Hoo boy, lots to address/quote here. Hopefully I don't forget anything I wanted to say. Really appreciate the comments, guys :-]
Oh my goodness I've been waiting for you to open up a gallery here and I apologize for not getting around to making a comment before now-- I wanted to do justice to such a beautiful collection with more than just a list of adjectives haha! It's all sort of long winded since I can't be concise to save my life. So I'll put my comments under a spoiler as well-
Aw, don't be sorry! Because I'm actually feeling pretty sorry right now, since your post is so much more eloquent compared to the post I left in your gallery... I couldn't say much since I can't critique drawings to save my life, haha.
I'll start with what I like about tags- and that is that you have an uncanny ability to meld your stocks into the effects around them-- all your pieces feel natural, for lack of a better word. The focal never sticks out in a jarring way or betrays the fact that it wasn't originally designed to be the way it looks in your pieces. Not sure if I conveyed that right, but I find that the most admirable of your work since blending the focal in with the rest of the tag was always what I struggled with when I did graphics myself!
I'm also a huge fan of your color choices-- my favorites including "The Journey Begins",
http://i.imgur.com/6OsZ8Dx.png, and the gumi tags sans the matroshyka one. I remember being particularly impressed with the lugia/ho-oh tag when I saw it on your gallery on another forum, and was instantly compelled to save it into my inspirations folder. The combinations of the renders, the texture, the lighting effects and the type-- it's literally all perfect and the double focal pulled off so effortlessly!
Thank you for the kind words! And I feel so honored that a banner of mine ended up in your inspiration folder omg.
Though I have to say, when I made that Lugia/Ho-Oh banner for that contest back on EGC (iirc) I was extremely satisfied with it, but now when I look at it.... I see so many things that could be better, lol. The gray background pisses me off a bit now, and the size just seems so
awkward now. It's crazy.
So, going on a bit of an unrelated note, I'd say it's definitely true that an artist is rarely truly satisfied with an old work, haha. But on the bright side, it happens because we all end up getting better as time flies by.
Your icons I also love- for more reasons than the fact that the first section are all one piece, which in and of itself is a reason to love all of them. But what's great is that you don't just slap on some color adjustments and call it a day. Each icon is unique and has a bit of your own flair and style to it. I particularly love the Pumpkin Brooke, Sanji/Bepo, and the blue and pink Kageyama icon. But there's so many more I can hardly begin to name them all-- and I just scrolled down to the big icons and I'm in love with the Faulkner, B&W Sableye/Banette, and the Eagle/Akashi icon... I'd better stop naming them because the list is getting too long LOL but dang this is a true goldmine of quality.
Yeah, that OP set is totally one of my best, haha. The ideas flowed out so easily and I just had so much to work with. Glad you liked it!
And I'm really glad people notice that; I do try my best to make my icons unique, so I spend quite a bit of time on composition to make each one stand out. I just got so tired of the blandness of cropping and *changing the color a bit*, so I branched out into more complex icon making, and I'd say that was the turning point for me. I feel like my "style" finally cemented after that, haha.
I also wholeheartedly blame my need for complexity on this.
On that note, I do agree with JustJeff-- some of your pieces, particularly the ones with the c4d renders, are extremely busy. Going into what I'm not so keen on in your work, I concede that in some tags I don't think that the mess of renders particularly detracts from anything- like the Zebra tag is very nicely done and I think the usage is executed brilliantly there. But the very first tag, "Fury" loses some of its focus due to the excess of renders splashed around-- the focal has the exact same values as the renders, so when you don't have color
or contrast
or negative space to set the focal apart from the rest of the background it all just kind of flattens out and I have to go looking for the guy I'm supposed to be looking at. The text is even kind of hard to find if not for the bit of blue. The monochromatic colors just may not be my style though, so that piece I admit is not my cup of tea from any angle. I'm not too big on the color choice in the Deidara Manga piece either-- and I can't say I like the addition of scan lines much... The checkered bits are a really great idea-- but I think a change in color palette, like making the dark blue a cyan instead to complete the 3D look would help a lot.
I agree. Imo that tag collection as a whole contains the most "technical flaws" out of any graphic collection up there in the OP, majorly due to my weird sense of experimentation
AND COMPLETE LACK OF SENSE OF DEPTH. (Though admittedly that's why I'm still pretty fond of my tags despite all that's wrong with them, haha. I find that my own personal taste is often very different from my audience, which I find to be interesting.)
Anyways, that first tag in particular is what happened when I tried to apply the gradient map concepts I use for iconing to tags. Needless to say, the execution fell short. I think I remember being a bit lazy with it, actually. That honestly kills me a lot in the end. My go-to solution is often just piling more and more C4D's and etc, so I'm trying to alleviate my dependence on them a bit.
I like your latest banner as well, but I'm not sure about the effects on the text. All of the other edges seem pretty solid, so I don't like how soft the inner shadow on "Ilex Forest" is. I feel like it would've been better if you'd zeroed the choke and taken down the size a bit. And perhaps chosen a font with sharper corners, to match the angular feel of the background on the upper piece. I like the rounded corners of the font you chose on the transparent version, which I feel is the superior version over all-- but yeah- just those two places to nit pick. Otherwise I love the second version in particular-- the leaves and the clipped layer under the celebi and his shrine are wonderful touches!
Funnily enough, I thought about removing the inner shadow completely or just changing it a bit after looking at the final product, but the person who asked for the set from me really liked the pieces already... so I ended up keeping that to myself, haha. But yeah, thank you for pointing those things out to me! It'll definitely give me something to think about when doing pieces like that in the future. I do tend to be a bit bland with text effects, which is somewhat ironic now that I think about it.
I would comment on the other stuff like your typography since hand drawn art is more where my expertise lies these days-- but I confess I've always been rubbish at typography and this post is already criminal in length LOL-- so I will save my comments for the other sections like the wallpapers etc another day!
Ahh yes, save it until after I give you a comment as good as this one! This was a great read and I enjoyed every bit of it. You reminded me of the reason why I open as many galleries as I can; it's always nice to know people like your work and care enough to lend some c+c as well \o/
And of course another reason is because it's always nice to know I can make people laugh with what I type in my icons, or even provide people with some eye candy, haha.
I appreciate your time, Loki ;-]
Can't say I hate them~ ☞(◕‿◕)☞
and wow! have some self confidence there buddy~ Lol I always take a lean and chill way whenever I use Photoshop. i think it makes better pieces tbh~ Don't hold me up on that tho :P
ohoho! All i read was more pieces from you! I'll be looking out for that~
Call me detective Jeff ✌(◕‿-)✌
I gatta say that its just taking a piece, adding little or a few things to add, and oh hey,Ii just made 2 icons! And vice-versa. I see two of the same piece in one, and the latter isn't that well blended. I think that needs a bit touching~
And your latest piece! I like it i like it! The 2nd banner looks pretty legit. A thumbs up from me~!
That seems to be high praise, coming from you ;-]
Just kidding! Though I gotta say, it's somewhat strange to hear "have some self confidence there". Admittedly I'm probably too confident in my skills, so much that I used to be a bit worried I'd come off as too arrogant when talking about myself in update posts in my other galleries LOL. I just like to consider critique seriously, since I do love to learn how people view my work. Honestly speaking, some of the things you pointed out earlier were critiques I'd never gotten before, so I really appreciate it!
So thanks again for the feedback; I can't wait for some more graphics from you as well ;-]