AnimeSuki Forums

**Solace** · 2007-06-14, 02:56

Welcome to my thread!
I've been using Photoshop for almost a year now. This is a collection of many of the works I have done. I make no claims that I'm any good at this, but it is fun so I hope everyone enjoys seeing them. You might note some of these are tagged with a different user name. That was me before I became Solace.

With that, on with the show!

All signatures are in thumbnails, click to see full size version.

Earliest signatures - These are some of my earliest works:

Spoiler for Early signatures:

Somewhat earlier signatures - These were more like a side step to what I started with. There's improvement in there...somewhere. Mostly in text.

Spoiler for Second batch:

Third phase - I took a break after the previous batch, but came back with a renewed interest in Photoshop. I started with a few crop signatures but eventually starting working with renders and making my own backgrounds.

Spoiler for Newer stuff:

Fourth Phase - These are signatures I've made this year, not including SOTM entries.

Spoiler for So far in 2008....:

Special Projects

Christmas Signatures - Winter 2007 brought a flurry of sig making from many people, which were exchanged as gifts. I think quite a few of us burned out from it, but it was fun.

Here's the signatures I made, over the course of two days:

Spoiler for Xmas Sigs:

Renders - I've recently started to render images. I've learned it's not as easy as other make it look.

Spoiler for Renders:

SOTM Entries - Even though I spend much of my recent time on the forums working on the Signature of the Month contest, I do find some time to enter my own signatures into the contest. It's been interesting, creating signatures with themes I've never really done before. Here's some of my entries:

Spoiler for SOTM entries:

SOTM Banners - Banners I've created for the contest

Spoiler for Banners:

Banner Contest Signature -

That about wraps it up for now. I hope you enjoyed seeing a look at some of my work from the past year. I'll be updating this with newer projects, as they happen.

Epsilon · 2007-06-14, 10:30

I absolutely love these types of sig. I love the whole darkness around it. great

Keep it up ^^

darkjester · 2007-06-14, 15:06

yea... some nice stuff u got there.... i like the claymore sigs... though that middle one's a bit freaky...

... lol, but then again, i like freaky...

nice work, keep it up....

k thxs

**Solace** · 2007-06-15, 22:56

Latest sig, this one is a screencap from Red Garden. Tried to clean it up and give it a soft tone to the lines, also added some clouds to the background. The placing of my name seems odd to me, but I couldn't think of any other area to put it.

Edit: Picture has been moved to first post.

**Solace** · 2007-06-18, 17:31

New sig, this time of Saya from Blood: The Last Vampire. Yes, I know it says Blood+, seemed to fit better.

Edit: Picture has been moved to first post.

Ice Climbers · 2007-06-18, 18:55

Hey my first post here

Hehe great sigs and avies, your first attempts are certainly better than mine lol

Keep up the good work, hope to see more

**Solace** · 2007-06-22, 21:55

Two more sigs today, nothing too fancy just some basic brushes and filters. Still trying to experiment with more advanced stuff like renders and making my own backgrounds, but the results are umm...pretty bad, hehe.

Ah well, it's fun to learn.

Edit: Pictures have been moved to first post.

**Solace** · 2007-06-27, 13:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Element_Echo

I absolutely love these types of sig. I love the whole darkness around it. great

Keep it up ^^

It was very hard to resist the urge to add a bunch of effects and stuff to that one, the minimalist approach works better for it I think. Thanks for your kind words!

Quote:

Originally Posted by darkjester

yea... some nice stuff u got there.... i like the claymore sigs... though that middle one's a bit freaky...

... lol, but then again, i like freaky...

nice work, keep it up....

k thxs

I know what you mean, if you stare at it long enough....it's like she's watching you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ice Climbers

Hey my first post here

Hehe great sigs and avies, your first attempts are certainly better than mine lol

Keep up the good work, hope to see more

Bah, your words are too kind!

I've seen your work and it is quite good!

Thanks for the support guys!

**Solace** · 2007-06-27, 13:42

More new stuff! This time it's a Shana sig and an Akira sig + avy.

Edit: Pictures have been moved to first post.

That's all I got for now.

toxic_trance · 2007-06-27, 14:10

Your color choices have greatly improved..and love ur last few sigs...the lucky star ones...isnt there a way to make the colors more bright , they look a bit pale....but they are good none the less ^_^

**Solace** · 2007-06-27, 15:24

I've tried tweaking the color levels but somehow it ends up worse. I wish I knew Pellissier's secret for making Lucky Star sigs so colorful.

**Solace** · 2007-10-06, 17:03

After a bit of a slump, I decided to pick up again. Here's my new sig, from Spiral.

