Marcus Trufant request!

[deluxe_247]

cool...glad you like it wacoug

metroid..thanks for the compliment .

speaking so much about the limits..... im not sure how many artists are still here that made sigs back in the day with me, but can you believe we actually used to have a 10KB limit here in the cafe up until a few years back?

i threw a party when we got that extra 2 KBs

[Metroid]

cool...glad you like it wacoug

metroid..thanks for the compliment .

speaking so much about the limits..... im not sure how many artists are still here that made sigs back in the day with me, but can you believe we actually used to have a 10KB limit here in the cafe up until a few years back?

i threw a party when we got that extra 2 KBs

Wow 10? I guess my sigs pre-Photoshop would have been fine.

I'm having a hard time creating anything under the limits that doesn't look like mud.

[deluxe_247]

I'm having a hard time creating anything under the limits that doesn't look like mud.

yeah...its mostly because of the userbar though. those things put a choke hold on your sigs quality. thats why i usually only wear mine for a couple of weeks and ditch it because i cant stand having my sig look like a watered down dog turd .

some things that may help you keep your quality up when sig making:

small size: obvious reasons....less space taken, less KBs

less contrasting colors: over time us artists have concluded less contrasting colors helps the quality. so fair warning, if you put a fruity rainbow in your sig...get ready for it to loook like crap. as for colors that are the worst to downsize....red takes the cake. black and white are the easiest.

less detail: see the small black lines in your cafe lineup userbar? those things are KB killers. little stuff like that will eat your kbs very quickly...so its not always best to get super detailed for cafe sigs. also notice that the lines disapeared on my userbar when i downsized it...they just take up too much size, and photohop knows to blur it out first to maximize quality on the rest of the sig. (check out those revenge of the nerds sigs...too much going on... and as a result....poor quality and blurriness)

less text: text is usually contrasting to the sig and if you put a lot in, it can kill the quality of it. (im talking about smaller stuff..like sentences or something, not a cafe tag)

just keeping playing around with it and you will learn your own tricks man, and of course always ask questions. a lot of us guys here have learned what we do just by chit chatting and getting tips through what other guys have done

[Metroid]

Right on man thats all very helpful thank you much!

Yeah yesterday I made about 20 different variations of the same sig to try and figure out what was using up all the space, this one....

All I came up with is less contrasting colors is better like you said. Kind of a bummer for me because I love wacky color combos...I'm not quite a rainbow guy, but I really like loud contrasting color.

Does fading or washing(or whatever)the images keep the size low?

[deluxe_247]

yeah fading does help, simply because you are usually toning down contrasting colors and making it more uniform. im a big color type of guy...so i only use the fade technique occasionally...if the sig is giving me a lot of problems keeping it decent looking downsized. ill tend to make a sig smaller before i take away too much color.

if you want some fun things to try with your sig making try blending in weird objects into your backgrounds. believe it or not...i used a picture of a flower in this trufant sig

this one:


if you select the picture (it can be any random picture...fireworks, a tree, sidewalks, buildings...anything) in photoshop and press ctrl+u....it will pull up a little screen. move the "saturate tab all the way to the left so its black and white. then press "ok". now hit ctrl+u again and the same menu pops up. check the "colorize" box at the bottom. play around with the hue slider and saturation slider until its the general color of the sig you are making. press "ok".

now move this picture into you sig. switch it to "overlay" over your current background and play with the opacity (transparency) of it.

i overlayed the flower in the trufant sig over this random background:


of course..i went through the ctrl+u and made the background blue also with this picture.

thats it dude. i blend crazy crap into a lot of my sigs just for texture and depth...but you can usually not even tell what it is. its pretty fun and you can make stuff look really crazy and cool doing this method.

[WaCougMBS]

yeah fading does help, simply because you are usually toning down contrasting colors and making it more uniform. im a big color type of guy...so i only use the fade technique occasionally...if the sig is giving me a lot of problems keeping it decent looking downsized. ill tend to make a sig smaller before i take away too much color.

if you want some fun things to try with your sig making try blending in weird objects into your backgrounds. believe it or not...i used a picture of a flower in this trufant sig

this one:


if you select the picture (it can be any random picture...fireworks, a tree, sidewalks, buildings...anything) in photoshop and press ctrl+u....it will pull up a little screen. move the "saturate tab all the way to the left so its black and white. then press "ok". now hit ctrl+u again and the same menu pops up. check the "colorize" box at the bottom. play around with the hue slider and saturation slider until its the general color of the sig you are making. press "ok".

now move this picture into you sig. switch it to "overlay" over your current background and play with the opacity (transparency) of it.

i overlayed the flower in the trufant sig over this random background:


of course..i went through the ctrl+u and made the background blue also with this picture.

thats it dude. i blend crazy crap into a lot of my sigs just for texture and depth...but you can usually not even tell what it is. its pretty fun and you can make stuff look really crazy and cool doing this method.

That is way cool man! I had no idea that much work/imagination went into the backgrounds - now I am REALLY glad I didn't try to tackle a pedestrian effort alone for the time being! Thanks again for your work d

[Metroid]

Wow I gots lots to learn!

Thanks again for the tips homeboy!

[joelamosobadiah]

Yep, after the sig contest is over with, and the artists are revealed I plan on doing a quick tutorial on my sig to help out some of you guys with Photoshop. you can get some amazing results without too much effort.

[deluxe_247]

Yep, after the sig contest is over with, and the artists are revealed I plan on doing a quick tutorial on my sig to help out some of you guys with Photoshop. you can get some amazing results without too much effort.

nice...some new additions for that tut thread i made. its pretty empty