Hey I recently made an account on d2jsp, and I've been making signatures off and on since middle school (in college now).

I feel like there are a lot of users who are very inconsistent with the quality of work posted here. Sometimes people will post something that is completely amazing and another couple of posts later they'll post something that really makes me question if they've been using Photoshop more than week. It feels like a lot of users strictly follow signature tutorials whenever they want to turn something with higher quality.

To me following a tutorial so closely feels not far from ripping. Whenever I use a tutorial I try to learn a skill from it and then later use that skill. All of the signature's I've made since I started making sigs again (for d2jsp). Have mostly been made with the experience I've gained through the years of using photoshop. I also use as little outside resources as possible. I rarely use c4ds and I use no 3rd party brushes. I only use brushes I've made(not often) and the default photoshop brushes, and the only tutorials I use are to just look at different brush settings for the smudge tool and brush.

For example recently someone requested a space themed signature.



I made this signature completely from scratch. Nothing is taken other than the font and the picture of the space ship.
I made the planet from tutorial that I read one time in high school and have adapted over years of making random planets in photoshop while being bored. Everything else is just the default photoshop brushes.

I was just wondering everyone else's opinions on this subject. I feel I'm pretty consistent albeit lower quality.

I spent 10fg on titles for this thread so please don't respond if you're not going make a honest post towards the discussion.

Not using the resources out there is silly.

This post was edited by Golden_star on Jul 6 2013 09:53am

I do use the resources given to me. All of the brushes that come with photoshop. I don't actively go out and look for stocks to help achieve an effect. I look for something with an effect I like and try to recreate it in photoshop with the tools at my disposal. A majority of the time everything I do isn't even worth posting, but at the same time I feel like I usually learn a little bit from the experience.

A long time ago. Probably 4-5 years ago. I linked a old GM I knew a video of someone drawing a photo-realistic sketch in MSPaint, and I told him how I'd never be able to come up with something like that and I'm surprised he could get that quality in MSPaint instead of photoshop. He responded to me talking about skills versus tools, and that he had no doubt that the person who used MSPaint could almost certainly make the same thing in photoshop or using pen and pencil.

I usually don't use any stocks except the occasional c4d, and every time I give up and use a c4d I really come to wonder how much of this can I really call my own. I don't really think smudging a c4d or taking a stock and changing the layer settings on it to be my own.

I can't read all of that

huh? there's only 3 things in the picture. font, planet and spaceship.

Yeah.. It's pretty dull overall, but I didn't sample anything. I tried to make a signature by just opening photoshop and ending with something I made. No stocks, c4ds, or 3rd party brushes. I only added the spaceship / text to satisfy a request for a space themed signature. I don't even think the spaceship looks that good to be honest.




Then don't post?

This post was edited by ralphquestionmark on Jul 6 2013 10:40am

seems to me like you don't understand the purpose of photoshop or the tutorials available out there.

If someone chooses to follow a tutorial to a tee, then good for them. The results will be wonderful, but they won't excel as designers, because it wasn't their design. The whole purpose of the tutorial was for you to extract their methods and incorporate them into your own Ps methods.
This is where the inconsistency comes in, because not every tutorial is made for everybody. Starting something from scratch is a whole different field on it's own, it's called digital illustration.



The spaceship is a stock, and without that the signature wouldn't even be passable. There's no point in not using the resources out there for image manipulation to satisfy a sense of morality. It doesn't help you get better, nor understand why people use "stocks, c4ds, or 3rd party brushes" and achieve amazing results in the end

This post was edited by TheShattered on Jul 6 2013 10:50am

No. I understand completely. That's what I try to do when ever I try to make something from a tutorial. But most of the tutorials out there I see often are just use X stock and Do X to create this effect. and often the quality of the effect is dependent on the quality of the stock. instead of teaching a specific technique.

Again, there are good resources and bad ones. You're talking about a bad tutorial then, which are bound to exist out there considering who made them and what they're for
Then again, why would anybody learn to use photoshop through signatures?

1. sounds like you reference the request forum designers more than gdgc designers
2. thinking tutorials are gimmicks or cheating is the dumbest thing you can say... everything in life is learned from watching/listening/teaching/copying/transforming. you'd have to go back so far to find truly original ideas
3. what point are you trying to make? that you are better than us because you made something bad but "without outside sources" to help you? how dumb can you be

This post was edited by TheReborn_Magi on Jul 6 2013 11:04am