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My Attempt At A Graphics Tutorial |
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Yes. Please. I apologize ahead of time.
Hello there! I’m Kagura, and it’s a pleasure to be making my very first tutorial. I have been designing for 2+ years (going for three very soon) and specialize in making personalized graphics for friends, family, and original custom work for organizations. =)
Around summer 2007ish I stumbled upon a site called Allianora.net, and read some of their beautiful tutorials by the lovely Sergeant Rose. One particular tutorial was one on how to make snazzy signatures with brushes, effects, and creativity.
I was later staffed at Allianora.net for a short time before Maya-chan went solo, and sadly, the tutorials went down and I haven’t seen Rose’s tutorials since. I’m guessing she’s got a site somewhere, but I had a lot of people ask me how I made my signature on Gaia, as well as other signatures I make for other purposes.
So this is my little signature tutorial. (Yes, my little rendition.)
Signatures can come in different shapes, sizes, colors, and images, but I usually love to use an extracted PNG whenever making a signature. Sometimes I use other full screenshots and images, but the PNGs let you make the background.
For this tutorial I am using an extracted PNG, and it is strongly advised to due to the nature of the background.
First off, get Adobe Photoshop going. I’m using Photoshop 7.0, but no worries. Everything here can be done through any version of Photoshop, preferably 7.0 and up.
Once you have Photoshop up and ready, go to File>New and get a 420x120 blank white canvas open.
Yay! Okay Next step!
I added a 1px stroke around my canvas just to show the definite lines of my image. This is an OPTIONAL step.
Next, pick out your PNG of your choice and open it up. For this tutorial I am using Lacus Clyne (rendered by Kidd), since I am a Gundam freak. Now copy the PNG and then paste it into the canvas. I strongly advise not to resize any image until it’s pasted on the new canvas because it may not be the right size and then it’ll be all pixilated by the time you want to resize it again. Therefore, leave as is until pasted.
Then you resize the image to your liking. I resized and position my image like so:
Now if your image looks a little faded or grainy, there are a couple ways of fixing that. If you feel like sharpening the image, sharpen it by going to Filter>Sharpen>Sharpen, and messing around with the opacity if it’s too sharp.
A way to also fix the color quality is by duplicating your image and going to Filter>Noise>Median and set the radius to 6. Then set the layer to Soft Light or Overlay, depending on your liking. Another way to change color quality is just by duplicating your image layer and setting it to soft light or another blend mode.
Here’s my image now:
(Don’t worry on making the image too snazzy right now. We’ll be adding things and working around with it.)
Now, we shall begin with the actual signature background.
Create a layer and set it as your second layer so it is behind your image layers. Using your rectangular marquee tool, create a rectangle the same length as your canvas yet half the width. Then fill it with a color, in which this case I am using #FF99CC as my color.
Like this:
Next, go back to your ORIGINAL image layer and give it a 3px stroke, color #FFFFFF. Don’t try stroking your other image layers since they are set to soft light it will not have the safe effect.
Now, before we go on, I want to make this comment:
I honestly dislike making tutorials since I feel that A. I suck at explaining things since my artwork is spontaneous and rarely ever is “planned out.” B. We all have unique creativity, and you can’t teach creativity, but you can teach technique. =) Anyhow, in this section I am going to be using my own brushes and my own ideas for what I think will look nice in my signature. This tutorial should only serve as a guideline and personally would like to have people follow their own creative impulses here. By all means, go crazy here.
All rightie! I strongly recommend to pay a visit to Animeshare, a beautiful, fabulous anime graphics resource site where I obtain most of my brushes from. I HIGHLY recommend their resources.
I also love getting brushes from LiveJournal recourses, like icon_tutorials, and other groups that have individual users making resources. Once again, strong places to get brushes, textures, and other amazing graphics.
I’m going to use on of Animeshare’s little arrow brushes, which I also believe are preset brushes on Photoshop 7.0. Create a new layer right after the pink mid layer and apply the brush like this:
Next, add a new layer and add a design brush. I’m using a vector brush by Aino Hanako and applied it in color #FFFFFF to the pink layer.
Keep adding whatever brushes you like to give it a very vector, colorful and retro effect. I added a little side brush from Aethereality’s lovely floral and brush set. I also added a few brushes from moragh.de’s floral brushes.
Here:
Then add some swirling dot brushes (mine are from Aino Hanako) to add that playful happy design. And a scribble brush from Aino Hanako too! <3 And finally some Sakura brushes from Aino Hanako! (I love her too much.)
Here you go!
Almost done! Now, time for some text! I usually love putting my text in some zany position. So! Using the polygonal lasso too form a shape of your choice to put your text inside.
Fill it with a white color, and stroke it 1px to the same color as your second color, in which mine is pink. Duplicate the layer twice and position them to your own liking, changing their opacities and setting them under the main layer so it’s visible. Then add whatever text you want.
Here’s my product:
And you’re done!
The tricky part of explaining how to make these signatures is that people are free to use whatever brushes they want. There is no set way how to do it, just play around with brushes and colors. I suggest primarily using vector brushes since they give that particular effect, but it’s not limited to just vectors. Also varying and using a variety of color palettes is very creative.
{ Yes. My first sad attempt at explaining myself. It’s torture trying to put my own accidents into logical meaning so I thank those of you who managed to bear with me without going, wtf?!}
Please no stealing and claiming as own, and remember to credit your brushes as I have. They are amazing people who need to let their work be recognized.
Here are some other examples of what I've done following this tutorial:
No stealing. If you'd like a custom, let me know through PM. But no stealie because you steal from me, you steal from everyone. (Pretty true too.)
Special thankies to Silare and Yahiko-chan who requested this tutorial. x3 Hope it helps! And yes, I'll be revamping it in time. ^^ Thankies for bearing with me.
So hope you have a fun and good luck!
Ohtori Kagura · Sun Nov 02, 2008 @ 06:40am · 0 Comments |
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