I’d love that, TDIT! My poor graphics never get used anymore… it’s always a treat when someone decides to use one of my creations.
Speaking of which, I should really get back into designing these things… as a result of school, I’ve been right out straight and it feels like my creativity has been completely shut off. Now that I’m done that semester and have a break this week (no babysitting, either!), I might be able to come up with a bit of stuff.
Hey little_chef… I was wondering if it would be alright with you if I used one of your siggy’s. I’ve been looking for a new one (since I’ve had this one since January of 09 ), and I really like the “I’m here to honor you one”. So yeah, I’m sure you won’t mind, but still, obviously I should ask first.
Some new magic whipped up in Photoshop today! (All of these are Ratatouille… for some reason I was on a kick with it this afternoon.) I experimented a lot with different effects, and I’m pretty proud of the results.
Nice series of Ratatouille graphics for a change! I like your versatility and how you keep experimenting with Photoshop effects. I tend to stick to the usual masking and compositing business…
Anyway, my favourite sig’s the last one of the ‘disembodied hand’. Your current avatar’s my favourite cos’ of the hand-drawn heart (or is it a Clip-art?).
How did you do those ‘glowy’ spots, like in Avatar 1 and Sig 2 (I feel I’ve asked this before… ), and the light-trails, like in Avatar 2, 3, 4 and Sig 1?
Keep it up, I’m seriously in envy of your Photoshop skillz…
Yes, it is a hand-drawn heart - I love my tablet! It makes adding little touches like that so much easier. The glowing spots are actually pretty easy. What I did was under a new layer above what I’m working on, I use a regular brush at maybe 50px or so, hardness @ 0, then under brush settings I click “scattering” and move the scatter slider over until it looks like the bubbles are dispersed well. I set the color to plain white, drag it across the image until I have a good amount of light bubbles, then set the blending of the entire layer to something like soft light or overlay (the latter seems to work best for me).
Kind of the same idea for the light trails… I draw in a bunch of pretty lines everywhere, then adjust the blending until it looks good. Sometimes I add a bit of Gaussian blur to it so they’re not so harsh-looking, or adjust the master opacity to blend it with the overall image. For some of these lines, I drew them all over the place then used the Radial Blur tool, and got some really sweet-looking swirls, as you can see faintly in Avvie 4.
Another thing that gives images a good touch, and what I did for Avvies 1 and 4 and Sig 2, was making a new layer with a multi-colored gradient in it. Then I set the blend to “Color”, and there you have a really nice-looking wave of color in your image. I pretty much abuse the diffuse glow filter half the time to get my stuff to look soft and shiny.
Overlaying random textures to your image can give it a really cool look as well (Avvies 2 and 3 and Sig 1). Try snagging images like Victorian wallpaper or stucco walls to have on hand - they make for great, grungy textures.
Hope that helped, and maybe gave you a few ideas as well!
Wow, little_chef! I have to say that I think you’re getting better at Photoshop! I really like the PMSing one and of course the disembodied hand Totally made me laugh when I saw those!
I might once I get the next chapter going… it’s been kinda hard to think up stuff since it deals with ALL the characters from the movie being humans. My best bet would be to draw something out, but I’m not all that sold on having to draw something just for a promo sig… I’ve got a bunch of other artwork obligations pressing as it is. D:
If I can come up with something using screenshots from WALL•E, I’ll go with that instead.
I was thinking you could do that, and maybe you could use the humanizations from your WALL•E character montage you did earlier, and somehow juxtapose each robots with their human equivalent, but have them (the humans) faded a little in the background.
Bah. No worries. I think you’re still funny! It’s me who needs to kick up the antics. I haven’t been high on the humor lately, much less made any graphics period over the course of… several months.