Making of Antisora Sig(Tutorial)

After seeing rseah's tutorial again, I've decided to make my own. It's not for beginners but anyone is welcome to try. I'm going to cover how I made my latest entry into the sig contest.

Outcome:

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...3/antisora.png

Getting the Render In

First, delete the background layer. Now, find a render or render something yourself. Try searching the forums on gamerenders.com or planetrenders.net. Position it as you find to be good.

Remember the rule of thirds.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...0Sig/step1.png

In this render, I really like the wisps coming off him. I duplicated the layer and erased Sora, and repositioned as needed. This step is, of course, optional, but you may want to consider it if it suits your render.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...0Sig/step2.png

Background

Now, you'll want to add a basic background as layer modes don't work on transparency. Just make a new layer and make it any color you like(I chose white) Now brush a bit. I used a gray grunge brush and some black kind of vectorish brushes. I kept the black strokes centered around the focus, but do it as suits your flow. A note on flow at the bottom

A note on brushing. It is generally not considered skillful to brush, and it doesn't really expand your skills either. Keep it limited or not at all.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...0Sig/step3.png

Now here is where you let the creative juices loose. I'll tell you what I did but I encourage you to experiment.

I'm a fan of c4ds. You'll find them to be used very often in my work. So here I added c4ds, one at a time, and played with color and layer settings. Now here are the three c4ds I added after adjustments.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...0Sig/step4.png
Adjusted to green and set on value.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...0Sig/step5.png
Adjusted to green and set on grain extract.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...0Sig/step6.png
Left default colors ad set on divide.

Text

It's easy to dismiss text, but doing so is certainly a mistake. You should spend enough time on text to make it look good.

First, choose where you want the text at. Choose somewhere that's mainly one color so you can see the text easily. I've outlined some possible places below:

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...0Sig/step7.png

Once you've picked the place, choose a good font. Spend some time browsing dafont.com to find the one that suits your sig. In my case it was easy. I chose Kingdom Hearts.

Before you type the text, make a bath following the place you're putting the text, unless it will be horizontal.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...0Sig/step8.jpg

Now type out the text and size it as you like. Color doesn't matter right now. Now press Text Along Path. It will make a selection in the shape of the text along the path. Now choose a color that will show up well and fill in the selection(Ctrl + ,)

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...0Sig/step9.png

Now make a border around it without making the text bigger by right clicking the layer and choosing Alpha to Selection. Make a new transarent layer and fill in the selection with a new color that shows up well against the bg as well.Shrink the selection a few pixels and press delete.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...Sig/step10.png

Now all that's left is the border. Easy. I just make a new transparent layer, select all, fill it in black, shrink by 1, then hit delete. The result is your finished product!

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...3/antisora.png

Flow: Flow is very important to your sig. You'll want to establish flow early so you know where to go with it. Here's the flow in my sig, but they can greatly vary and I'll try to show more examples.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4...Sig/step11.png

As you can see, it's exploding from the focus, and my background is doing the same. Most sigs won't explode from the focus but rather follow the focus. I'll try to explain in more detail later.

Please post your outcomes and opinion of the tutorial. I may or ma not make more depending on if you guys like it/find it useful.

wow those are sooo good. it looks very complex and awesome!

trying to stealing my thunder ehh?

good tutorial although im not really going to use it but good anyway

on thing i don't agree on though

"A note on brushing. It is generally not considered skillful to brush, and it doesn't really expand your skills either. Keep it limited or not at all"

lol in my opinion, you guys are both pro's:p

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rseah

trying to stealing my thunder ehh?

good tutorial although im not really going to use it but good anyway

on thing i don't agree on though

"A note on brushing. It is generally not considered skillful to brush, and it doesn't really expand your skills either. Keep it limited or not at all"

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rseah

trying to stealing my thunder ehh?

good tutorial although im not really going to use it but good anyway

on thing i don't agree on though

"A note on brushing. It is generally not considered skillful to brush, and it doesn't really expand your skills either. Keep it limited or not at all"

---

I don't agree with that, but what do I know, I'm a noob! :p

I don't even use C4Ds anymore once I downloaded a huge pack of brushes. :D

Oh, and that's a cool signature.

