Here are few of my first works. I'm completely new at this and started GFX just about week ago. Feel free to tell my mistakes and how to improve. Any help is appreciated.

The fact that you didnt start like a ton of other people with doing sigs with messy backgrounds makes me already feel good.
You started your own way making poster-like signatures with colors fitting the renders. The text was not expected better for beginning so everything looks ok for a start. I see you tried rounded borders, but you made a mistake at stardust, a rounded border shouldnt be composed of a white rectangle bg behind so it looks still like a rectangle, i think you knew this but just making you notice just in case.

Id suggest you to read some sig tutorials, google them and try this page too, its very good for beginning imo
http://www.sigtutorials.com/

I think alice has some other sources i dont know she might post them here as well

Problem with Stardust is that I saved it in JPEG and it doesn't support transparent background as I found out later. XD

yeah i got some

RENDERS/C4Ds
http://bakarenders.com/renders/index.php
http://planetrenders.net/
http://sigresource.com/index.php?act=idx
http://vizune.com/renders/
http://gfxforums.net/
https://www.youtube.com/user/BakaArts?feature=g-all-u

FONTS/BRUSHES
http://www.dafont.com/
http://www.deviantart.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/BakaArts?feature=g-all-u

TUTORIALS
http://bakaarts.com/page/2/
http://www.deviantart.com/
http://sigresource.com/index.php?act=idx
http://gfxforums.net/
https://www.youtube.com/user/BakaArts?feature=g-all-u

I didn't exactly asks for resources but thanks anyway. (Not using any tutorials anyway as they don't help at all)

most as they are usually made for at least intermediate-expert level gfxers try the link croc gave you and https://www.youtube.com/user/BakaArts?feature=g-all-u cuz video tutorials are way easier to understand. as a beginner just try and fund style that you like and start there(be warned some styles do not help you improve)

thing you will need to know on you journey

flow= direction of the effects and everything in the tag
depth= making things pop out/look realistic(hard for me to explain)
lighting= place it where light is coming from on your render you can use a 300 px soft pursh color white to make a light source
shadows
Focus= what you want people to look at in your tag, mostly the renders face
Blending=making everything fit together. i will get to that later
rule of thirds=look it up on google

as for blending you will use adjustment layer

• Gradient Map: Gradient Maps help pick the color scheme for your signature, so you might want to spend some extra time with these. They are extremely versatile to use, but do note that not all gradients are to be used. However, if you do not wish to have your Gradient Map control your color scheme and leave that for the Color Balance, I suggest keeping the Gradient Map on Normal at an opacity of 10 or less.

• Color Balance: Allows you to gain more control over the color scheme, or even define it. Try not to adjust it too greatly to stay on the safe side.

• Photo Filter: Adds a tinted layer to your signature. Useful at some points.

• Hue/Saturation: Controls Hue, Saturation, and Lighting. A basic tool to use.

• Vibrance: Alters the saturation and vibrancy of the colors. Gives better results than the Hue/Saturation layer.

• Levels: Controls lighting. Requires a sleight of hand as grave changes could turn horribly. Try to avoid this tool unless if you must.

• Curves: Controls lighting as well. Much harder and advanced than the Levels tool. Not ideal to use.

• Black and White: Setting the layer to Normal will allow you to create a gray scale signature, but set the Blending Options to Luminosity and the colors will remain the same. This tool affects the lighting and concentration of each color. One of the best tools known to artists.

for gradient map i put it on soft light/overlay and the opacity somewhere under 50%.i use about 5 of these, play around with it until you find something you like.

don't really mess with the hue/saturation unless you're changing the color of effects and c4ds

photo filter i only use two of these one on 11% depth and the other on 9%

curves just make a little s if you're going to use this

make sure to just try everything out and find out what you like.

btw do you use gimp or photoshop? look at THIS It explains things better then i can

The Crocodile wrote:

Id suggest you to read some sig tutorials, google them and try this page too, its very good for beginning imo
http://www.sigtutorials.com/

Don't use this site. It's really not that great.
Deviant art or a graphic forum hold better tutorials

Tutorials help a quite a bit actually. PSD packs help you learn too.
My DA is loaded with Tutorials and PSD packs and whatnot
http://darkneji12.deviantart.com/favourites/

Your tags need better organization.
Alice got most of it.

I'm telling this for last time! I'm not using any tutorials!

Well agi, tutorials are the way to improve, if you have some teacher, then ok, but a person can't progress on their own if they are not led by something, and tutorials lead you to some great techniques

I'll depend on teacher technique, just let that teacher come back! XD

Here's some advice: listen to advice.... seriously, you're never going to get better if you go it alone, you may on a strand of luck, but if you listen to what people are saying then you'll improve faster.

Don't be like " Nuuuu tuts won't work"

seriously, you have 3 graphic designers with tons more experience than you telling you otherwise. Listen to them.


About your sigs, for a beginner you're not bad. But you lack depth, lighting, atmosphere, text placement, effects are bad and your blending needs work on the JD sig.


go find tut's on how to learn these BASIC things to make yourself improve. It's the best way.

Now you have 4 graphics designers with tons more experience than you telling you to use the damn tuts.


Btw sorry, but i'm gonna be straight and simple with you. You need to listen to us.

Well, I started my gfx tutorial by watching some random tuts, understood how it works and started.
https://s636.photobucket.com/albums/uu90/BurhanMysterio/Yugioh%20Renders/?start=all Here are a lot of YGO renders including characters and cards renders.
Also how you're supossed to do something out of nothing?!
You need resources, including brushes, texts formats etc. But the most important and probaly hard thing is blending in. (I couldn't do this until the end.)

Yes, indeed I do need resources and stuff, but watching tutorials is really hopeless from me. I don't understand a thing from them (I'm too lazy to read written tutorials). I really would appreciate if someone would explain how all that stuff as now I'm just working with tools I know.

Agi, look at the link with BakaArts. It's really helpfull. It has a lot of tutorials for beginers including: photomanipulation (really helps to understand how to apply effects.) Sig tutorials (really slow ones, explaining step by step with simple words that even a kid can understand.)
I'm telling you this because I learned after those tutorials and nobody will give you bad advices.

1st thing i noticed is that you like dragons.

Overall Sigs- Looks too plain on all of them. You need to put some stuff in to eliminate all the emptyness. And they look like they all one color or two.

Backrounds- Well on the Stardust it looks like you just got a space wallpaper and just placed it as your backround and just put stardust on top. On Judgement all i see is yellow. On the BW im guessing the backround is a C4D? It looks like you just oversized it and left it like that. Chaos Emperor idk cant really tell but looks plain also.

Renders- They are a bit too big. All I really see is chest up.nSize them down (ctrl + t) to like where you can see there body also so it has more going on to them.

Font- Pretty straight foward they are all the same. They dont really match your signatures. Try putting other fonts. Alice gave you the best website possible to download fonts
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My 1st 2 Signatures ever made on my 1st week in. Took me like 40 mins each LMAO I think i was at the same skill level as you



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Anywho back to your thingy. Im pretty damn sure you will be good at GFX if your really into it. Also dont be so STUBBORN about going and look at some tutorials. You do get to learn alot from them believe me. You wont get any better anytime soon. if you dont allow that to happen. You also learn shorter/faster ways to do stuff and they sometimes give you shortcut key which are REALLY helpful. Everything pretty much has been said by other members. Good Luck on getting better.

ageha do you use gimp or photoshop?

Photoshop. (For some unexplained reason Gimp is ultra slow on my computer)