The secrets on how to make artwork of the Sam/Jack ship family thread

[Jumble]

Must. Stop. Downloading. Fonts...

Check this one out, isn't it pretty!

Abusive Pencil

Can you please stop dragging me along with your font addiction? I have waaaaaaay too many already, but I just can't resist

Lili, your 'Tis better to have loved and lost' sig is bigger than the forum dimensions allow. It's something like 800x270, and we can only have (unless I'm mistaken) 700x200.

It's 700 x 180, I think, TR - someone was on this thread a while ago actually and pointed out that's the entire sig space, not just the image file, so any text or anything else you have in there also has to fit into those dimensions. She got pulled up by a mod for hers, I think.

I keep seeing 700x200 and 700x180 Has it been changed? Because in the forum FAQs it's still 700x200.

[Sarai]

Tut Continued...

Spoiler:

4. I opened up a new layer 600x200 (the resolution I use) and literally just filled it with black using the Bucket Fill Tool (see pic). Then I pasted in the RDA pic that we just used and positioned it.



5. The next step was to use one of the arrogance grunge brushes on a slightly lowered opacity to ‘decorate’ the simple black background. To change the opacity of the brush using the opacity slider which is located on the main gimp window and is available on a lot of different tools. (In fact you can see it near the bottom on that last pic of the bucket fill tool section). Also I changed the scale a little, you just need to play around with it and see what looks best.

Ok so this is what it should roughly look like now:



6. Ok, you can see that there is a clear line where the RDA pic meets the background. There’s probably a much better way of rectifying this but the way I did it was the most simple I could think of. First I selected the brush tool, then making sure the foreground colour was black I put a few black dots in the area that I’ve highlighted in red below:



7. Then using the smudge tool, making sure I had the right layer highlighted, I literally smudged the black over, so that there was a faint line of white around his shoulder to define it but the rest of the area matched the background! Very simple and very rough but it works for me! Right so now we have:

EDIT: Jumble you know you love it!

[jasminaGo]

I keep seeing 700x200 and 700x180 Has it been changed? Because in the forum FAQs it's still 700x200.

700x200 for the whole sig, with credit text or whatever. The picture part of it should be no bigger then 700x180.... I think...

[Sarai]

Final Part...

Spoiler:

By the way, I’m redoing this as I write this tut so it’s pretty rough. When you do it take more time to make it look better!

8. Ok, so now I’m looking at it thinking the picture needs a bit more work. Using the rectangular select tool I highlighted just the area of the picture, went to Filters > Artistic > Cartoon. This basically solidifies a lot of the colour in the picture and makes it more like a cartoon, less like a ‘real’ picture. It’s a fun effect to use when you’re doing a sig which involves just one person.



Ok so now the sig should look something like this, at this point I just put a few more brush strokes in because it was a little bare.



9. The tough stuff is over now mostly, it’s just a case of picking the font you want and positioning it in the place you want it. For this sig I chose Abusive Pencil for his name and English for the fancy bit underneath!

10. The final bit is to make the border which is an idea I snurched from Jann, who apparently snurched from someone else, lol! First I saved what I had as both an .xcf file so I could come back and change the layers if needs be, and as a .jpg which flattens all the layers so I could put the border over all of them.

Using the jpg version I selected a couple of millimetres at both the top and bottom of the sig using the Rectangular Select tool (at this point you may have to invert the selection using the Selection Editor) then went to Colour > Curves and just played around with the graph. You’ll notice it changes the area that you have selected, brightens it etc... so just play around with this until you have something you like!

Et voila! Finished sig that should look like this:

[Jumble]

Just checked again. Maximum width is 700, maximum height of whole signature area is 200. There's no maximum size for the pic itself, just that we have to include everything underneath it in the 200 height.

So LiliJ's sig is in fact waaaaaay over the 200 limit

[Sarai]

Just checked again. Maximum width is 700, maximum height of whole signature area is 200. There's no maximum size for the pic itself, just that we have to include everything underneath it in the 200 height.

So LiliJ's sig is in fact waaaaaay over the 200 limit

I don't know why the mods don't just implement a system that tells you your sig is over the limit when you're modifying it !

[starlover]

I don't know why the mods don't just implement a system that tells you your sig is over the limit when you're modifying it !

They have when you upload your sig on GW...but since many people use PB etc....they aren't checked and often over the limit

They can't check sigs from other sources...also if you have them on rotate you can't see the actual source of your sig and the size...

[Sarai]

They have when you upload your sig on GW...but since many people use PB etc....they aren't checked and often over the limit

They can't check sigs from other sources...also if you have them on rotate you can't see the actual source of your sig and the size...

Ahh, I see, thanks for that Jann .

[TrueRomantic]

Yeah, like Jumble said, it's the whole thing that can't be bigger than 700x200. Which is why lots of people use spoilers for anything they actually say. The pic in the sig doesn't have a limit.

And now I'm off to take my Zoe to her first puppy class!!

[starlover]

Yeah, like Jumble said, it's the whole thing that can't be bigger than 700x200. Which is why lots of people use spoilers for anything they actually say. The pic in the sig doesn't have a limit.

And now I'm off to take my Zoe to her first puppy class!!

but don't forget that anything, including the stuff in spoilers isn't allowed to be bigger than 75 Kb...or so....

and good luck... Have fun let her play with the other dogs

[LiliJ]

Thanks for the tut! I shall have a go at that when I get back from my sister's. And I am currently resizing all my sigs *sigh*.

[Rachel-Kree]

Hello GimPs! finally i'm back again, GW went crazy last night i guess the problem was with the server or something like that...

Bekki suggested it as a Sekrit Challenge idea, which I thought was an incredibe idea - completely confusing and hysterically funny Can you imagine how hard it would be to guess who made each sig?

But I chickened out and made it easier

hehehe now i'm gonna stalk imitate Josiane i use photoshop and you Josiane ????

unfortunately none are mine as my mojo/muse has deserted me but these is my ideas as to who dunnit
probably completely wrong

1. Luvnjack
2. Jumble ?
3. Jumble
4. Josiane
5. Jasmina
6. Rachel/Achaja
7. Luvnjack
8. Josiane/Jasmina
9. Jann/Rachel
10. Kim
11 ????
12. Oma
13. Jumble
14. Jumble
15. True Romantic
16. Jumble
17. Jumble

well those are all probably competely wrong

humm... you were almost there but i wasn't in the last challenge

Sarai and Jann - Awesome sigs

How's this?

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/h...c/a890739a.jpg

*amazed* wooow Jasmina! this is perfect !!!!! the borders and everything! wish i could green you but GW wont let me ... Congrats on 10,000 you made me remember of this sig i made in the Shipmas....

[bandcat]

was looking at sarai's tutorial and wondered if anyone knew if there is an equivalent to the cartoon filter in PSP?

[Solo]

Can you please stop dragging me along with your font addiction? I have waaaaaaay too many already, but I just can't resist




I keep seeing 700x200 and 700x180 Has it been changed? Because in the forum FAQs it's still 700x200.

And when you go to upload an image, it's 700x180... /confused!

[Jumble]

but don't forget that anything, including the stuff in spoilers isn't allowed to be bigger than 75 Kb...or so....

and good luck... Have fun let her play with the other dogs

It's saying 53 Kb now, I thought it was 57

You're right Solo, on the Edit Signature page it does say 700 x 180 Way to confuse us

Edit: It's 50Kb max for everything see Skydiver's post here