few black vectors, probably stocks or brushing, then set the layer to overlay/soft light. I'm sorry to say I can't give you any great C & C on your pen-tooling, as I myself cannot use the pen-tool without injuring my forehead and damaging my desk simultaneously, if you catch my drift. D: text seems too plain, though the font isn't necessarily a problem~ Maybe you could work on differing sizes/positioning or some deco? :3
LOKI:
I dunno why I capitalised your username, acutally. o_o don't ask me why, you'll only get another 'o_o' XD; Okay, back on topic. Really, it doesn't seem like a slump that you're going through, in my eyes~ the only
problem I can see with your Misosushi Hero banner is the text, and that can easily be rectified. It's a sound banner otherwise, although the textless version looks kinda empty to me D: of course, it dodes lack your usual graphic pizazz, (someone actually tell me the freaking correct spelling for that colloquialism. <_<) and I think the colours are mainly accountable for that~ it's too mild, and I think a few bold colours to contrast against the generally mild palette you used would make it much better. :3 As for the more recent Hiroki banner (yay for short Japanese names :x), I would say text is the biggest flaw D:
WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR AWSUM TXT SKILLZ?! I love the colours for this one, and the fact that the foreground smudging seems to blend in perfectly with the background~ maybe you could touch up on the smudging around his head (there doesn't really seem to be much there, ne?) and shoulders, for example, in the left side, the smudging changes rather abruptly from white to that dark green towards his neck, whereas on the right side, the soft-erasing/fading doesn't seem to fit in D: In general, I think these recent graphics of yours are fine, albeit a step down from your usual awesomeness. Don't worry yourself too much about being in a 'slump', it'll all come back soon enough. ;D
Hah, you seem to have gotten one of the bigger chunks of my rating spree. Lucky [????] you. :3
Animadversion:
Hmmm. I like the idea for this banner, but I think the blending isn't exactly top notch D: this could be credited partially to the stock used, of course~ Also, you seem to be able to blend scanlines into almost every one of your banners successfully, but I think this is an exception; it just doesn't work, in my opinion, and I can't really explain beyond that level of detail because I sux at critique. :x However the colours look good, and I do admire the positioning of your brushing, though the central upper area looks kinda empty/plain, ne? I think it's because there's too much of that one colour concentrated on the area~ text also looks fine, which is surprising, considering I would've never managed to get text right with dimensions like that XD;
not that I can with many other dimensions, come to think of it. I suck at text ;_;
Poke'd:
Too much blurriness~! I think you'll find, despite their huge variations in style, most good banners have a few things in common, and I believe one of them is clarity, in one way or another. I'm referring mainly to the 'Bleach' and 'Cloudy Sky' banners when I say this. I mean, the blurriness on the Bleach banner seems to kill the focal point of it, and it doesn't look very pleasant in general; I think you could adopt a different method to achieve the result you desired with MUCH more efficiency, such as using a different form of smudging, perhaps with a more solid shape and a few altered settings~ the text also seems kinda plain, and the colour is too bold~ the same applies for the Cloudy Sky banner; in fact, my eyes actually took around a second or two to adjust when I looked at this little graphic, to distinguish any of the details~ the FML banners look a lot better. However, the blending is still a bit too blurred, and you should probably vary your smudging style to achieve the best results. The colours are great, and I think you made good use of the render's original colours. The splatters are okay, nothing special, but it doesn't make me frown either. XD I believe the antidote to these graphics of yours would be variation, sharpening and perhaps a few effects here and there, like C4Ds~
Gold19:
Hmmm. Let me try and explain this. Flat. Very, very flat. It lacks any kind of focus or perspective, and this is because, (in my humble opinion, that is) the similarity in colours and the lack of effective differentiation. I'll start with the text, as this is normally the easiest thing to
shoot down rate. The font choice? .....Erm, yeah. I think it's best to keep the text simple and formal, that kind of text has the distinct property of taking attention away from the focal point of your banner in a not-so-pleasant way. :x Now, that bluefest you used to highlight the render. I think it's actually sound in terms of colours, but it lacks pizazz, and for ONCE I think I may actually know why o_o; See, instead of making it a huge, regular blue ball, you should probably spice it up with a variety of colours and effects. As for that C4D? DDD: It's much too opaque, as Clade rightly said, and the colour should probably be different, or at least bolder. The blending mode you chose for it was probably the wrong one, [try linear dodge~!] and it doesn't really add to the flow of the image, ne? Oh and btw, don't be too crestfallen after reading this, I'm a harsh arse when it comes to rating </3.
clade.:
I think the main issue I have with the first banner, the orange one, is the opacity differences of the grungy brushing, and it's overlapping, lack of sharpness/clarity gives the whole image a messy, muddy kind of look. It needs more space, I think~ for the second one, I like how you left the initial render and the background relatively clean. I think any smudging or brushing wouldn't have worked due to the lack of space, and the colours are good. But those white-effects in front of the render seem quite... pointless? o_o they don't really add impact, flow, blending, anything.... I would have replaced them with a bit of brushing, or maybe a low opacity filtered C4D~ this is where they come in handy~ :D
Gummy:
-flip horizontal-...... -flip vertical-...... eh, the focal point, where is it? ;; I can't really tell what's what in this banner, in terms of orientation, and I think the contrast in intricacy between the render and background is a problem~ I would, if I were you, clear some of those foregorund effects, slash the text, use some hard smudging around the render and in your background to reduce that detail contrast, give it a few photo filters/gradient maps and some completely empty space to fade the background into, it would give your render some direly needed emphasis~
K, Ima post some of my work now too, for reasons stated below~
These two banners use the same render I have used in a previous signature, I used it as the basis for some practise~
This one is painfully similar to the original, I've just adjusted the border, some effects, added a touch of smuding in the background, changed the lighting in one of the corners and added a near-invisible C4D~ ....okay, maybe it's not
that similar... XD;
This one is the direct outcome of a tutorial that Loki linked me to, <3. Of course, I veered off into my own dark domain of graphics throughout the progression of the tutorial, as I ABHOR following tutorials step-by-step. It feels too monotonous~ but enough ranting, what do ya think? :> it's so very different to what I normally do, it's almost frightening. o_o
Okay, my parents have just announced that I am to get off the computer within the next 5 minutes if I value my life, so I'm
EXTREMELY sorry to anyone I haven't critiqued yet, I will do so in the near future, and that's a promise! :3
