Thank you for your help, Dodie. =D (Though I see a tiny little flaw with it, but it's barely noticeable, expecially in TFF Dark. xD) I'm working on a Leon one next. I'll show you whenever it's decent. =]
Nope. I think this is a very good banner that you did, and I wouldn't change anything! There's a lot of good focal movement in this version, and good balance as well. It also looks great against TFF Dark. I haven't viewed it in TFF light, but I don't ever use that anyway. Great job!
I tried my best with this one. xD It's probably the final-final one. =P Do you have any more suggestions?
Oh, no, you were none too harsh at all. I really appreciate the criticism. =] You're right about that imbalance thing. I was thinking of adding a rose on the upper-left corner to fill up some emptiness. Either that or switch to a rosy font. As for the splash, it wasn't supposed to have so much. Oops. >.< I think I will do the frills. Borders are extremely easy to do. And perhaps I'll have better luck with finding a larger image of the right one. Anyway, thanks, Dodie! ^^
I would make the border color a bit darker. Maybe use the darkest color pink that is in the main banner for the border. That way you will have some "color bridging" and there will still be that "pop" as well. I liked your idea of erasing a bit of the edging on the border and making it more "frilly" looking. That might be a bit harder to make a border around though. There's sort of an imbalance of imagery in this particular version. The right side has more going on than the left. I think that can mainly be attributed to your use of the line design on the right side of the banner and a lack of it on the left. My eyes focus on the image of Claves first, then hits the image that is in the lower right corner and then up the line design and back to Claves. My eyes don't really go to the left side unless I focus on that side. The viewer should be able to gaze around the whole image, not be stuck at just half of it. Maybe try adding a bit of the line design to the left as well? Not too much though. I like the splashes of the pink color that is in the top, but I wouldn't have so much of it, especially surrounding the name. The name sort of gets lost in the busy-ness of all those splashes, and you can't see the music notes very well anymore . Again the image on the right is a bit too blurry for my personal liking. If you can't find a good one that you like, you can always use a quote from the game and fill in some of the space. But you already had that idea. hehe. I hope I made sense, and I hope that I wasn't too critical of your work. It's just my opinion. I still think this is a great banner, and that background is pretty amazing! =D
Here's my final one. Tell me what else you think would help. Click.
Haha, great minds think alike, right? ;] I like it! =] The only thing that I don't like about putting pictures outside the rectangle is that if you miss a white spot when cutting out an image, then it shows up clearly. That's probably the reason why I tried outlining, to be honest. I'll bet. But it does indeed "bolden" the image. =D
I'm starting to do some that have stuff coming outside the rectangle, and having the rest transparent. I agree that it does look really cool! The Dodie16 banner in my sig is my latest work on that. I'm really pleased with how it turned out! However, I am more experienced in condensing everything inside a rectangle. hehe... I need more practice in everything really... Um. I just outline with a paintbrush or pencil tool. It's time consuming though.
What style do you use: the one where everything is condensed in one rectangular area, or where whole images stretch outside the rectangle and you have the rest transparent? I'm practicing doing the latter, because it just seems better looking, in my opinion. Well, even the renders are decimated by the eraser in my experiences. xD I tried to outline my pictures, just to give it a more "poppity" look, but that failed, too. Do you know how to outline well? Also, what program are you using? It did? It worked fine for me. =P But yeah, she's probably one of my favorite characters from the game. =D
I wish I had some advice to give you about your banner work, but I'm still learning myself. If you do come up with something, I will most definately love to see it! As for cutting around pictures, Vivi gave me some pretty good advice. When you are looking for images of characters that you want to use, just type in "[character's name] render in Google image search (example: Sephiroth render). Most of those images that pop up should already have been cut out of thier original backgrounds. I can't really help you on backgrounds though... I have problems coming up with stuff that I like as well! Btw, the link you provided directed me to a page that said 403-Forbidden. I'll google Claves to see who you're talking about, so no worries about it. ^^
I was planning on starting with Leon from Star Ocean 2, actually, but I couldn't find very many good pictures of him. So I decided to go with her, since I'm playing the game at the moment. I was deciding between whether or not I should do Serenade or Claves in the first place. xD I'm not very good, though. It's hard to design a decent background for me, and I'm bad at cutting out pictures; using the magic eraser gives me crooked, pixelated edges. Those elimination threads are the only things that I actually post in anymore as of recently, I think. xD You could say that I just want something to do because I'm bored. =P
I had to do a Google image search to see what she looked like. She's cute! I thought that you might have wanted to do something from Star Ocean though. If you make a good banner, are you going to put it in your signature, or are you going to start your own thread? It would be cool to see what you come up with! You just want to make me miserable as well, don't you?....
I can tell you what I was going to do for my first banner ever. =P Serenade from Eternal Sonata. I like neither of them, but if it comes down to Roxas vs. Zexion in the end, history might repeat. =P
I would love to see what you come up with! ^^ Umm..not a whole lot of people are voting him down really. It's more of a struggle between Marly and Axel, at least that's how it looks to me.
Ahahahaha! That one made me chuckle. Why not? I just want Roxas to WIN. =D Therefor, I will keep voting for Roxas, and since people are voting Zexion down, why not? ;] Also, I'm trying my hand on sig-making as of lately. If I make something decent, I'll show you, all right? =]