Edit: Picture has been moved to first post.

bigdave · 2007-10-06, 19:55

Argh another person changed there name and has confused me XD

ur tweaked one looks good. If u want to make it more vibrant u can't just use Hue/Saturation

try to use the layer blending settings, and go gaussian blur a duplicate of ur whole sig and set that layer to Overlay or Soflight. And then duplicate ur whole sig again and put it on multiply.(this one is above ur overlay one.) of course with both layers play with the opacity.

besides this u can try using gradient maps too. ^___^

gj though Solace/aka Ankoku XD

**Solace** · 2007-10-06, 21:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigdave

Argh another person changed there name and has confused me XD

ur tweaked one looks good. If u want to make it more vibrant u can't just use Hue/Saturation

try to use the layer blending settings, and go gaussian blur a duplicate of ur whole sig and set that layer to Overlay or Soflight. And then duplicate ur whole sig again and put it on multiply.(this one is above ur overlay one.) of course with both layers play with the opacity.

besides this u can try using gradient maps too. ^___^

gj though Solace/aka Ankoku XD

Yeah the name change is because I wanted this one when I first signed up but couldn't get it. I contacted a mod about changing the thread name so hopefully it won't be so confusing anymore.

Thanks for the advice, I'll try and tweak a bit more with the layers.

KasumiGirl · 2007-10-07, 01:21

You have some very nice works here.

My favourite from you is:

Though you could change the text a bit.
Keep the good stuff up!

**Solace** · 2007-10-09, 05:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by KasumiGirl

You have some very nice works here.

My favourite from you is:

Though you could change the text a bit.
Keep the good stuff up!

Thank you for the compliment.

I try to balance dark and light idea when I decide to work on projects. If all I do is make dark work, I start to get depressed.

But yeah, the text needed work on that one for sure. I'd like to think I've improved upon that with later works though, hehe.

My latest sig and avy set, from a Shana render I found. Loved the look, but man did I struggle with the background. As you can see, I just left it transparent, because no matter what I thought of trying, it just made it look way too busy.

Edit: Picture has been moved to first post.

I think it looks pretty decent for being so simple, but I'm struggling with going from drawing on paper to drawing on a computer. There's tons of brushes and effects but they never seem to help me get my ideas from my head to the screen.

**Solace** · 2007-10-10, 05:49

The Shana sig just wasn't doing it. So I stumbled upon a thread with a certain you know who and found a ton of pics....and well, I couldn't help but do something with them!

So here's my latest work. I took bigdave's advice on the layers, so I hope these are a bit more vibrant than my usual stuff.

Edit: Picture has been moved to first post.

She's so cute!

KasumiGirl · 2007-10-10, 05:56

Kyaa~ *Goes into Miku fangirl mode*
Miku looks so kawaii there O-O

Very nice, but maybe change the text font...it looks good atm but it might look better if you changed the font.
Great job!

Ice Climbers · 2007-10-10, 10:24

OMG another miku-hugger, so many ppl now XD
Nice blending on the sig, but the bg (great soft feel btw) is kinda bland. Maybe add a few more musical notes?

**Solace** · 2007-10-11, 03:31

Tried to tweak a bit -

Version 2:

Edit: Picture has been moved to first post.

