[Showcase] Way Regained

[derozio]

I like the use of the C4D.. :) btw where you get that C4D? just asking.. :)

Signaturestop. From the same place you got the C4D for your current sig, bro. XD;

As for requests: As I said, I might do requests in the future. I don't really know when in the future, though. I might just start doing them once I'm less busy. But it doesn't really seem like I'm getting free anytime soon, so yeah.

@Benny: Even if I were to take requests, your request is kinda impossible for me to do. I don't color stuff, you see. XD;

Update(s):

As you can see, this is my current signature image. I wanted to go for an edward theme and tried using a new style. A style new to me, anyway.

This one isn't really anything special, I guess. Just tried experimenting with depth.

Idk about this one. Just a random vertical tag.

 

[derozio]

Since this thing has been dead for quite a while and coz I haven't really done any updates, I figured I might as well just put this in here. XD;

I'll just say that this tag is completely different from my usual ones. I went totally on a different route this time. And surprisingly, the results were good. At least, that's what I think. o3o

 

[Uecil]

Wow.. your graphics are amazing, Derozio.
Keep up the great work :P

 

[loliwin]

AWESOME MY PAIR YOU MADE A GALLERY
I still like your work, and you keep improving! XD

 

[Abnegation]

Alright, well, I've given you some little snippets of critique from the beginning, and you've improved a lot since then, as I said you would. But don't be too hasty, there's a long road ahead if you want to be much better than you are now. The graphics world is a dog eat dog one, sub-conscientiously; everyone competes. So let's press on.

Recently done stuff:

Spoiler:

Right off the bat here, the borders annoy me. Clipping mask borders are a no go, in fact, borders in general are a no go. I would avoid them at all costs as they were a technique primarily used by graphic artists about 2 or 3 years ago, now only beginners tend to do them until they realize they actually do nothing for a tag. Not a bit fan of your method of creating effects in this one to be true, the lighting on the hand is the wrong colour; don't put a spot light on something that already has the same colour, it'll just reduce contrast. So a white spot light over a white hand was a bad idea here, a warmer colour may have been nicer, given the fire in the background and the general warm texture of the tag. The text on the left is a little meh, but you'll hear me time and time again, giving out about your font choices, and I think I've mentioned that to you before, you need to pick fonts that match the theme of the tag, and this means downloading a lot of stuff from dafont or the likes. I kinda like the style you were going for, but you went on overkill with the effects and clashed styles with the border clipping masks which had heavy colour, and the body of the tag which is very un-saturated.

Spoiler:

Not a bit fan of this one, the colours all look washed out, but not in a way that would pass off as an intentional artists' technique as they just make the tag look really low quality to be true. Blurring images like this, which already lack in colour, is a bad idea also. The faces were lacking detail as it was, now they merely look like they had their quality stripped off. The boy you sharpened; is over sharpened, his face had too much light and the rest of his body isn't brought out at all, other than the torso. If you were trying to emphasize him, you should have brightened up the rest of him with the dodge tool or by using a white brush and playing with opacity and layer styles. Wouldn't be one of your better tags, a slight jump backwards.

Spoiler:

Again, not liking this one, it carries over a lot of what I said in the previous one, it's just horribly lacking in colour, it looks like you put a gradient map over it and left the opacity too high. Clipping masks are kind of cool, but the ones at the top left are not parallel to each other and it looks bad as they just seem wonky. I would recommend going down a different route if you're going to desaturate and strip colour from anime/cartoon styled images, because it just makes no sense. Do it with RL stock images, but do it tastefully, working with depth and lighting using levels and curves as well as brushing, using the channel mixer, selective colour etc. don't take short cuts. But, not one of your better ones again, I would jump away from that style pretty quickly if I was you.

Spoiler:

I actually like this one a lot, you didn't take off the colour of the stock image, you maintained it's original quality like you failed to do in the previous two. I think you know that it's one of your better tags, but I think it might be a little bit messy, don't worry too much about filling up space. That texture is a little too heavy also. The text, ruins the tag for 3 reasons: 1) Bad font choices 2) You should never put text stuck in a corner and 3) don't make text semi opaque like this.You'll need to cut out the borders also, they do nothing for a tag. You'll need to eventually get off the habit of repeating the stock image in a tag to fill space, it shouldn't be used so heavily or twice for that matter, it just shows poor technique, so try different directions and use it only where it would be tasteful.

