[Lord Murphy]

Just made these because I wanted one. Couple questions. What do you think of them, I have never done this before so I used a basic banner maker. Also Which one do you like best.





Here is a quick edit of the first one



If anyone knows any sites that would be useful in making these that would be great. I have GIMP.(Don't really know how to use it.) Any site for banner backgrounds or editing or anything. Thanks a bunch.

This post has been edited by pmurphy21: 03 June 2009 - 08:52 PM

[Under Fire]

Me Trying to help:
I don't think a banner maker website is what you're really looking for if you want any of the effects you've seen used around here.
If you want to do that I would suggest cracking open GIMP and fiddling around with it.
Just don't overwrite any original image files and you won't lose anything for your experimentaion.
Alot of us started with tuts (tutorials) to learn the basics of your program of choice. I personally use GIMP.
When I look for tutorials I tend to search on Deviant Art, but there are many people here who caould give you a text based tutorial.
I like tutorials with pictures because I find them much easier to follow.
If a tutorial says to use specific settings, you don't need to use those numbers, change things around to make the style your own.
You never need to follow the tuts to the letter to get cool effects.
http://browse.devian...;q=Gimp+sig+tut
This is a link to a search for GIMP tutorials on DA.

About the Tag:
All it is is a render on a black background with text, while Gohan looks cool on a black background, nothing is happening. It's very flat.

[Lord Murphy]

Thank you very much. That is very helpful. How do you get the render(the picture) to be just that with no background. That is one reason I left mine black is because the pictures background was black.

[Under Fire]

I tend to use ones cut out by others.
they are saved as .png files (which all of your final tags should be as well as a .xcf if you wanna change anything later)
.png allows transparent backgrounds
I use http://planetrenders.net/
so that should be good for you too, at least, for now

This post has been edited by brisingr is fire: 07 June 2009 - 04:55 PM

[Quoth the Raven]

But the basic way to render things is with the Magic Wand in GIMP. It looks like, well, a wand with sparks on the end. Click on a place in the picture and it will select everything adjacent that has a color within a certain threshold, which you can change.

[Under Fire]

Whenever I render things I use the paths tool to outline it, then make the path into a selection, then invert the selection and delete all after adding an alpha channel (so transparency is allowed)

[Quoth the Raven]

Yeah, but that's more confusing than the magic wand. =/

[Under Fire]

I suppose it could be, but I find it fairly straight foreward, just outline and cut

[Lord Murphy]

Thanks for the help guys. I made my first sig with GIMP now.



Obviously still working everything out on it. I was unsure of how to do a few things so I just tried it out my own way. I don't think it is great, how could I make it better?

This post has been edited by pmurphy21: 07 June 2009 - 07:06 PM

[Quoth the Raven]

That's pretty good for a first sig, but the text just doesn't match at all. I'd say either lower the transparency or make it blue, and a bit smaller and closer to the render.

[Lord Murphy]

Okay I edited that. I am getting tired and I have finals tomorrow, but I will try and work on a couple more latter. Thanks for the help.

[Quoth the Raven]

Uhh, I think the blue ought to match more, instead of being bright blue. Also it should probably be closer to the center, and in a font that matches more, maybe along the lines of Arial.

[Palagrin]

The font isn't great either. Or the text could be the colour of his hair, that might be quite nice.

[BeefStew]

But the basic way to render things is with the Magic Wand in GIMP. It looks like, well, a wand with sparks on the end. Click on a place in the picture and it will select everything adjacent that has a color within a certain threshold, which you can change.

That's really horrible for rendering. It makes the render turn out horrible, the path tool for GIMP is really easy, and turns out way better, plus you have control over what you need to render.

Thanks for the help guys. I made my first sig with GIMP now.



Obviously still working everything out on it. I was unsure of how to do a few things so I just tried it out my own way. I don't think it is great, how could I make it better?

That's a pretty good start. Keep working and checking out good tuts... Try the gimptalk forums, they're good.

[Lord Murphy]

Thanks everyone. I am going to try another style now. Quick question. How do you change the transparency of things?

Also how do you choose foreground and background images.

This post has been edited by pmurphy21: 08 June 2009 - 01:49 PM