Charas-Project

Off-Topic => Creative arts => Topic started by: gamerman4 on August 30, 2006, 09:07:58 PM

Title: Yet another gallery of my sigs..
Post by: gamerman4 on August 30, 2006, 09:07:58 PM
I just downloaded about 20-30 fractal brush sets (806 brushes total) and felt like making some sigs using them and a new technique I found on making things look really nice and glow. Hope you like em and please help me pick one to use for myself. I have the PSD of all of them so if you want to use any of the other ones as your own sig ill be glad to just go in and change the name. Just post at my DGA Art SigSpot (http://charas-project.net/forum/showthread.php?threadid=8430&forumid=42&catid=9)  and give me the number of the sig.

1.
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2.
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3.
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4.
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5.
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6.
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Post by: I Have a Sandwich on August 30, 2006, 09:27:06 PM
Man, fractals are awesome. Almost as awesome as grunge brushes. I like 2 and 4/5 five alot.
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Post by: Blue_Strife on August 30, 2006, 09:34:59 PM
I see a smidgen of depth in some of them, but not much. Work on focal points (draw the viewers attention to one area ala blur/sharpen tool), and they'll look better, I think.
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Post by: gamerman4 on August 30, 2006, 09:46:15 PM
I don't see what you are getting at, this is abstract fractal art, nothing really there to draw attention to. Also, blurring a fractal really makes it look bad, they are meant to be sharp and vibrant.
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Post by: InsaneJP on August 30, 2006, 09:47:48 PM
how do you make those?! ive tryed makin sigs and im ok but im not as good as youu got any trixXx?
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Post by: Meiscool-2 on August 30, 2006, 10:08:43 PM
I'm one of two people that voted!

In fact, I was the first to vote.
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Post by: gamerman4 on August 30, 2006, 10:15:59 PM
Insane: its really easy once you figure it out. It takes a few layers but thats whats great about photoshop. Let's take one of my faves form this, #4. It was 3 layers on the text 2 layers for the border and 6 for the fractal and its coloring/glowing.
I can make a tutorial if you really want to know.
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Post by: I Have a Sandwich on August 30, 2006, 10:18:00 PM
You can do alot more stuff if after all that if you apply image.
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Post by: InsaneJP on August 31, 2006, 02:51:29 AM
Quote
Originally posted by gamerman4
Insane: its really easy once you figure it out. It takes a few layers but thats whats great about photoshop. Let's take one of my faves form this, #4. It was 3 layers on the text 2 layers for the border and 6 for the fractal and its coloring/glowing.
I can make a tutorial if you really want to know.


that would be great if you could... no rush though... its just i love to learn new things to do with photoshop all the time :D
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Post by: Blue_Strife on August 31, 2006, 05:08:26 PM
Eh possibly... I dunno, guess it's my tendency to not use brushes much. -shrug-

That and they're pretty big for sigs dude. o_o...
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Post by: I Have a Sandwich on August 31, 2006, 06:08:58 PM
I still love using brushes, but after CS2 everyone keeps telling me to smudge, but I just dont like it.
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Post by: Blue_Strife on August 31, 2006, 06:12:23 PM
-looks at own sig-

For some reason Charas shrunk/distorted it. O_o...
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Post by: I Have a Sandwich on August 31, 2006, 06:20:35 PM
Because you used the [*IMG*] tag. You have to use the < ***img src="url"***> minus the asterisks.
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Post by: VulcanRaven336 on August 31, 2006, 07:09:20 PM
1,2 and 4 bro, they're cool. Do you use 3d brushes? They're awesome dude!
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Post by: I Have a Sandwich on August 31, 2006, 07:17:28 PM
Quote
Originally posted by VulcanRaven336
1,2 and 4 bro, they're cool. Do you use 3d brushes? They're awesome dude!


D'ya mean C4D?
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Post by: gamerman4 on August 31, 2006, 09:49:50 PM
Quote
Originally posted by Blue_Strife
Eh possibly... I dunno, guess it's my tendency to not use brushes much. -shrug-

That and they're pretty big for sigs dude. o_o...


I like big sigs and I have a knack for compression since I have 26.4k dial-up. Look at my current sig, it is easily bigger than urs by far and only 1KB bigger filesize. When I make the most voted on one into my sig it will shrink considerably.

These aren't 3D fractal. Most people at DeviantArt use a prog called Apophysis to make fractal brushes.
Title: Here is the Tutorial for this technique.
Post by: gamerman4 on August 31, 2006, 10:27:01 PM
Ok ill just use a 200px square for demonstration purposes.