Tags:

Spoiler:

This will go back to your problem with quality, you're taking too much of it out of the tag. I think it's either an over use of gradient maps or by reducing the contrast with one of PS's tools. Whatever it is, you need to tone it down a little. This render is really easy to make a tag with as it has so much action and so much flow going for it that the tag artists just needs to slap it on a tag add a few effects and boom, an instantly nice tag. But, there's a few things that would urk me, again; font placement, get it out of the corners, and the "with fury" looks bad when it's not going in the same direction as the "Blazing", but you need to play with text a little more, try warping it with ctrl + t, and purely being innovative, these sort of generic fonts and colours aren't doing much for your text. This tag does have a lot of flow, I just wish the colours were more vibrant.

Spoiler:

I'll group these together since they're the same tag in retrospect. In any case, I like the first the most due to the colour. The text however, seems a little rough, over sharpened possibly. In general the tag is just very busy and messy. Over use of clipping masks, too many fractal stocks thrown about. Overall it's just too busy and it's plain to see. I prefer the top because it sort of masks the overuse of effects somewhat.

Spoiler:

I like the text method used here, but better positional and fonts would have made it more impressive. I'm not sure how much I like the blurring, again you're using whatever technique you use on your tags that brings down the contrast and it's really not working to a full extent, it's far too heavy. The dust stock is also too heavy and isn't really doing much for the tag, the colours need to be more vibrant and again, the lack of contrast kills it.

Spoiler:

TEXT TEXT AAAAAAAAAAAAH, again, the opacity, and the font choices. better placement here though. But eh, the tag as a whole doesn't appeal to me too much, I think it looks too low quality. It would be much better if everything looked more strong and not so wishy washy. I think that if you improved on the text (which I notice is influenced by Maly's tags), fixed the quality of almost everything, added a little more depth; it would be a more solid tag.

Spoiler:

For a tag, this is a little short to be honest. I kind of like the text positioning, it flows, but again, not the font choice. You kept the original quality of the render here which is something you should try to always maintain. The clipping masks though, I think you should head in another direction with those, as in, don't use them to make effects. The C4D is a nice one, though I think you should have used more C4D's than clipping masks to be honest, it's better practice. Just a few things needed to fix this one up, just watch out how you fill space and add depth.

Spoiler:

You got the right idea about where the action was coming from; his hands, and you played on it nicely. Though the tag as a whole is lacking, not only are his hands the focal, but his face is also, in fact, the entire render is. The entire tag feels a little flaky, the way you filled space doesn't appeal to me very much, again, probably due to the use of clipping masks. I think if you made it wider and seriously burned the edges in a circular sort of way, it would look a little better.

Spoiler:

Again, not wide enough, and borders don't help it much. I like where you were going with it though, except I dislike the opacity you put on the cards on the right, and again, the clipping masks. I think you have a habit of chopping things up and throwing them about the canvas, though this might work for physical art, I'm not sure it's something you should be doing in graphic design, it looks a little tacky. But I like this style, maybe a little too warm but a nice direction to head in anyway so long as you fix up a few things. .

Spoiler:

The text in this one, again follows the route of "Where Dero went wrong with text", so just look back at previous comments to see why this is bad placement etc. The tag itself again is a little messy and the colours are rather dull. I think you should bring out the reads and add a little more colour. Try making a new layer and with a soft brush at 65px ish, put a dot of colour (in a few different colours) around your tags and set the layer to "color" whilst adjusting opacity etc. So try that on future tags. But really, this one lacks in colour and composition primarily.

Spoiler:

Took me a while to actually find the focal here, which shows that you haven't brought it out enough. Every time I look at the tag, my eye jumps around to find where it should be going to. The tag itself is very monochrome and I think that going with that sort of brownish colour all over the tag was a bad idea, furthermore, I don't think that the render was all that great either. I kind of like the style but the colour is really awful, and again, the clipping masks aren't doing much in the way of effects.

Spoiler:

This one seems to lack effects really, the colours are also very dull again. I think that you've not gone through much trouble to make this like you have in other tags. I also feel that you should avoid renders like this, they don't offer much in the way of giving you options for colour. There's also a huge void to the left of the tag in which needs to be filled up.

Spoiler:

One of my favourite tags of yours. I love the render, but I like how you worked it. the only thing that concerns me is the texture you used, I think you should slow down with your use of textures in general. A little blurring would have sufficed.

Spoiler:

I'll finish with this one, as I feel I'm starting to repeat myself as a lot of your tags hold the same qualities. At any rate, this is probably your best. I would advise you move that text onto the black space on his torso. I love this C4D though I dislike the opacity. Whatever you did with his hand also throws me off a little though, I think the flow just jumps about when you look there. All in all it's one of your best tags by a long way.

