Art First Sig

[Ima]

Hello, This is my first sig in about a year and a half so its not the greatest. Criticism is accepted :P

One thing I noticed is the outline of the image I left it as a square. And the character in the image is hard to see.

I also have a question if somone could point me in the way of some nice brushes I would appreciate it.

[Retribution]

[SIZE=1]The war continues, lol...

You shouldn't use brushes because it makes you look really awesome, when you're not. I mean, any 8 year old kid can click here and there to slap on some pre-made brush. It takes actually [b]skill and talent[/b] to make your own effects and experiment, and [I]god forbid[/I] fail a few times.

If you hadn't made that with brushes, I'd salute you, and possibly bow down to you. Considering you just reaped the fruit of someone else's labor, you get a "try again." I can see you at least have an eye for art.[/SIZE]

[Ima]

I get what you are saying. But some of the best signatures are ones that use brushes.. Now just because I use brushes dose not mean that I am not good with photoshop, nor dose it mean I am bad with it. Brushes are a Newbies dream since as you said it gives them a nice signaute to start off with. Im not here to compete with anyone or say that I am better than anyone. Im just saying that brushes add a nice touch to signatures and if Im going for a certain feel I will use brushes and If im not I will experiment until I find what I am looking for.

This post is not to be defensive or offesive and if somone takes it personally Im sorry. :P
<3

But I do infact get what you are saying and it dose not take much skill to do what I did but it dose take skill. And when you see my next signature I hope you will be happy to see that I took what you said into consideration.

[Delta]

[COLOR=#7C0201][SIZE=1]I've been hearing about this abstract brushing thing for a while now and am really interested on how it is done. Often it's just a mess of brushes but yours actually has a focal point. Yep. Done like an InvisionFree pro.

I'm a bit doubtful about the color combination, though. Know what? I'm pretty sure a little tweak in the Levels would do the image good. To spruce it up a bit, yeah? Bring out that lovely pink spot at the center.

BTW, those grunge brushes look really rad! Where'd you get them? (The ones I pick up look like scratched metal. No good.)
[/SIZE][/COLOR]

[Hittokiri Zero]

For a first signature it is not bad, atleast it is better than my first signature. The problems in the signature seem to be the same problems a lot of other people on this board are having though; namely the text is placed randomly and is to hard to read, and... the image doesn't really show anything. The image might be abstract but there is really nothing to look at. The signature dimensions also look a little odd because the image itself is somewhat bland...

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[quote]You shouldn't use brushes because it makes you look really awesome, when you're not. I mean, any 8 year old kid can click here and there to slap on some pre-made brush. It takes actually skill and talent to make your own effects and experiment, and god forbid fail a few times.[/quote]

I'm not sure why you've been going around telling people to explicity NOT use brushes. There is a fine line between "abuse" and "use". Brushes are a great way to save time and create an effect with less of a random approach to it. Granted I don't think you should download brushes and haphazardly place them around your image, what I generally end up doing with my grunge brushes (both those I have made and downloaded) is I place them around an image using the parts that I want and then use the eraser tool to make each brush stroke/placement "unique".

While there's nothing wrong with you posting and advising people not to "abuse" brushes telling people not to "use" brushes doesn't make much sense.

Case in point --->
[b][URL=http://img200.echo.cx/img200/8913/corrupted3ys.jpg]Layout Made Using Brushes[/URL][/b]

By using the smudge, blur, color dodge/burn, eraser, and *custom brushes* I was able to make the banner to that layout. The most blatant use of brushes is the "red" blood-like marks on the banner. If you stop and think about it that red in the image could very well have been made with just the eraser, smudge, and blur tools, but compare that to just taking a brush putting it down and touching it up with the eraser tool and you'll see that the difference in time is more than worth it.

Brushes aren't bad you just have to know how to use them.

[Ima]

Thanks for all the great comments. Now there is a decent skill to brushing I mean if you stamp it, It really dose not look all that great and some of the peoples brush art is amazing and I could not believe that you could make it look that great. But its quite true that brushes can give you a nice quick way of making somthing simply by splating a few things here and there.

Now for the comments. Yes I just placed the text for ripping purposes since I really will not be using this. Now I know who would want to rip this but you know first sig its sortof sentimental to say the very least. I was going to make it a wider variety of colors and make it so you can see a darkish red, blue/purple, and some yello and green shine through but I decided not to. Yes i agree the image just really bah, It's not flowing but I had to place somthing there since it would not look complete. For my first sig this was an experiment more than anything I think it came out decent.

Id give myself 2-4/10 if I touch it up I could get a few more stars :P



I cannot think of the link off the top of my head and since I am on a laptop at this moment I do not have them bookmarked, so I will get back to you on that.

[Retribution]

[SIZE=1][quote name='Hittokiri Zero']I'm not sure why you've been going around telling people to explicity NOT use brushes. There is a fine line between "abuse" and "use". Brushes are a great way to save time and create an effect with less of a random approach to it. Granted I don't think you should download brushes and haphazardly place them around your image, what I generally end up doing with my grunge brushes (both those I have made and downloaded) is I place them around an image using the parts that I want and then use the eraser tool to make each brush stroke/placement "unique".[/quote]It appears I was not clear in my post. Sorry.

What I meant to say was that by downloading some other person's brushes you're only hurting yourself. You lack ingeniuity, creativity, and style by using someone else's brushes. Custom brushes are quite alright, as they are made by yourself, and therefore are creative.

Besides, no one's even crediting the site from which they got the brushes from. I'm pretty sure on all the sites that let you download brushes, it says "Give me credit." I do not see a link in the post to the site, so it seems as if he/she's saying "I made this all by myself," rather than "I got help from (link)." The only thing that gave me a clue was that he/she said "Point me in the direction of some nice brushes," so I made an assumption.[/SIZE]