Dave vs. DigitalNight

[The Doctor]

And so, history shall repeat itself...

The following contest is scheduled for one fall!


Introducing first, from The Right Side of Justice, we have the man with a plan, the ball of Thunder...DAVE!!


And his opponent, from Nashville, TN, the Son of Fate, the Father of Death...DIGITALNIGHT!!

The rules are simple: There are five categories, which are as follows:

1. WWE vs TNA
2. Lost (TV Show)
3. Sports
4. Your favourite WrestleZoner
5. Your opponent

Each sig maker will submit a sig for each category. As the submissions are entered, the people of Wrestlezone will give feedback and talk about their likes and dislikes for each sig, and decide winners for each round. At the end I will put up a poll where you can judge the winner based on their entire body of work.

Happy sigging, and remember not to spam!

FIGHT!!​

 

[Dave]

So, first I must say best of luck to my opponent, whom I have a lot of time for.

Now, the topics after this one are not set in stone and were basically there so that we could just get this one off and running. That being said, expect them to change in the future.

However, the first topic is WWE vs TNA and here is my submission for that category:

Category 1: WWE vs TNA

Now, what is above may look really simple but it was actually quite a chore to create that is very rewarding in the end. For this, I found the picture of the brick in the background and went about making it more broken up. I did this using the crack brushes that you can probably notice. Then, I found a nice quote that I wanted to put in that I found was relevant to the mantras of both WWE and TNA right now. I then found the pictures I wanted and painted them on with some layer masks before putting the logos in and putting the red around the cracks in afterwards.

I like this one, it came out the way I imagined it would and is something different from what I normally do.

 

[The Doctor]

And Dave comes hard, with fists a-swingin', to deliver the first shot!

Very nice work there Dave. It's an interesting concept that you pulled off well. The blending is done fantastically, and the whole thing is put together well. I love the quote in the middle; fits perfectly with both companies. A nice piece of work overall.

Now for my complaints:
Well, for one, I don't like the decapitated Hogan. Poor guy. He may not be the most popular guy for what he's doing to TNA right now, but he doesn't deserve to have his head cut off!
In seriousness, I'm really not liking that. It disrupts the sig, somehow for me. The flow. It fits with the feel but it just looks like an ugly black mark.
Also, I think the text could be enlarged slightly.

However, it's still a nice sig, all in all, and the problems I've mentioned don't detract from it in a big way. Good work, strong first entry. I'm excited to see what else you can come up with, and what DN fires back with.

8/10

 

[DigitalNight]

When I did get back into Photoshop a week and some odd days ago, I was on the "Headline/Ticker" kick. This graphic is no different.

The characters were paired up layers copied, high passed with a 10-Level overlay to give it the "cartoony-HD" look. Next I seperated the groups with a triple line in the center, and created the Lower Third for the event. I spammed some lightning brushes with highlights and created varying star fields for each side.

I named the characters accordingly, set text to bold and set strokes in needed areas and spammed some more lightning around the words "When Worlds Collide." I finished things off with a 4 pixel border.

 

[The Doctor]

Very nice, DN. I like the effects done to the women, along with the whole layout of the thing. The idea is good, the colors all work well together, and it's just a nice signature. Plus, it has Natalya!

I particularly like the fonts used. They are simple, yet effective, and stand out well while adding to the sig. If I could make one criticism, it would be that I think the "Neidhart / Melina" and the other similar text would look better if there was no space between names and slashes.

Overall though it's a very nice piece of work.

9/10

I found it hard to judge this round, as both sigs were of different styles. I had to really step back and decide which I liked better from a purely surface point of view, without thining about techniques and difficulty. Overall I feel that DN's flowed ever-so-slightly better. Fantastic work, both of you. I am very excited to see what else you may have in store.

 

[DigitalNight]

Note. I have never watched LOST at all. I got the info from a lost Wikia page.

Cloud brushes for the top, Waves for the bottom. Perspective warp on the water & waves. A harsh center-focused line faded out in reds on both top and bottom. This makes up the background.

Lost text was a faded out cutout from a font selection (that I quickly threw away. Don't need too many useless layers stacked around. Hehe.)

The lower third is made up of a pair of black-red-black and a red central area. A mask was added to the central area and faded out a touch.

Text areas were filled and stroked to the necessary amounts. (2px)

 

[ABMorales787]

I have to give round one to DN. Dave did a fantastic job on his and the quote is dead on, but this is one occasion where The Hulkster needed the spot light. Cutting his face off didn't do well. DN on the other hand did a great job. Its clean and to the point. However I didn't get the message that's written.

 

[Dave]

Not trying to be funny but I had thought about doing a news report thing...

