PDN Fanatics

yay this is the first thread!

Anyway, i looked and looked but theres never a thread for good, artistic, beautiful, signatures. I turn green when i see the wonderful creations of some people, and they just shrug it off and say - 'made it on paint. net' and the conversation ends there.
HOW?
How did you achieve that work of art!?!

So tell me. - how do you get that awesome looking metal? or that beautiful cracked stone? or that awesome looking swirly thingy?
Please, tell us your techniques here.

My sorry excuse of a sig was done in a couple of minutes.
I intend to make a new sig, but im not sure how yet.

Oh, and to drakkan - how did you get that lightning effect on your sig?

My sig was made with Xor and zoom blur - I don't remember the exact steps I took, but This Tutorial is very close.

@aralox...

The basic lightning I created from a tutorial on the other forums (Lightning with Dent effect)...I just adjusted the color a little.

There are three duplicates of the lightning layer, one in front of the text, one (with glow applied) just below the real lightning) and one behind (which I used the glass tile effect on for a little background texture).

I am rather fond of that particular sig.

Mine? Well, I used my own tut on the other forum:
http://paintdotnet.12.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=4901
I tweaked it a bit though so it would not just be a rectangle.

drakaan wrote:
I am rather fond of that particular sig.

you should be, its very good.
another thing, how do your create the 'metal' effect on the rims of your sig?

Aralox wrote:

drakaan wrote:
I am rather fond of that particular sig.

you should be, its very good.
another thing, how do your create the 'metal' effect on the rims of your sig?

barkbark helped guide me on that (curves is your friend).

make the base image, select a bg color that's not in the image, and resize the canvas by some even number of pixels in height and width (I usually use about 12).

select your new border area, and make a new layer. Fill the selection with a black-white linear gradient at a slight angle, and apply curves...that'll make it look chrome.

You can also make another new layer beneath the chrome, keep the border selection, fill it with black, deselect, and gaussian blur for a drop-shadow (oh, and maybe move it a bit horizontally and vertically, too)

Omg i didnt think that i would achieve something that looked THIS good, thank you drakaan!

btw, i dont know what curves your talking about unless its the color ones, and i changed the metal slightly.

with a little more info, im gonna write a tutorial! this is awesome!

@someone2016 - i saw that tutorial and did it!


@Ben_r_r - done that too lol



theyre both pretty crap though
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For the explosion, looks good, the only thing is it looks kike you forgot to re-size the Xor layer.

yeah i think youre right.
theres another tutorial like that called exploding planets or something, which is also pretty good

Aralox wrote:Omg i didnt think that i would achieve something that looked THIS good, thank you drakaan!

btw, i dont know what curves your talking about unless its the color ones, and i changed the metal slightly.

with a little more info, im gonna write a tutorial! this is awesome!

curves has two settings (in the drop-down list at the top left. changing colors is with "RGB"...use "luminosity" instead, and make it look like evenly spaced hills (about 4 of them).

whoa i never thought levels could do that!
i thought luminosity just made it darker or brighter!

Mine was done using a grunge tutorial found on the official PDN forums.
Bolbait's grunge tutorial is also very useful for a sort of scratched looking image.

Very cool looking!

My sig well didn't come from any ones tut except the one on the use of Unfreeze. I wish APNG's were a standard because its a pain to get a gif to look decent.