Small Work Showcase [Vol. I]

Originally Posted by zeldafan12z

Oh looks great Caleb! What an amazing color scheme! Is the render of Yeul from Final Fantasy?

I hope it's okay that I post one of mine now I think we can all agree yours is awesome! :3
Here it is decided to go out of my comfort zone a bit and pic a random render that I had no knowledge of and work with that for practice! And I'm pretty happy with the result! ^_^



Version 2: No scanlines, different border

Ooh! I definitely like Version 2 with the different border (THE SHORTER THE BETTER) ! I really liked the scanlines that you used for the first, and I think it'd look nicely with the second as well! Otherwise it's near perfect :3!

Originally Posted by Strawberry

Ooh! I definitely like Version 2 with the different border (THE SHORTER THE BETTER) ! I really liked the scanlines that you used for the first, and I think it'd look nicely with the second as well! Otherwise it's near perfect :3!

Pft perfect? I think not haha but yeah I do like this one! Thanks so much! Yeah I definitely like the border on v 2 better, and I really like the scanlines so if I ever use the sig I'll probably combine them!

Originally Posted by zeldafan12z

Oh looks great Caleb! What an amazing color scheme! Is the render of Yeul from Final Fantasy?

I hope it's okay that I post one of mine now I think we can all agree yours is awesome! :3
Here it is decided to go out of my comfort zone a bit and pic a random render that I had no knowledge of and work with that for practice! And I'm pretty happy with the result! ^_^



Version 2: No scanlines, different border

It's very good, I have a few little critiques to give you. First of all, I think you did a great job of making the render fit in with the rest of the image. However, I think it could benefit from a little more contrast rather than just the flat colour. Also you could probably ease up on the fractal's and whatnot going around in the right corner. Other than that, excellent job I hope to see more!

Here's my piece, I entered it in the SotW competition, so I hope it's not against the rules if I post it here.

I really like this sig Lady Destiny! The only thing I might change if it were me was maybe the color of the C4D behind the render, I keep mistaking where his helmet ends! haha but that just be me!

I really really love your subtle use of the green near the bottom and the scattered C4D's around the base! Great job! ^_^

Ooh, that's really good. I love the colors you used, and the way the helmet blends in with the sig is cool. It's a little easy to get lost, though, so I'd recommend doing something to bring out the render a bit more - possibly a different color C4D, like zeldafan had said.

I like it!


Now, with that said, I have a sig I'd like critique on. :3

I like that sol! I have a few things I'd say though. One, once I place my C4D's above a render I always go back and erase anything over the face. Also try, if possible to keep the flow of your sig in the same direction, the C4D in the top right hand corner is kinda flowing against the render and the waves. And lastly although I love the color scheme of the sig I think you might want to introduce one complementary color to help your focal point stand out a bit, or maybe even just some white!

Really really great sig though! Keep it up! ^_^

Ah, thanks! I'll remember the C4D thing for the next sig I make. As for colors: Yeah, I kinda wanted to throw something else in, but I felt at the time that the sig didn't call for it. I'll definitely use a more diverse color palette in the future, though.

Eeeee!
I actually really-really like this! Sól, you know, the cool thing about you is that you do heed the advice you're given and the improvement is drastically visible. :> I actually like that the sig has one main colour scheme, but of course, I'm not a gfx person. x3

Oh and those thin horizontal lines compliment the sig very well. :]

Here's another of mine! I'm really excited about this one! ^_^

I'm excited about this one too! ;D

The only concern I have is this: most of the time blending the render in is a great thing. But there is a point where you can blend it too far. You're almost there. I think next time if you sharpen the render after you get it resized it will make it much easier to differentiate between the BG and the render.

Also I'd love to see you branch out with more colors in a single sig! I like the whole "stick to one color spectrum" thing, but like with my Yeul sig, I had tons of color in there and it all matched. I'd love to see you try something similar.

hey I remember this place, back when it was the Signature Showcase in the Synthesis of Imagery. Used to post in it all the time, back when I actually put some effort into making signatures. Same ol' two-comment rule and everything.

