Dont forget to sign up at our forums: click here to get access to free tutorials, signatures, renders and brushes!

Translate this tutorial (does not translate text inside pictures):


You Are Viewing Becomming an better Artist it's been viewed 3353 times. Report broken tutorial

In this write-down, the gfx artist *Genesis-Orbit explains a few of the basic points you have to pay attention to when you make signatures.


1. Does my work of art have a focal point?
Unless you are doing a collage, your signature, splash, wallpaper, or print must have a focal point. To achieve a good focal point, there needs to be a part of your graphic that your eyes draw to, like a white spot where the brushing is centering in on. If you want to throw in a pic (render) into the graphic, you want your pic to be right in front or right by the focal point because if you place it somewhere else, it's going to look ugly because the render will be disrupting the focus. When you get a good focus, the text becomes easy. Here as some of my examples of establishing a good focus. This is the same case for both sigs and larger pieces also. [link] [link] (what makes that larger piece even better is the off centered focus. When you got a focus that is right in the center, you might try to be drawing the movement from all over the place, but if you have the focus a bit off centered, you can draw movement from 1 location and it can make things a little easier, and the result looks better too). Of course once you master the focal point, you might start to realize that all work doesn't need a focal point to be good. This can only be replaced by great flow and a nice composition. If your piece doesn't have any of these then keep on trying till you get one. A well balanced composition is more important than anything. Here are 2 examples of pieces where the composition is more important than drawing movement. [link] [link]

2. Does my graphic have a color sceme?
I find that the best graphics have a repeating color scheme that is displayed throughout the the graphic. Unless you have something other in mind with the colors, Whenever I get done with a graphic, I save it and then reopen the saved file in photoshop so it is all 1 layer. that way I can put a color balance over it all. So fool around with the color balance options until you get something that you like. To make your graphic seem more alive, if you save it and don't like the way it turned out, because photoshop file has more color than a jpg, open the jpg in photoshop and increase the contrast and decrease the brightness. do that until you are happy with your outcome. Also, try to make sure your graphics are not monochromatic unless you want to go for a black and white look. Monochromatic pieces do not help out the flow of a piece at all and sometimes color changes is all you need to get your piece focus or movement. [link] (see how the colors are repeating through the whole piece, but they come out the brightest at the focus? This would look pretty bad if it was monochromatic I think).

3. Does my graphic have good motion?
Motion is hard to explain, but it might be easier if I tell you what motion isn't. When your pics and text are placed randomly without any thought at all. Bad motion comes when you got multiple pics in a piece and your eye doesn't draw to anywhere in particular. It also comes with badly placed text. When you look at art, there is something that always sticks out on a certain piece. you want everything else in the graphic to contribute to the buildup to the focal point, think of it as support. For instance, you can try making the the parts of your graphic that you don't want your eyes to draw to a very dull color, or even try using the blur tool. Like in photography, when you see photos, sometimes the surroundings are really blurry and the focal point is really really focused. This might be easier to see than to be explained so heres what I mean by motion [link] Some of the parts of the render literally force your eyes to follow it to the focal point. [link] - see how everything in this piece is attributing to that 1 center point in this? Good motion really brings a piece to life.

4. Does my graphic have good text?
Text definitely is a big difference maker in computer graphics. When everyone starts gfx they always end up downloading like 300 fonts and using all of them, but what they are missing is the font is so dependent on what the graphic style is. Do you ever see your favorite gfx artists on deviant art using these crazy metallica like looking fonts for their graphic? No, they know they if they did that it would just ruin everything. I found that once I tried to establish focus in my graphic, the text comes SO much easier because text always was a distraction to my focus before hand. You know how you always see beginning gfx artists just automatically add text in the bottom right corner because they don't know where else to put it? Thats because chances are their background is boring, has no depth, and is extremely repetitive. Here is a good example of text. [link] - See how well placed the text is? Thats because he has a very defined focus and so much motion in it. Here is a bad example of text [link] - Oh my I went for the bottom right corner. why did I use that text? it looks so unprofessional!!! If changed my font to something like franklin gothic 10 point or any serif or sand serif font, moved it somewhere by the middle and maybe put a smaller sub text under that it would look 1000 times better. You see, you don't have to download fonts to get better. The fonts you need are right in front of you when you install photoshop. Good text MAKES the graphic because when people see that you know how to put text in a graphic, they know that you know what you are doing.

5. Does my graphic have a theme?
-I can not stress how much it is important to stick to a theme when making a graphic. I've seen people add tech brushes to a grunge sig before, and I am just thinking, what on earth are you doing? just becuase you have the power to do that doesn't mean you should. It's hard to explain and use examples so I can pretty much say, when you pick a theme, you have to stick to it. If your making a grunge graphic, do everything in your power to make it looks like dirty decaying matter, don't throw in a tech design to throw it off.

6. How do I get depth to my graphic?
Depth is probably one of the hardest things to understand in gfx. I'll do my best to explain it. I'll start you out with some examples. [link] - Blurring is one of the best ways to establish depth. It's a technique that I'm not even the best with so I can't give you all the advice on this, but if you want to go for an effect like this, treat your piece like it is being photographed. If you get close to your focus, a lot of things that aren't in focus will appear blurry, and if you get that effect with your pieces, they will appear a lot more realistic to the viewer. - Here's an example of a piece with no depth. [link] - Don't use filters and blend them together. The sooner you start to brush the better off you'll be. It takes time, just look at my scraps if you don't believe me. This piece doesn't have depth cause there is nothing prominent in it, it's just a bunch of filters with distortions all blended into one big mess. Hopefully you enjoyed my walk through, and hopefully you will now use photoshop to its full purpose instead of just screwing around. Thanks, and have a nice day :) Keith Kosmal Keith Kosmal