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The Un-Photoshop style sig tut - LJXD Style


LJXD

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This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to open or download the PDF

 

How completely lame of me to do a sig tut on my sig, but dignity aside here's the way I do my type of sigs.

These are some that i've released in this style.

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Basically what I aim for when I design these is, gloss, colour and shape. For my latest one I focused on red orange yellow, green and black. In my sigs I never use stocks or brushes.

This is what you'll end up with, depending on what design you draw

3

These are the plugins you'll need

Drop shadow, Average blur.. , Align Object

Okay so lets start :)

Part 1: Intro

1.Open a new canvas with a size of 1000x300 (I like my canvas's twice the size then resize later)

2. Now ctrl-a and hit delete.

3. Draw a straight line from top to bottom anywhere on the canvas, then run align object to centre the line. This will be the middle of our design.

4.Now select the paint brush button, and change the setting to aliased. (If you'd prefer drawing the shape with the line/curve tool then by all means)

5.Add a new layer

Part 2: The Shape and Design

6.Now this the most crucial part, the shape design. We only want to draw one half and we'll flip it later, first we want to make our centre piece, in earlier pieces i made an orb but in my latest one i made a greeny shield thing.

The centre Piece is also what will be the avatar, to make a nice matching piece.

7.Keep erasing and painting until you've finished the basic out line. zoom into about 200-300% too see the lines easier. Remember were only drawing one half. This is what I get

4

8. Okay now we duplicate the layer and flip it horizontally, if the design looks bad in full, you should delete that layer and make adjustments until you fine the centre piece looking good. Once you like it merge the centre piece layers.

9. Add new layer

10. Now we want the Outside design, we need to decide whether its going to be attached to the centre piece or look as though its coming from underneath, because of the intricacy of my centre piece i'm going to have the centre piece coming from underneath.

11. Okay so get your paintbrushes out and start designing again, remember only one half. Here's what i got

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12.Now duplicate that layer and flip it, that's the whole shape of your sig, if your not happy then make changes. Merge the two layers, and make sure they're all closed up. This is how mine turned out.

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NOTE: Make Sure that all your outside design lines are connected, uncheck the view icon next to the Centre Piece Layer to have a look. It doesn't really matter how they're connected as you wont be able to see it.

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Part 3: Colours

13. Now its time for a bit of colour, we need one colour for the centre piece and one for the outside. I Like contrasting colours to catch the eye. Now choose your colour for the centre piece, i chose orange.

14. Grab the magic wand tool and select the outside of the CP (centre piece). Then ctrl-I and add a new layer Then paintbucket your colour. If it covers the whole canvas ctrl-z and try and find where you didn't link up.

15.Dont deselect, and add a new layer, get your paintbrush and and make the colour a bit darker, then draw some lines all along the same "flow".

16. Get a smaller brush and changer your colour to something lighter than the original colour and draw some more flow lines. This is what I got, I put a bit too much flow lines i think.

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17. Now Gaussian Blur at around 15 and change the layer opacity to about 200, duplicated layer and flip horizontal and merge and merge again to the CP.

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18. Magic wand the outside and invert again, and add a new layer. Make your primary colour white and secondary fully transparent and make a linear gradient from the top to the bottom. On that layer change the opacity to about 150

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19.Open curves and change the line to about this. (Dont worry, we'll get our original colour back later)

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20. Do that selection thing again with the magic wand and invert

21. Add a new layer and grab the circle/elpise tool. And change the Mode from outline to fill.

22. Now draw a curve like this, Change the layer opacity to about 30

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23. Delete the original CP outline layer

24. Run feather on default except tick the true feather box.

25. Run average blur on the transparent gradient on default settings

26. Run feather on the circle "Gloss" Layer

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27. Run Glow on the base CP layer with everything on 10

OUTSIDE DESIGN: Unless you want me to write a book on this tut, i'm going to have to let you do the out side design by yourself. Just repeat steps 13-27 (to a certain extent), and you'll be right. If you have any trouble just post your problem :) . Here are some screens of my progress dong the outside colour.

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Part 4: Extras

30. OK now, that ^^^ is what i have. But There's some thing missing. Earlier on i mentioned whether or not you want the outside to be attached to the CP. IF you wanted it attached then skip the next step

31. To give it a De-tached feeling we'll need to duplicated the main cp layer, select the one underneath and open Drop Shadow. I ran these settings

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NOTE: The Keep original image box is unchecked

32. Want to add some text or a symbol? I found some great symbols here http://www.tribalshapes.com/ I chose this tribal symbol

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33. I cut it out using Curves+ like this

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34. Paste the symbol onto a new layer that is under the CP gloss layer, then do step 31 to the symbol

No Drop Shadow21

Drop Shadow 22

35. You can also do step 35 to your outside design aswell

No Drop Shadow 23

Drop Shadow 24

36. Flatten the image, and resize it to 50%. And make sure you save it as a .png

YAY We're done, I hope that wasn't too confusing and It helped you out. Post your outcomes if you like :).

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Woot! I always thought you made the design using a pen tool. Gonna try it out later. :wink:

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f134/Code_Ember/daredevil_v3.png

Code_Ember passed away on October 25, 2008. The Paint.NET forum staff and members wish his family and friends only the best in this difficult time.

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Well, I'll post my results. (Obviously, you shouldn't fill the image with your drawing. :oops: )

signature_LJXD.png

Great tutorial. I do have a couple of notes: 1. the link to the first set of plug-ins needs to be fixed; 2. Step 20 doesn't need to be done because the selection is still in place; 3. Step 27 doesn't specify where to run Glow (I merged the layers for the object I was working on first, and got good results).

signature_SW.png

Do not click the picture above. It will take you to my site, and I don't need the anxiety.

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Thank you all

Well, I'll post my results. (Obviously, you shouldn't fill the image with your drawing. :oops: )

signature_LJXD.png

Great tutorial. I do have a couple of notes: 1. the link to the first set of plug-ins needs to be fixed; 2. Step 20 doesn't need to be done because the selection is still in place; 3. Step 27 doesn't specify where to run Glow (I merged the layers for the object I was working on first, and got good results).

Good work, and i'll fix those mistakes thanks :)

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  • 1 month later...

LJXD, awesome tut. i wish some of the stuff in my gallery was this good. i might make one of these sigs. i just may be pursuaded enough.

just maybe.

 

You should get the Win7 theme for XP. Then get the rest of Win7. Then uninstall XP. Then it'll really look nice. ~ David Atwell

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  • 3 weeks later...

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