The Halls Of Dirt - DirtyJose fucks around with Photoshop

[DirtyJosé]

Welcome to The Halls Of Dirt!​

Let's cut to the chase.

One night I'm really high and screwing around on here, and I decide I want to try my hand at some graphics stuff. I read the first few of The Doctor's tutorials, but by that I mean the ones he had under spoiler tags because he had replaced them with newer ones. Any who, I downloaded his neat little "abstract" brush set, and set off to make some graphics!

My first few graphics were for the WZ Tourney. I can't seem to find them on my computer, but that's because they weren't much special at all and earned me a warning, cause I'm an idiot and didn't read all of the sig rules first. However, it did help get moving images into and around on a canvas without squashing them down pat.

My next sig, the first I'll present here, was also my first non-wrestling sig.

Spoiler

I remember spending a long long time doing up the background and messing around with blending options. Eventually I found that kind of fuzzy moldy look that I dug. I don't remember why I felt a bright spot in the lower right hand corner feel necessary. The purple glow isn't an "outer glow" option, but 3 layers of the image behind the top one, set to "difference" (I think) and placed just a little bit off each time to give it a feel like it was moving. I dig it, and I'll pull it out from time to time, but I totally didn't put a border on and I see now why that matters.

Moving on, my newest piece was a little rushed, but I'm quite happy with the results more or less.

Spoiler

I couldn't find any pre-cut images of the guy, so most of the work was spent on trying to get it to look, I dunno, not like total shit. Threw up some neat stuff for a background, put an image of the guy up and made it near transparant, and then put up a red filter on the whole thing. On top of that, I found some generic pattern to overlay onto it to give it a static on television type feeling (as the source is something that feels like it should be on a shitty VHS tape, even though it came out in '03.). I started to do the previous technique of using multiple layers of the same image when I put the guy on, but instead switched into sponge mode and played around his out line a bit. I kinda liked the "painted on black velvet" feeling it gave. If there's something I don't like about it (besides it weak border) it's the text. I haven't bothered to add any new fonts, and the stuff that came with this is pretty lame. I just kinda picked one and ran with it. Threw on a bunch of random effects like outer glow and emboss, then used the same style for the lower text. I may come back to this one, but likely I'll just start another one in his honor later.

Feedback is appreciated. So is good ribbing.

 

[DirtyJosé]

My next sig was made for the 2010 Debater's League competition. I wanted to show off my entry into the event, and publicize it. I knew right away that I also wanted to try my hand at ripping off that Uncle Sam transparent background style, as I've always liked how it feels like a seamless part of the post.

Spoiler

This was my first use of an image from the highly recommended PSD-Dreams site. There is some neat stuff there, but anything off the beaten path so to speak is either not there or not high quality. This was the best Yajirobe I could find there, and I didn't notice until I was done that part of the cut along his hair on the left hand side is pretty bad. Thankfully, having it against a white/transparent background hides most of the bad work, though some of it can still be seen in the shadows from his hair on that side. I rotated him to find an angle where I could have him quite large, make him seem to be running out of the sig, and still fit all of him in the canvas with no clipping at the sides. I like the WZ tattoo on his arm, I felt it was important to give him a little something extra to personalize it. Threw up some drop shadow effects and called it done.

I don't know how I feel about using fonts so far, I can't quite get them to do what I want them to. The top and bottom text on the right hand side were initially down with some shadows and effects, but I felt it distracted from Yajirobe and made the sig feel cluttered and a little more sloppy than I wanted it to be. Instead, I put up some embossing options, used the fx entitled "stroke" or something like that, and gave it a granite-like texture. The "dirtyjose" part took me a little while to nail down, and I did it last. Everything I was trying before felt too much like a bad graphic you'd have found on an angelfire site in 1998. Eventually, I used some abstract brushes set to very small sizes inside of a border I set beforehand to ensure I didn't spill out into the area in the sig I wanted to remain white/transparent. I looked around for a font that was close to what I wanted, and then played around with the settings and sizes until I got it large, full, and easy to read, but still having a chaotic feel to it.

If I walk away from this with something in mind to improve on, it's my techniques with fonts. I'm also still trying to find the skill of knowing how best to utilize canvas space properly. I like this one, though, and I'll likely be sporting it for awhile.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts, opinions, advice, and insults.

 

[DirtyJosé]

Next up, my first request. Doug Crashin, FalKon, and FunKay, three awesome RPers in WZCW, recently made waves by forming a faction, and Doug requested a sig to showcase the new stable. His only request was that Crashin was in the center of the sig.

Spoiler

I knew I wanted them on a city backdrop. These are men of society, movers and shakers. To convey that, I gave the background some motion blur to give the feeling of a chaotic and lively city scene. I also used Dave's (or at least I learned it from him) technique of making a 1 pixel dot pattern to give the background a neat look. Perhaps there's a more technical reason to do that that I'm missing; I just like the way it looks. Next up, I sized up the men how I felt looked appropriate, and then merged each of them into the same layer and gave them a drop shadow. I copied that merged layer twice, playing with motion blur on each of the copies. I stretched one of the horizontally, and the other vertically. The text is a mish mash of effects, including outer glow, bevel, emboss, a white marble texture, an inverted linear gradient, and then I played with the blending options and set them to soft light. Like my other posts, I'm sorry if I'm not very descriptive with my techniques, I'm still at a point of trial and error. Anyways, I finally worked out having a decent border, and I saved it as a .png instead of the default .jpg because I saw Doc bitching about it somewhere. Any reason why, or just a sig making master's preference?

 

[The Doctor]

I like .pngs because they're of high quality.

As for the sig, it's quite nice. Good sense of style, everything is proportional, the right things are emphasized - however, I'm not really digging the glow thing around the text. I feel a simple stroke would have worked with no glow. But it really isn't that big of a deal. Another thing is that I think it would have looked better if you smudged the renders or enlarged them and did Gaussian Blurs instead of motion blurs. Again, not a big deal, just a personal choice, as the sig looks extremely nice either way.

Good work.