Another update. With another pretty generic sig. This one features Erio from "Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko," a new anime airing this season. Despite being gorgeous, she's a bit of a nutjob, and an alien conspiracy theorist...The green/white text says "chikyuu wa nerawarete iru!" ("The earth is being targeted!"), which is a popular line of hers from one of her alien rants. The text in the corner is just the name of the show. I went for a space background to fit with her character, and I had actually downloaded a few space related brushes which made that part not very hard at all. The pattern overlay is actually one I made by accident when my diagonals misaligned, but I really liked the way it looked so I kept it.

Both of those look pretty neat. I like the diagonals on the second one; it definitely looks interesting. By the way, are you using Photoshop?? Or GIMP?

Thanks, rex. :] And I am using GIMP.

No problem! I should really be thanking you more for the tons of tips you give me in my thread. There is hope for me after all, since I only have GIMP!! But really, it's good to know that I don't need Photoshop to make stuff like that. Just more practice and time

Yup! There's only so much the program itself will do for you, though. For me, it's not so much a matter of learning to use the program, just that I'm not very artistically creative, so stuff tended to turn out boring. One thing that worked for me was trying to replicate effects I liked that I saw in other images, and applying many of them to stuff I was messing around with.

This next one isn't beyond much in an artistic feat, but it has some other cool properties.



It lists my recently watched episodes of anime (as per updated on myanimelist.net). The cool thing about it is that this signature automatically updates itself. Whenever it is loaded, it will check how long it has been since the last update. If it has been at least 1 day, it will automatically check my recent activity on myanimelist.net, and replace the text in the 4 boxes with my 4 most recently watched episodes. It will then put the glass effect seen in the boxes over the text.

I tried to make it at least somewhat presentable, but it does look a bit cluttered since the purpose is to provide information. I think I made up for it in other aspects, though, because not all images will update themselves with no intervention from the user.

(If anybody actually cares, characters from left to right: Matsumae Ohana from Hanasaku Iroha; Kanzaki Aria from Hidan no Aria; Makise Kurisu from Steins;Gate; Astarotte Ygvar from Astarotte no Omacha!).

Holy crap, that is beyond cool. How did you program all that stuff in?? That just blows my mind that you can do that, lol. And, of course, it looks great.

Aha, that makes sense. I'll try doing what you did, then (trying to copy others' effects and whatnot). As soon as I have more time, lol.

Well, this time I had to use a bit more than GIMP, haha. If you want a run down of how it works:

The link to the image is actually a PHP script I made. It's a pretty useful language for web stuff. For example, all the pages on Psypoke are PHP scripts that generate web pages. However, you can use it for much more than HTML (for this, it's still web related, but image data instead). I actually made a base sig image, and another image that had only the glassy layers. The PHP is able to manipulate the image and dynamically add text wherever I want. In this case, I have the coordinates and text saved. The text periodically updates itself, with the script automatically opening a connection to my history page and parsing the data there. Then, it's able to combine the glass image on top of the image it created with the base and text. When it's all done, it sends a content header to the browser to signal that it should be a PNG image, then sends the image data. This way, it is shown as a perfectly valid PNG file, even though the PHP link itself is all code.

It's can be pretty powerful tool if you're good. If I wanted to, actually, I could make one of those typed pokemon sigs that put in 4 random pokemon each time. Perhaps that's a project for another day, haha...

WOW! Those are all amazing!
I like the typed themed pokemon ones.
Could you do a Steel one?

Thanks, hammythepig!

Steel:



Or did you mean you wanted one personalized for you?

In today's update, I decided to improve upon my original Psydex banner design. The original and current banner:


And here's the new one:


As I mentioned last time, the banner needs to be compressed as a JPEG to save bandwidth, so it might be slightly fuzzy in some spots. JPEGs also lack any support for transparency, yet I still wanted to rounded the corners out a bit, so I cheated and filled the blank space with the same color as the page background. Though, that's not the same color as the background for forum posts, so it won't blend at all here.