Step 1: Fractal
Usually fractals are best when white on a black background so fill the background black and put your fractals on a new layer.
Image by gamerman4

Step 2: Glow
Hit ctrl + J to duplicate the fractal layer. Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur
Anywhere between 5-12 on the blur is good depending on how you want your blur. If you want it to glow more hit ctrl + J on the blurred layer. Merge any glow layers you make.
Image by gamerman4


Step 3: Color
Make a new clean transparent layer. I started just using a soft round brush (50-300px) so you can use that. Make the layer blend mode "Color". Now pick a color you want and brush on the new layer. It turns out best if you just do spots where there is most glow and leave dimm spot either uncolored or less colored. Also dont brush it, just click in different areas.
Image by gamerman4

Step 4: Accent Glows
This is optional but can really make the overall look very nice.
Make a new layer, blend mode overlay, and use a darker colored brush than the previous. On this I originally used a light blue, for the accents I'm using more of a true blue. Use a smaller brush size too for the accents. Dab the brush on major glow areas to intensify the color.
Image by gamerman4


Step 5:  Making It Stand Out
Make a new layer and fill it black. Now change the blend mode to Vivid light. Hit ctrl + U and make lightness around 30-40 (I used 35). This really makes your major areas stand out. Now make your brush about the same size as you did on your color layer and make it a very light grey color (but not white I used CFCFCF). Enable the airbrush and set flow to 40%. Brush over you major areas and make it really stand out.
Image by gamerman4

Step 6: Final Touch-Up
Make a new layer and fill it black. Make the opacity about %30 and make the blend mode overlay.

Thats about it and here is my final peice.
Image by gamerman4

Some variations to this tutorial you can do:
-experiment with the gaussian blur
-experiment witht he Color layer. You dont have to use the soft round brush. This is the actual color layer on the #4 sig you all like.
Image by gamerman4
-just mess around with other settings.

Also, do you recommend me post this in the tutorials thread? It seems like it is only for RM2K tutorials...i dunno
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Post by: EXO Muffin on September 02, 2006, 04:10:49 AM
Could you link some fractal brush downloads that are PS6 compatible? All the other kinds won't load on my PS.

EDIT: Turns out I have 6. It just looks like 5 sometimes.
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Post by: I Have a Sandwich on September 02, 2006, 04:41:32 AM
Quote
Originally posted by EXO Muffin
Could you link some fractal brush downloads that are PS5 compatible? All the other kinds won't load on my PS.


PS5? No wonder your stuff seems kinda iffy.
Title: Wow...
Post by: gamerman4 on September 02, 2006, 12:25:06 PM
PS5? You aren't gonna find anything compatible with that. PS5 is old (I got PS7 4-5 years ago). Also, a lot of the brushes form deviant art were only compatible with CS and CS2 so I ahd to use a program called "PSD Viewer" to convert the brushes to PNG and then I used an Action macro in PS7 to make each PNG a brush. I combined all my fractal brush sets and the ABR file is 135MB. I have about 800 fractal brushes. I dunno if PS5 supports "actions" but its really easy to do if you want to convert new brushes to old format. A decently fast comp is useful when converting a crapload of PNGs to brushes though.
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Post by: EXO Muffin on September 02, 2006, 05:33:52 PM
Yep, I didn't buy PS any time recently. My mom got it several years ago, and it costs a LOT OF MONEY for the new kinds, so she just stuck with that. I wish I had Illustrator.

And, 135 MB for a brush set?! Wow. My computer has only 4 GB total C drive capacity. New computers have, like, 40 GB. I'm really amazed. My computer sucks.

Yes, PS6 has actions. I don't know how most work, so, could you format some brushes into a simpler or more compatible format for me?
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Post by: I Have a Sandwich on September 02, 2006, 05:48:25 PM
You need to download 7. The only reason you need to ever buy PS is if youre doing comercial work with it.
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Post by: gamerman4 on September 02, 2006, 05:57:25 PM
Quote
Originally posted by EXO Muffin
Yep, I didn't buy PS any time recently. My mom got it several years ago, and it costs a LOT OF MONEY for the new kinds, so she just stuck with that. I wish I had Illustrator.

And, 135 MB for a brush set?! Wow. My computer has only 4 GB total C drive capacity. New computers have, like, 40 GB. I'm really amazed. My computer sucks.

Yes, PS5 has actions. I don't know how most work, so, could you format some brushes into a simpler or more compatible format for me?


