.com Forum · Banner Making Forum

** Please be nice **

I've only just started to get interested in Banner Making - and was wondering if some of you would mind giving me some polite, friendly, useful critiques?

Bare in mind that I do not have PhotoShop - I am using a free program called GIMP.

At this stage - the banners I make are only for my own use on this site only. In future I may end up making banners for other ShowDog members if they are interested (As I'm not that skilled, hahahaa!)

Thanks in advance!

Rij

of Dalkeith, Chaos and Havoc, Ariege, Quileute Legends, Rijbakluva and Northern Lightz.

(Images to follow)

^^ Not sure why that one has some white around the edge, will fix that later.

I think they are very nice, and on a par with many that I've seen produced for paying players. Well done.

My only observation is that the Chaos and Havoc double drop shadow is very hard on the eyes, makes me squint reading it.

They aren't bad for a person just starting out. Don't sell Gimp as a bad program just because it was free. A few years ago I was one of the top banner makers and I only used free programs like Gimp and Paint.Net. Just keep practicing and playing with all the features of Gimp and you will have banners everyone will want. Here is a banner I made a long time ago with the programs I mentioned .



WishMaker

Thanks so much for your comments I appreciate them

I'm not selling GIMP as a bad program at all - I was just mentioning that

a) I don't have PhotoShop and I know this is the 'preferred' program.

and

b) I've only been using GIMP for 2 days - so I barely know what I'm doing hahaha!

I literally spent all day yesterday on and off playing around with GIMP and I only know how to do certain things. I'll learn more as I go along - especially since they have a really thorough user manual online

I use gimp to make mine.

Ok here is my critics.


The cropping looks good, what brush are u using? A hard or soft one. It looks like a hard brush to me as the edges of the dogs are sharp, I prefur to use a soft brush so the dogs edges are a bit faded so they blend in better.
On the first banner the faded head at the bottom on the neck I'd use a very big soft brush to it fades out the neck so again no sharp edge to it so u can't realy see where neck ends.
Remember to place a shadow on the ground when placing dogs to make it a bit more realistic.

Try playing with mutable lays on different settings, there is a dropdown menu by where you can change the layers opacity with things like soft light, grain merge ect.
This works will with texture layers.

Also play with colour and lighting to help make it pop.

Awesome - thanks so much for your critiques! Especially from someone who uses the same program

I wouldn't have a clue which brush I used - i'm still getting used to all the different types - I'm pretty sure I used the 'blend' or 'blur' tool for a lot of it.

I've been watching some of the tutorials on YouTube today so I'm starting to understand how to use the different layers and the benefits of playing around with the contrast and colours etc.

I suck majorly at shadows hahaha - will take me a while to get used to that :P

Thanks again - it really helps to hear what other players think

The brush I use for cropping the the round fuzzy one, and zoom right in and erase the background.

For shadows I use the same brush and just paint black where I want the shadow, then blur it and either make it very transparent or put it on soft light or multiply

Here are a few more that I have made over the last few days - I'm really enjoying this program




Chaos and havoc - Grey-scale theme with silhouettes.

I'm in love with this black and white themed Azawakh banner

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Dalkeith Azawakh with raven - I had fun playing with some filters in this one, as well as the saturation levels.

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Northern Lightz - image in text - this one was HEAPS of fun to make - can't wait to experiment more with this type of adaptation

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I need to work on making the text less 'bold' in this one, but I am happy with the images.

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Chaos and Havoc Azawakh with Raven - I love this one, although I haven't softened the edges of the Ravens wings just yet - still needs a bit of work


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Quileute Legends with CMD - I love this one!

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This one needs a bit of work - but I liked it at the time that I made it lol!

It's funny how you can make a creation one night and love it - and then look at it again the next day and go 'hmm - I think I need to adjust this,and that and ...' haha!

And a few more :P

(Banner making is addictive!)





Not 100% happy with this one - still learning

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I really like this one

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Still can't decide if I like this one or not - I struggled to get the dogs to be within the letters - but in the end I gave up - too tired lol.

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I love this one Having fun with some filters too

Looking good Before you know it, you will be better than me in no time

WishMaker

Love this one

And love this one