*Puts Constructive Criticism Hat On
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Right not a bad first attempt by all means Kirby. I can't seem to see the 2nd link you posted up buy I can see the first and then the edited version of a sig you posted up today.
The First thing that pops out at me is the lack of colour in the sig. Generally most sigs have colour in them, and few sigs "work" without colour in them (exceptions being very detailed sigs that want to create a retro - emotional effect on the viewer). Hot to mix colours and blend them etc. can be quite difficult and scary to begin with but practice makes perfect
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The Second thing that pops out at me in the 1st one is the lack of detail in the background. Generally a gradiented background just isn't suffice if your wanting to make a good looking signature. When your first starting to make sigs, their is really 2 different ways of making B.G's (backgrounds) that you should be looking at.
1)
Using the render/stock to create your background - The good thing with using this approach is that, assuming your render is not a really dark colour it blend the colour of the render and the background in without you having to do much to make it this way. 1 way of using the render to create a background is to copy lots of layers of the render and cover the canvas with them, keeping the original where you want it (and I always keep a backup of it and just hide the layer). Then Grab a brush and change the scatter settings on it and smudge all your copied render layers.
Another way to use your render to create your back ground is to drag the render/stock you desire into your sig without resizing it. Move it around untill you get a nice bit of colour or a nice bit of detail you like. Now you should not be able to recognise what the render is because it is so big however it will create some sort of backdrop for you to add to. Then what to do is add in the render again and maybe resize it a little bit (or not at all) and get a feature you like in it and erase the rest of it (This could be a belt of bullets the render has got on, or a wing or whatever looks good). You can also then add some filters on to these to make them look a bit more interesting.
The Second major way to create a background is to use your brushes. You can download loads and loads of brushes for free from places like deviant art and all people want for you is to say thanks for them or favourite them to your deviant art account. Everyone has their own technique for brushing so it's just a case of experimenting with it and seeing how you get on.
Once you've got the B.G. down to perfection, your going to next want to conentrate on the render. Now the render/stock is usually the centre point in a signature, therefore you do want it to be seen however a common trap that alot of people fall into is that they stick in the render and think that's it. On the contrary a decent amount of work has to be done with the render in order to blend it into the B.G. Their are multiple ways of going about this. One way to blend a render into it's surroundings is by using your smudge brush and smudging the edges of the render onto the canvas (there are loads of tutorials out there that show you how to do this in much more detail than I can here.). It doesn't just have to end their though. If the render still isn't quite fitting with the whole feel of the sig, try adjusting the levels (Ctrl + L) of the sig, this allows you to lighten/darken the highlights, midtones, and shadows of your sig. You can then play about with curves, brightness/contrass layers and loads more to make sure it fits. If you don't want to smudge your render into your canvas you can always try to feather it into the canvas. What this does is takes a certain number of pixels in from the edge of your render and lowers the opacity of them. You can do this by Ctrl + Clicking on your render in the layers pallate, then going up to Select > Feather or If you have CS3 it's Select > Modify feather. Then again you can choose how many pixels you want to be faded blah blah. I wouldn't go over 20 if you can help it as that will just cut some of your render of and overdo it.
Text should be the last of your worry's when creating a sig. Some people may disagree with me but at the end of the day, text is really just a type of Copyright. Something that means other people can't rip your work. If I really can't be bothered fiddling about with text I will just make it pretty small, a normal font and stick it in my sigs:
If your wanting to go for this simple approach, use a nice simple font, a relatively small font and choose a colour from your background to colour the text.
The one thing you don't want in a sig is for the text to be the focal point of the sig. This tends to be the case with your sigs up there. It's just far to big and takes away from the sig as a whole. I assume that this is one of Photoshops pre loaded style that you have applied to it? Anyway I would advise that you make your text a hell of alot smaller on your next projects. Don't try to be too fancy with it and see where it takes you. Once you get a bit more experianced you can play about with using 3 or 4 fonts in the one sig and adding little vectors and things. A beautiful bit of text I just saw on a sig was this one:
This guy is from a site called Bratz Designs and this sig just won one of their sotw's.
Last but not least a simple border always makes your sig look a whole lot better. This can either be a simple 1 pixel black border round the whole thing or doing funky things like having that Film strip sort of effect comming down the sides etc.
Anyway That's about a rap from me. I urge again that this is constructive criticism and is meant to help you not deflate you or anything. In my opinion it is the only way someone can get better at something like creating a peice of art in PS. I got a hell of alot of it when I first started and still get a hell of alot of it justnow, and I believe that without it I wouldn't at the level I am justnow, and I will not progress and further without it. A last peice of advice I would give you is to join a good gfx community somewhere and post your sigs up and ask them for C&C on all your artwork. Also trall through loads of tutorials and try them out. You will see alot of basic techniques creep up every single time, and the more you practise them the more you will learn and understand how photoshop works. Anyway hope this helps
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Macca.