Also, at the time of writing this, the actual banner on the Psydex page has not yet been updated with the new one. So, there's a chance that if you're reading this, the old one is still in place. If that is the case, consider this an exclusive sneak preview!

Lol I kinda figured it took a bit more than GIMP. So, how does it separate out specifically the anime from anywhere else you visit (say, Psypokes, for instance; why wouldn't it show that you had visited here?)? But that's really cool that you can do that just by knowing how to code. Per chance, is that also how you and Jiggz have the sigs that change based on the time of day?

The Steel and Psydex ones look really good as well. In some ways, I kinda like the old one more, but then the new one also has some really neat elements to it that I like a lot. What is the fire thing behind Tepig?? It almost looks like a face made out of fire, lol. Great job!!

Well, the site (myanimelist.net) is used to organize all of what you're watching, have watched, plan to watch, etc. So when I watch something, I'm sure to mark it on there. The code in the signature will check my recent activity a couple times a day, and use the four most recent things to write in the boxes. Nothing shows up from Psypoke because it doesn't connect at all to Psypoke for updates, only to the MAL site. Though, that doesn't have any effect on where the image can be viewed. It can still be linked to from anywhere and output the same thing.

My signature doesn't really depend on the time of the day, it just serves a random image each time. The image itself is another PHP script, that creates a random image, picked from all of the sigs that I put in the directory. It doesn't mess with the image any extra, though; it just uses the exact image data of the one it picked to form itself into a PNG.

I get what you're saying with the Psydex banner. I myself also thought that it might have been just over complicating things, and that a more simple banner was suited to the page, but nevertheless it was received positively by the other staff. I didn't really try to make the fire behind Tepig a face, but now that I examine it, it does kinda look like that, haha. Behind Tepig is just a handful of brushes that I thought looked the most like fire, combined into something that would look decent. Didn't think I'd end up arranging them into a face...

Oh, the part about how it checks which ones are on the sig makes a lot more sense, lol. And the sig that changes, although I didn't really catch the part about it changing every time somehow.

Like I said, I did really like the Psydex one. Honestly, my preference to the older one probably has a bit more to do with the fact that that's what I'm used to; they're both equally good, in my opinion. Lol interesting coincidence, as far as the face goes.

It has been quite some time since I updated this! Not because I've been neglecting the thread, per se, I've just been neglecting image editing in general. I haven't been doing much of anything productive lately since I've been at work a lot and just feel like vegetating when I get home. Nevertheless, I have managed a couple of pieces which are at least somewhat presentable...

The first I made a while ago and just never posted. It's another MAL activity display, though I haven't written the script to make this one work yet. (It's not that drastically difficult, but eh, I just can't find the resolve to do it). It originally was going to be a regular sig, but once I had the background set, I really couldn't make anything look good on top of it, so I just put boxes for information instead!

The bg:


With the MAL quadrants:


I won't post my other failures of putting things on it. ;P I don't remember exactly my process in making this one, but the source was a background image extracted from the Fate/Stay Night visual novel. I remember doing a lot of crap tweaking the colors, including experimenting with different layer modes, and obviously added a blur at the end.

In any case, when I do write the information updating to make it like my original MAL sig, I'll make it modular so it'll be easier to make more functioning ones in the future.


The second one is...not an anime sig! Never thought it would happen myself, but here I am looking at it. I caught the X-Files movie on TV recently, and really got into it. When the X-Files TV show aired, I was still a bit too preoccupied with all the cartoons on TV, so I never gave it a second though. But as of late, I've been watching some episodes that I downloaded and really enjoying it. So much so that I whimsically decided to make art of it!

