The Best Today

[Kayoh]

After nearly a year of not having access to Photoshop due to a haywire laptop, $232 later and my $2200 Laptop is practically brand new again (aside from surface scratches), and I'm back to Photoshop, thank goodness.

My first inspiration was the #1 guy in all of Wrestling today, none other than CM Punk. This guy and Daniel Bryan are pretty much the only reasons I watch Raw anymore, as most of my favorites are on SD (Del Rio, Ziggler, Christian, Edge) and I get easily pissed off when John Cena has mic time.

Regardless, here's the sig (it's in my signature right now, but for future reference when I inevitably change my sig to something different) in all its glory:

Creation-wise, it was pretty down-to-basics: one amazing render of CM Punk and one sexy stock of a london alley at night. After that it was alllll filters with the use of only three non-preset Splatter brushes to give me some texture to start with. I actually used the ever-elusive Liquify filter and I think it turned out GREAT. One problem I was having was just not feeling like it felt finished. I remembered a finishing technique that I used to use and as it turns out it worked like a charm because once I used it, the sig felt complete. I've never been all that creative when it comes to borders so I did a simple solid black over white overlay border. I wanted to keep the text discreet so the focus of the image would stay on Punk himself.

Thoughts?

 

[Janice]

Wow! That was the first comment I had when my eyes found their way to the sig and it definitely is something to be proud of. I'm not a "graphics guy" so take my comments with a grain of salt but I'm almost thinking you might want to remove the text. It almost looks sort of unprofessional and this is one of those pieces where you don't need text, because the picture really speaks for itself. Either that or maybe changing the text? Of course you don't want to take away from the focus either and that is where the problem arises, just my two cents on text. Another thing, why so small? It's not a dig or a rip at you or anything against your style, I simply favor more of 400 by 200 or above signatures because I feel like doing something so small is almost like you're afraid of maximizing the boldness of the piece. It looks very good right now and the background you conjured with the stock and brushing techniques, priceless. But, I would suggest maybe increasing the size and maybe even putting a few more less visible Punk renders behind the main one. Again, this is coming from a person who has just began to dabble in the graphics world. Good job dude, definitely gonna remember you.

 

[Kayoh]

Believe it or not, as soon as I uploaded it and put it in my sig, my first thought was "Damn, that's too small". I'm probably going to re-do the sign with a larger size (I'm thinking 450x175) but I've always preferred long, thin sigs as opposed to more squared sigs. Thanks for the comment, though, I saw it was nearing 50 views and 0 comments, not sure what was going on there.

Oh, and just to clarify, I didn't use any brushes aside from maybe 5 clicks of spatter brushes at the very beginning.

I went in and stripped the sig of everything down to the original...

and this is what it looks like with the one layer of brushing visible...

After that one little set of brushing, all I did was filters and adjustment layers.

 

[Lash L'Heureux]

This is cool but I agree with Janice in that it's a bit too small to really appreciate the detail. I love the 'dodged' look that you've given it but I also feel you got a little lazy with the type work. I appreciate you've gone for the minimalistic look with the text, but the rest of the image is strong and the typography lets it down slightly.

Overall it's a cool piece though.