2007-06-14, 02:56	Link #1
Solace (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006	Solace's projects Welcome to my thread! I've been using Photoshop for almost a year now. This is a collection of many of the works I have done. I make no claims that I'm any good at this, but it is fun so I hope everyone enjoys seeing them. You might note some of these are tagged with a different user name. That was me before I became Solace. With that, on with the show! All signatures are in thumbnails, click to see full size version. Earliest signatures - These are some of my earliest works: Spoiler for Early signatures: A simple crop sig. I spent more time on the border than I did cropping the image. Another crop sig. This image is rather popular because of the look and how easy it is to crop. Text is terrible though. My first animated sig. The frames were a challenge. My second animated sig. Everything went wrong here. Frames are terrible, text is awful, border is awful....it's just bad. Somewhat earlier signatures - These were more like a side step to what I started with. There's improvement in there...somewhere. Mostly in text. Spoiler for Second batch: A request signature. Was difficult to do much of anything because the source was poor. Oh how I wanted to gif this entire scene. One of my favorite Luck Star moments. Another request. This was the first time I tried to put two renders into one signature. Also the first time I experimented with the smudge tool. More experiments with smudge. Otherwise, just a crop sig. Ditto for this one. Lens flare filter. Leet skills here. This one I'm proud of. It's essentially a screen cap, but I think I'm also the only person ever with a Red Garden sig. Ah, the Claymore phase. The anime ended poorly but the manga is still going strong. I was so touched by the Teresa arc that I made these two animated sigs. Both of these animated Claymore sigs were tough with the file size (I had no concept of shrinking the image back then), but I still like them and thought they turned out pretty well. This one turned out poor. But, I did learn about the clone stamp because of it. Akira flipping the bird. Awesome. Third phase - I took a break after the previous batch, but came back with a renewed interest in Photoshop. I started with a few crop signatures but eventually starting working with renders and making my own backgrounds. Spoiler for Newer stuff: I had just viewed Spiral when I found this image. It's a crop, but I liked the picture. My first Miku sig. This one is a crop with brushes added to it. I had no clue what to do with this one. Like Red Garden, finding good Blue Drop images is nearly impossible. My first "real" signature. The background was created with a stone tutorial, and the text was done using a tutorial from the stickied thread here. A request. This one was my first detext. A request. Simple crop. This sig had a few versions. Another series with tough to find images. A request. I liked the effects on this one. The borders are just brushes. A request. My only signature with actual people in it. My second Miku sig. Also features Rin. Technically a crop, but there's a lot of added stuff. My third Miku sig. I spent a lot of time on the bg and the text. Image is a bit wide but was fun to make and was the start of a newer sig style for me. The blades of grass on this one are actually gunshot brushes with just the edges used. A bit of blur, some leafs, image of Ginko smoking (I added the smoke) and viola! One Mushishi signature. Request sig. I liked the text the user requested. Request sig. Creating the West and South on the weather vane was easily the hardest part of this signature. A crop. But it was an image I felt didn't need more stuff added to it. My first animated snow. I really like how this turned out. Fourth Phase - These are signatures I've made this year, not including SOTM entries. Spoiler for So far in 2008....: Saber at the beach. Nothing amazing but it's an excuse to have a summer sig...and Saber in a bikini. The animation isn't perfect on this one but I liked the image. Just a crop from Yume Tsukai. The fox mask is a trademark of the series. Animated scene from Yume Tsukai. Quality isn't too bad considering the size. This one isn't Animesuki Safe, which is a bummer. Sadly, that's the optimized version. Not Animesuki safe. This one I didn't even bother optimizing after doing some frame test runs, it was way over no matter what I did. So this is the full version. I've wanted to make a signature from this scene ever since I saw it in Kaibutsu Oujo. A bit of a headache getting it to fit, and it's kind of small, but meh. Hellgate signature. Crappy game, great art. Yurine from Karas. Also featured in an avatar and in the AnimeSuki Gfx Worm. Christmas Signature. Special Projects Christmas Signatures - Winter 2007 brought a flurry of sig making from many people, which were exchanged as gifts. I think quite a few of us burned out from it, but it was fun. Here's the signatures I made, over the course of two days: Spoiler for Xmas Sigs: Renders - I've recently started to render images. I've learned it's not as easy as other make it look. Spoiler for Renders: SOTM Entries - Even though I spend much of my recent time on the forums working on the Signature of the Month contest, I do find some time to enter my own signatures into the contest. It's been interesting, creating signatures with themes I've never really done before. Here's some of my entries: Spoiler for SOTM entries: This was my February SOTM entry. This one didn't do so well. I think it was because I spent more time on lighting and effects than I did on making it fit the theme. These were my two entries for the March SOTM. I entered the No Holds Barred sig as my official entry, but looking back on it the Mikoto one would probably have worked better. Ah well. This was my April SOTM entry. Static and animated versions. This was my May SOTM entry. Tried to use C4d a little more this month. Surprisingly I got a few more votes than normal for this entry. The June Entry. Turned out a bit yellow (source image was green, grey and yellow), but I like the gritty feel to it. And of course, Stein is win. The July Entry. Due to time constraints I couldn't be too crazy with this one, and the source was already pretty good. So I brushed in some lighting and effects, changed some colors, etc. The August Entry. Second place! I was pretty happy with how this signature turned out. September Entry. A lack of inspiration this month but I liked the serenity and colors. October Entry. A little more inspiration this month. I really liked how it turned out. This was the last SOTM of 2008 that I participated in. SOTM Banners - Banners I've created for the contest Spoiler for Banners: Banner Contest Signature - That about wraps it up for now. I hope you enjoyed seeing a look at some of my work from the past year. I'll be updating this with newer projects, as they happen. Last edited by Solace; 2009-03-09 at 23:51. Reason: Updating thread

2007-06-14, 10:30	Link #2
Epsilon Senior Member Graphic Designer Join Date: May 2007	I absolutely love these types of sig. I love the whole darkness around it. great Keep it up ^^ __________________ You won't like me when I'm honest

2007-06-15, 22:56	Link #4
Solace (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006	Latest sig, this one is a screencap from Red Garden. Tried to clean it up and give it a soft tone to the lines, also added some clouds to the background. The placing of my name seems odd to me, but I couldn't think of any other area to put it. Edit: Picture has been moved to first post. __________________ Last edited by Solace; 2007-11-11 at 17:49.