The sig:


Yeah, no Scully. Although I do like Scully, something about Mulder just clicks really well with me. The premise for this one is pretty simple, just a shot of Mulder with a catchphrase of his. A couple pattern overlays over the background. The image of Mulder is actually from the background image in the picture, I just cut him out from the background and superimposed him on his self in a semi-opaque form over the pattern layers, so he doesn't appear to be as hidden by the pattern layers as the background. That's actually something I do (or at least try to) a lot. The border is a bit of an accidental idea...I originally had a dark colored inner border type thing which I made by creating it thickly, then erasing random parts with odd shaped brushes. When I first viewed the final product on a webpage, the background of the webpage happened to almost exactly match the color of that "border," so it appeared to be transparent. I liked it so much that I hid the border, but selected the places it occupied and removed them from every layer, and of course blurred the outside slightly.




But ye, C&C and any other C's you'd like to contribute.

Nice work serpie!

I do think your focal points aren't striking enough though. They're kind of getting lost in the blurred background. Also I'm pretty sure you can find nicer fonts, but otherwise I like them. Deviantart is a good place for goodlooking free fonts, and you can check out what they look like on some examples (usually). Flicking back a few posts I quite like the ones are are in line with your current signature at the moment.. especially the interplay between the focal image and the ones in the background. You get what I mean? Also I'm a fan of the white/black border as you've done on the Psydex images - I'd probably incorporate these more into your other signatures.

Those are 2 things that frustrate me when I work as well. I think my next work will probably try to focus specifically on improving them.

This isn't my "next work," this is actually an old sig I made and forgot about. I guess I forgot about it because it's pretty forgettable. It features blastoise. If memory serves me correctly, I wanted to try mixing it up with art sources, so in this one I used a shot from the pokemon anime on the right side in the background. Overall the sig turned out pretty mediocre, but since I never posted it back when I made it I'll put it up now.




I'll do some looking around for fonts, and like I said, try to focus on the focus... that is, having it blend well with the background and still noticeably stand out. Also, as far as backgrounds go, I want to avoid making more that are like that old blastoise sig shown above. Yes, blastoise is supposed to be the whole main idea, but really it's just a whole bunch of images of blastoise in the background with another one in front. And this isn't my only sig that has done that, either. You can expect further works to be more creative in that respect.

Blastoise <3

But in all seriousness, while there's (like always) room for improvement, I still like what you've done. With the two new ones, (as DP mentioned) the focus was kinda off. It took me a couple of seconds to make out the features of the top one, and the text on the second is kinda blurry, or something. But other than that, I can see that you're using really interesting effects and brushes, which is always cool to see.

The Blastoise one I like. But as you mentioned, it does have a lot of similarities to other sigs, insofar as the bg/fg pics and stuff. Which is something I wish I could move away from as well. Maybe you could try drawing something on pen and paper, scanning it in, and then putting it in a sig? That might add the variety you want....

Could you make one for me?

It has been a while since my last update! Unfortunately, I haven't returned from seclusive training with the skills of masters. In fact, I really haven't been doing much image editing at all, as my activities have to compete for my free time now that I'm working so much. Enough of that though, I've some images to share!

This one I made a while back but never posted. It features Kirisame Marisa from Touhou Project, doing my rendition of "Master Spark" in the background. I actually used that skill in a 2D fighter-style Touhou game, took a screenshot, and took the character out for the smaller image in the bg. Random trivia.


The second one is the new banner for the Psydex, as the Gen V one was a bit out of date with Pokemon X and Y coming up! Unfortunately it looks a lot like the old Psydex banner, but oh well. I tried (kinda).


Because of my aforementioned lack of continued practice in this hobby, these don't feature any new or exciting techniques. That will have to wait until I decide to start picking this up more regularly again. Until then!

oh also:

I haven't really done requests but I guess if somebody wants something done you can request, just be aware that I don't make these all the time so it might not be a speedy respone.

Thank you!


Thanks! My sig is a PHP script that picks a random sig image out of my folder, so that's why it changes every time.

Thanks for your comments :]

Improvements to the site are always welcome. Also new art.

Hehe, I'm normally pretty unreliable at delivering in either of those categories, hopefully that changes