I knew not everyone would agree with that, but let me try to explain more clearly so maybe you will agree: What I was saying was not that brushes look bad or that brushes cannot be used with skill, but rather that using brushes in excess will not improve your art.

This is not directed at people who use a few brushes in their sigs, but at people who almost exclusively use brushes. You'll find that these people cannot make anything decent without brushes, whereas you could remove any tool including c4ds from my arsenal and I would still be able to whip up something worth existing. And I don't mean to sound egotistical by that at all, but I've spent a lot of time ensuring that it's true.

And, well, as for c4ds vs brushs: I find that c4ds "pop" more than brushes. I guess it depends, but that's how I find it to be. Also, c4ds are a lot easier to work with on advanced stuff, rather than having to brush once, undo because it was placed wrong, brush again, make a new layer, use a new brush there, etc.

Anyways that's my word on that. I'm going to leave it there though because that's my opinion and its my tutorial :P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BassDeluxe

I knew not everyone would agree with that, but let me try to explain more clearly so maybe you will agree: What I was saying was not that brushes look bad or that brushes cannot be used with skill, but rather that using brushes in excess will not improve your art.

This is not directed at people who use a few brushes in their sigs, but at people who almost exclusively use brushes. You'll find that these people cannot make anything decent without brushes, whereas you could remove any tool including c4ds from my arsenal and I would still be able to whip up something worth existing. And I don't mean to sound egotistical by that at all, but I've spent a lot of time ensuring that it's true.

And, well, as for c4ds vs brushs: I find that c4ds "pop" more than brushes. I guess it depends, but that's how I find it to be. Also, c4ds are a lot easier to work with on advanced stuff, rather than having to brush once, undo because it was placed wrong, brush again, make a new layer, use a new brush there, etc.

Anyways that's my word on that. I'm going to leave it there though because that's my opinion and its my tutorial :P

---

Yea, I always find myself making signatures differently. I don't like them all to be the same. (Although, they wouldn't be the same to other people. they'd feel the same to me.)

I always try fooling around with different options, so I can learn more about them. (I've been using tons of Gaussian Blurs, though, which I feel like I should try to avoid next time...)

Oh, and I can't believe I've never seen that Sora render! It's awesome!

One of my favourite things to do is take a soft brush, with a bright colour, on Linear Dodge (Add) and make stars. I like shiny things. ;)

But still, I've only done that a few times.

I only disagree with that sentence, because it can take skill, to do certain things. I just do whatever I think looks best for the image.

For a Killzone signature, I'd use lots of Grunge Brushes onto the background.

For a Katamari one, I'd use lots of bright colourful layer effects, and some splatter brushes.

Oh, and probably the most useful brushes are Fractal/D3 brushes. :p

Ah, who cares, it's just an opinion, no use getting into a big discussion on your tutorial thread. (Which was pretty good by the way.) :)

Wow this is great, thanks for posting! I feel so stupid now using brushes all this time! I need to make a new sig now using your techniques! Thanks so much.

wow graham you don't use c4d's?

...what are c4d's?

C4Ds are abstract images typically created in Cinema4D that are used to complement signatures, though that's not really the main use. They can be used for very slight lighting effects(I think rseah did this in one of his last few sigs) or bigger stuff, like I did in the Antisora sig. Here's an example. You can find a lot of them on Deviantart or gamerenders.

Oh so they are similar to renders, but not intended to be the main focus, in some cases? nifty frijoles. thanks

yeah they are pretty much just for minor effects and stuff also loads of people use them in abstract work as well

The technique of bending the text via paths and filling it in hangs for me at the Ctrl + , stage.

That's an odd place to hang as all that does is fill it in with your FG color. I don't know what else to tell you except instead of doing text to path trying to rotate and distort your text into place.