As for LP's an icons, I think you need to be more technical in what you're attempting to do, the LP's are merely colour edits with a few techniques here and there and unappealing text thrown into th mix. I would advise you try something a little more challenging and add more effects before I come back to rate as what I see here doesn't differ greatly to some of your tags. The icons need work also, the only one I really liked was this - https://i862.photobucket.com/albums/ab183/ASC303/REPAIR1-1.png - I think that you should work with more IRL stocks, that's the way forward.

So a good body of work, I think you could definitely improve if you cut out some bad habits. You're always welcome to bug me on MSN PC for crit. Keep it going, you're getting good!

 

[Trish]

I think the vert tag where the render puts up a "horns" hand sign is the best among them all. I love the colors, love the splatter and you got flow pinned on that one. The render is perfectly placed too. Only thing distracting about it is the splatter effects that you added that overlay-ed the render. That is pretty distracting and very annoying, and on top of that, it feels like there's no depth (look at the splatter conjoining the knee with the elbow and the background).

Some of the colors in your tags are washed out, dull, and very heavy. Try some vibrant colors to spice them up. You have some sharpening problems on some of them too. Otherwise, you have great depth and occasionally great lighting. Good job!

 

[Hourglasshero]

Excellent Job! The style is unique and i love the icons! Wish i had ur style...
Question: Have u taken art lessons?

 

[derozio]

@Loli: Thanks a bunch, loli. <3
@Gav: Wow gav, that was seriously one heck of a C&C! I'm indebted. <333
I'll be sure to consider all of the things you mentioned into my works that I make in the future.

@Trish: Which tag are you talking about, exactly? And yeah, I know the colors are washed out. I never did try any colour enhancements in my works until recently. I'm starting to work with my color problems now. And even..the text problem.

@Hourglasshero: Ha ha, thank you very much, bro. I'm truly flattered by your comment. And as for your question: No, I do not take art lessons. XD;

Update time:

Icon(s):

Tag(s):

Did this a while back. Using it for an alt atm. Might actually use this for my main (this one), though. Don't mind the shadow, plz. That was just done..umm, idk why. XD;

 

[Monark360]

Ugh, looking at your stuff makes me want to get back into sigging. My bro has my notebook, though, and even if he didn't, it's a piece of junk now. Sigh.

 

[Trish]

This one, mate. xD

 

[derozio]

@monark: Ha ha, thanks a bunch, brother. <33
@Trish: Oh yeah, that one! XD; And yeah, thank you once again for the C&C, bro. :D

Update Time:
Here are some Icons I made for the wall. Not all of them are good, I know. But yeah, some turned out quite good. <3

The Lightning Theif icons:

Bleach:

FMA:

Fairy Tail:

Gurren Lagann's Kamina:

 

[Abnegation]

Something about your icon style really bugs me. I want you to do something for me if you want some help on making them better. Tell me exactly what your motive is before you set out to make an icon, what you want them to look like, basically; describe your style. I'm asking because it's not your technique that's lacking, it's your conceptual talent, it's whatever style you're going for.

Your icons really lack colour and quality, they feel a little washed out and not much has been done with depth in the way of lighting, try using more levels layers, as well as the many colour editing options there are such as "Selective Color", this is about the best, but still laking in colour, try making them stand out that much more and avoid these washed out colourings.

 

[mikey]

Ahhh shame on me for never commenting in your gallery before D:

Anyways, nice stuff you got here. Especially the sexy FMA icons hurr

I honestly like your icons more than your signatures, but all in all your pretty good at graphics :3

 

[derozio]

@Gav: As I've already told you before, I mainly go for selective color. I don't use levels or anything else, for that matter. But yeah, I've been trying on getting my colors right and hope I'll get them right soon enough.

@Toshiro: Hehe, not commenting on it..it doesn't really matter. XD; Thanks for your comment, Toshiro! :D

Update: One SRK icon. XD;

 

[Ashe~]

This is what I like.. :)

I like the use of the C4D.. :) btw where you get that C4D? just asking.. :)

I'm very much in love with this signature <:

 

[Spirit Albarn♫]

Dude, your icons are amazing D:

 

[derozio]

@Ashe: Haha, thanks a bunch, bro. That tag was definitely my best. :D
@SA: Hehe, thanks. They're not really THAT good, though. C:

Anyway, update timez:

I need C&C here. Please.

 

[mikey]

^ Awesome One Piece tag! Love the colors.

 

[derozio]

Haha, thanks a lot, Toshiro. Many people have appreciated that tag and I'm glad. <333

Updates are due in a while. Maybe a day or two. I might actually make a tag tomorrow if I'm not busy. It'll also be OP based, of course. Or maybe FMA based? Idk.

 

[derozio]

Well, I might as well post this here. Even though it ain't as good as my previous one, haha.