Great work though, DN.

So for this one, I was very much out of inspiration after I dropped the news report thing. I was thinking about just doing it anyway but it would have come off badly. That being said, I am happy with this one and pretty much included everything I wanted to. I started by finding the picture of Jack lying in the jungle and desaturated all of his surroundings before adding the mask and the render behind. Then, I saved all of that as a PNG and added the new mask for the logo before adding the text.

Pretty standard but still nice.

 

[DigitalNight]

Challenge Unit Number Three: Sports.

I chose NHL Hockey, and the Calgary Flames as my choice. I'm not huge into any sport anymore, but I do hold these guys close to my bikini area.

Started off with a black border around a white background. Added in the area of red and closed off the bounding boxes. Made a secondary box and used a generic bar code font to spell out the event.

Made a Third box for the location information. Added a smaller, more transparent Calgary Flames logo as a security device.

Next I made a shoddy cut of Jarome Iginla and put him in there next to a logo. Positioned them as asides to one another.

The lower texts are respective to the teams listed (though they are a bit dated, but still recognizable.) Added stroke to the text areas and called it a day.

 

[Dave]

I don't know what it is about this week but I have been really slow with my graphics and I am not usually like that. I think it is because it is my birthday tomorrow and I have been quite busy with other things lately. That being said, I am going to make more of a concerted effort to try and get the rest of the categories out in a timely fashion, starting with:

Category 3 - Sports.

So, for this one, we had to do a sig based around sports. A lot of people wouldn't include wrestling as a sport but I certainly do and decided that I would do a sig of Jack Swagger for that. I initially started it off with a picture of the statue of liberty and Lincoln in the background but changed it. Then, I found the pictures of the stars and stripes, which are separate images because I wanted to try something else. Still, it came out looking OK and I put a fill over it. Then, I put Swagger on top of that, got the SD logo and brushed on a layer mask. Then, I put the text over it and added a gradient background to work as the second canvas.

I like it.

 

[DigitalNight]

Favorite Wrestlezone Forum Poster: "The Doctor"

Simple graphic really, even though I dislike the idea of so many people in a graphic. But I did it in tribute, so it had to be done.

Made out a grid out of 4 pixel lines, set every Doctor graphic I wanted in order (no set order, just in there really.) Selected the grid, inverted and cut everyone's extra body parts out. Painted the grid green except one segment and made it red.

Added a black bar across the top with a white overlay outer glow (at three pixels.) Added a 15% coverage of an "Artist Canvas" selection from the pattern overlay menu. I finished things off with white text and called it a day.

Bonus Points if you can name all the doctors listed in the graphic.

 

[DigitalNight]

Final Stage: "Dave."

Background: Lots of trash brushes in black, white and green stacked on top of each other nearly endlessly.

All of the characters were duplicated, high passed & 10 pixels and then overlay & saved as one layer per character. One character was faded out, seeing as he has been deceased for a while, but wanted to visit nonetheless.

Standard black box with a 2 pixel inverted emboss and a 2 pixel glow. Text added & you have yourself a graphic.

(More Bonus Points if you can name all the Dave characters in this graphic.)

 

[Dave]

Category 4 - Favourite WZF'er

So, for this one, inspiration was a little thin on the ground. Truth be told, I had no idea what I wanted to do and it really had me stuck for a while. I initially created a sig for Doc. It was a kick-ass Death Note one and when I saved it as a PNG and closed the PSD down without saving it, something went wrong and it would parse correctly. BEWARE - SAVE ALL PSD's

Anyway, after that, I was exceptionally pissed. Then, I started the thread in the Bar looking for some inspiration. Lee entered the thread and I would be lying if I didn't already think about him. I had a thought about his modding being inhuman and went in this direction, with that quote being the inspiration. I found a picture I had of him from London on my computer and cut around it before adding the clipping and layer masks. I then put the terminator picture below it and cut around that also. Both of the renders were completed by me and the initial ideas that came to me were not good enough. However, text did not look great on this one and I do like the way I finished it off.

 

[Dave]

Category 5 - DigitalNight

Truth be told, I kind of shot myself in the foot with the last category because I don't actually know a great deal about DigitalNight, other than he is a cool dude and posts graphics. So, the first step was finding something I could use for him. I opened his personal profile and looked at his interests. I was about to give up hope when I noted
that his MSN was something to do with Sephiroth.

So, here is what I created. I started off with the render and did a lot of different effects including high pass and noise effects that really make it cartoon-like. Apart from that, I used a lot of gradient maps and photo filters to really make it pop. Wrap it up and call it a day.

Thanks, DN!