@zf12z: Caleb has most of it covered and I agree with him about the blending and the color and whatnot, so I'm going to address the text. This same criticism also applies to Sól's signature up there (and in fact every sig he's posted in this thread apparently) and it's a problem I see all the time.

in graphic design, text should be used minimally and, more importantly, it should be used graphically. Too often I see signatures where text is thrown on like a label and it only takes away from the rest of the image. This especially applies to Sól's sig (not to pick on you or anything)—the text is just way up in the corner and out of the way, not adding anything.

text in signatures, if used at all, should be seamlessly immersed into rest of the image and I feel that you did not quite manage to do that here. A good example of text used graphically, in my opinion, is Lady Destiny's signature (which is also a rare example of scanlines used well—adding a subtle texture to the background, rather than distractingly overpowering the background as in Sól's sig...sorry Sól ).

anyway, that's my two cents or so. Now here's a little something I made today:





(it's two images, but I consider them part of the same work. They're a set, obviously).

Originally Posted by Lysis

hey I remember this place, back when it was the Signature Showcase in the Synthesis of Imagery. Used to post in it all the time, back when I actually put some effort into making signatures. Same ol' two-comment rule and everything.

It technically still is the signature showcase, but I decided to shorten the name. Considering signatures are definitely a small work, why bother to say signature specifically? :3

anyway, that's my two cents or so. Now here's a little something I made today:





(it's two images, but I consider them part of the same work. They're a set, obviously).

I like this, although I have no idea who the heck these people are. :3
Because of that, it would be more ideal for people like me to have that text moved further away from the images (assuming that it's their names), so that people like me could not only read the text, but make it easier to read.

I like the shadows, they do a good job of giving some amount of depth within each little window. The only thing I'm really not a fan of is the green background. It's probably just me, though. I don't really like green.

But it looks good, either way. It's a tad different, which is something this thread could use.

Originally Posted by Caleb

It technically still is the signature showcase, but I decided to shorten the name. Considering signatures are definitely a small work, why bother to say signature specifically? :3

yeah yeah, totally makes sense. I was just reminiscing.

I like this, although I have no idea who the heck these people are. :3

Ho-kago Tea Time from K-On! :3

Because of that, it would be more ideal for people like me to have that text moved further away from the images (assuming that it's their names), so that people like me could not only read the text, but make it easier to read.

yeah, I get that. The text was sort of a last-minute addition; I hadn't thought of it until after I'd already done everything else and by that point the signature was already at the maximum 150 pixel height allowed by the ZU forum rules. Because of the descender in the letter "g" in Mugi's name, I already had to crop down the size of her window to make the other letters even visible.

I suppose I could have cropped down or resized the other windows as well, but I'm lazy and I was going more for style than readability.

I like the shadows, they do a good job of giving some amount of depth within each little window. The only thing I'm really not a fan of is the green background. It's probably just me, though. I don't really like green.

unfortunately I can't take too much credit for the shadows inside the windows, or the green background, as those were part of the original images. I did put some drop shadows in between the windows though and touched up the color and sharpness a bit.

But it looks good, either way. It's a tad different, which is something this thread could use.

thx :>

Originally Posted by Lysis

maximum 150 pixel height allowed by the ZU forum rules.

650x240 is the new size, it changed maybe 5 months ago, but I feel like the forum rules still say the old size

:?

Zelda Universe: Rules (Full Descriptions)

Yeah, I know :3

But we decided a while back in staff that if you're given 240 pixels to use for multiple images, why not be able to use it for one image? And it was posted in the graphics convomatic and stuff as well. :3

-Pops in-
Hellooooo (:
Here's mine~

I can't see it

Here is a new one of mine, hope it's ok to post!

I hate the text, but that's probably the thing I'm worst at in gfx. haha no idea how to work with it better!

Thanks (: fixed it~

Uhhh that's pretty (: and hitsugaya is hot as always <3
But the render looks LQ . Tha fractals aren't bad (: For the text~ just play around with blending, fonts,positions and sizes. The main thing on that one is that the font's really plain and I would suggest adding a white box on screen behind it. But not so big as to disrupt the flow, if you know what I mean And keep it closer to the render and make it a more obvious colour~

Originally Posted by zeldafan12z

Really love the colors in this one Render does look a little LQ, but it's not too noticeable. The brushstrokes or whatever in the background look a bit messy to me, but that's probably just me. All in all, I like this a lot.

Originally Posted by lilacfielder

-Pops in-
Hellooooo (:
Here's mine~

I like it, although the effects you put on it seems to lessen the focal's quality somehow. The brushstroke over the hand seems kinda random, and there's a weird shadowy effect coming out of every part of the focal. Other than all that, the colors are nice and I really like this one.



And to keep this organized, we'll just continue on with someone else's sig now. Sorry, lilac, but we're just gonna move on so you only get one critique if you continue to post you'll get two each time, so look forward to that :3