Hehe....I build computers....new computers come with around ~100-200GB. My comp has 330GB (80GB Hard drive and a 250GB one soon to buy another 200GB)
You really could use an upgrade. Also, converting brushes would prolly be a bit slow on your comp just seeing as how low your HDD capacity is, i doubt you entire comp is much better.

Also, i can't convert my brushes to PS5 since i dont actually have PS5.
Just download ABR viewer and download whatever brushes you want. Load the brushes into ABR Viewer and export them as PNGs. Then record an action where you just select the whole image, convert to brush, and close it. Photoshop has a batch processing mode that you can just put all the PNGs in one folder and it will convert them all by itself with that action you did.
If you use any IM program just gimme ur ID and I can walk you through it. (I use AIM, Yahoo, and MSN)

ABRViewer....http://abrviewer.sourceforge.net/
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Post by: EXO Muffin on September 02, 2006, 06:20:11 PM
200 GB?! That's insane! Also, I tried to use the ABRviewer, but it says it's missing a file. Maybe because I didn't get the RAR file with it?
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Post by: gamerman4 on September 02, 2006, 06:29:06 PM
Hmm...do you use any IM prog? I could help you out better if we could chat.
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Post by: EXO Muffin on September 02, 2006, 07:37:08 PM
Hmm, here's what I came up with when I got a look at this (http://www.kirupa.com/motiongraphics/simplefractals.htm).
Here are snapshots of mine:

1-


2-


3A-


3B-(when I did what you told me)



The original 3 looks better in my opinion.

SIGNATURIFIED!

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Post by: I Have a Sandwich on September 02, 2006, 07:50:22 PM
Are you sure you did what he told you?
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Post by: EXO Muffin on September 02, 2006, 08:30:47 PM
Yeah, but I didn't use a fractal BRUSH. I used a fractal PATH.

EDIT: Oh, wait. I forgot to change the blend modes.
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Post by: gamerman4 on September 02, 2006, 09:00:11 PM
....Okay

1. Fractals should start out as a bright white rtaher than dark colors. You add colors later. For that I would just desaturate it and do an auto contrast to maximize brightness.

2. That is a sad excuse for a fractal. ok...There are fractal paths and then there true fractals. Fractal paths have no gradient to them, they are one continuous color and they dont have bright or dark places. True fractals use complex calculations and use a gradient for variations. This makes them look pretty. Even though it was sad, here is what I did to it after making the proper white color. Image by gamerman4

Also, I attached a working version of ABR Viewer, it shouldnt give any errors. Download this and go download some real fractals from deviantart. Or if your computer can handle it, you can try your hand at rendering your own fractals with Apophysis (Google it).


Signaturified....
Image by gamerman4
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Post by: EXO Muffin on September 03, 2006, 12:20:28 AM
It gives me an error when I press,"Add." It says a directory extension was not specified. Could you make a WinZip Wizard version of the file? RARs seem to not work on my computer.

I got Apophysis and it's awesome. So awesome I don't even use it for brushes, but whole pictures right now. Thanks for telling me about it!
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Post by: EXO Muffin on September 03, 2006, 01:22:06 AM
Wow. This is the product of your wisdom:
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Post by: gamerman4 on September 03, 2006, 02:30:22 AM
Nice sig, only thign is that the glow stands out too much, looks kinda out of place but the fractal is great. Keep working on it and you will be making great artqwork in no time.

Here is a ZIP, i think it may be a problem with ur comp rather than  the software. It may not support PS5 or sumthin...i dunno...
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Post by: EXO Muffin on September 03, 2006, 04:03:36 AM
Huh. I tried openning up any programs on it, and nothing happenned. It just has a bunch of files in it that are supposed to be read by the program. Could you help me with this?
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Post by: gamerman4 on September 03, 2006, 04:48:31 AM
it should be here
ABR ViewerabrViewer.NET_1.0.1abrViewer.NETbinDebug the file is called
abrViewer.NET it should have a green icon.
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Post by: EXO Muffin on September 04, 2006, 02:32:32 AM
Well, I had to go where you said after SAVING TO DISK, extract the files to a non-exist file called ABR Viewer on my desktop, and open that to the mirror directory of the ZIP, and I finally got the green icon.

EDIT: GRAGH! Now it says that there was a startup error when executing the program because MSCOREE.dll was not found!
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Post by: InsaneJP on September 04, 2006, 05:48:53 AM
Hey man those are great and i plan to use that tut later on and ill post what i made and show you what i learneddd
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Post by: Almeidaboo on September 06, 2006, 03:15:05 PM
Is it possible to make a sig using me, The Almeidaboo?