2007-06-18, 17:31	Link #5
Solace (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006	New sig, this time of Saya from Blood: The Last Vampire. Yes, I know it says Blood+, seemed to fit better. Edit: Picture has been moved to first post. __________________ Last edited by Solace; 2007-11-11 at 17:50.

2007-06-18, 18:55	Link #6
Ice Climbers Retired Graphic Designer Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Princeton University	Hey my first post here Hehe great sigs and avies, your first attempts are certainly better than mine lol Keep up the good work, hope to see more __________________

2007-06-14, 15:06	Link #3
darkjester Desu Desu Desu!!! Graphic Designer Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Age: 41	yea... some nice stuff u got there.... i like the claymore sigs... though that middle one's a bit freaky... ... lol, but then again, i like freaky... nice work, keep it up.... k thxs

2007-06-22, 21:55	Link #7
Solace (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006	Two more sigs today, nothing too fancy just some basic brushes and filters. Still trying to experiment with more advanced stuff like renders and making my own backgrounds, but the results are umm...pretty bad, hehe. Ah well, it's fun to learn. Edit: Pictures have been moved to first post. __________________ Last edited by Solace; 2007-11-11 at 17:50.

2007-06-27, 13:42	Link #9
Solace (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006	More new stuff! This time it's a Shana sig and an Akira sig + avy. Edit: Pictures have been moved to first post. That's all I got for now. __________________ Last edited by Solace; 2007-11-11 at 17:50.

2007-06-27, 14:10	Link #10
toxic_trance ~Anpan~ Artist Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Yuri Land Age: 37	Your color choices have greatly improved..and love ur last few sigs...the lucky star ones...isnt there a way to make the colors more bright , they look a bit pale....but they are good none the less ^_^

2007-06-27, 15:24	Link #11
Solace (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006	I've tried tweaking the color levels but somehow it ends up worse. I wish I knew Pellissier's secret for making Lucky Star sigs so colorful. __________________

2007-10-06, 17:03	Link #12
Solace (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006	After a bit of a slump, I decided to pick up again. Here's my new sig, from Spiral. Edit: Picture has been moved to first post. __________________ Last edited by Solace; 2007-11-11 at 17:51.

2007-10-06, 19:55	Link #13
bigdave Falling for Ginsama ^3^ Graphic Designer Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Airantou	Argh another person changed there name and has confused me XD ur tweaked one looks good. If u want to make it more vibrant u can't just use Hue/Saturation try to use the layer blending settings, and go gaussian blur a duplicate of ur whole sig and set that layer to Overlay or Soflight. And then duplicate ur whole sig again and put it on multiply.(this one is above ur overlay one.) of course with both layers play with the opacity. besides this u can try using gradient maps too. ^___^ gj though Solace/aka Ankoku XD __________________ If you want to see more of my sigs go to~ bigdave's sig gallery ~

2007-10-07, 01:21	Link #15
KasumiGirl The endless sky Graphic Designer Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Oosutoraria Age: 34	You have some very nice works here. My favourite from you is: Though you could change the text a bit. Keep the good stuff up!

2007-10-10, 05:49	Link #17
Solace (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006	The Shana sig just wasn't doing it. So I stumbled upon a thread with a certain you know who and found a ton of pics....and well, I couldn't help but do something with them! So here's my latest work. I took bigdave's advice on the layers, so I hope these are a bit more vibrant than my usual stuff. Edit: Picture has been moved to first post. She's so cute! __________________ Last edited by Solace; 2007-11-11 at 17:51.

2007-10-10, 05:56	Link #18
KasumiGirl The endless sky Graphic Designer Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Oosutoraria Age: 34	Kyaa~ Goes into Miku fangirl mode Miku looks so kawaii there O-O Very nice, but maybe change the text font...it looks good atm but it might look better if you changed the font. Great job! Last edited by KasumiGirl; 2007-10-11 at 02:50.

2007-10-10, 10:24	Link #19
Ice Climbers Retired Graphic Designer Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Princeton University	OMG another miku-hugger, so many ppl now XD Nice blending on the sig, but the bg (great soft feel btw) is kinda bland. Maybe add a few more musical notes? __________________

2007-10-11, 03:31	Link #20
Solace (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006	Tried to tweak a bit - Version 2: Edit: Picture has been moved to first post. __________________ Last edited by Solace; 2007-11-11 at 17:52.