by Flodian Mon Jan 04, 2010 7:54 pmContest Results
Originally, this was going to be a community involved voting experience. However later on I realized that since certain admins and mods (who will remain totally and completely unnamed) are participating, that would become a bias factor. As a result I'll be the only one that will be giving out the results in a completely objective manner.
Scoring Fashion
This is how it's going to work for each signature that you have made they will be graded on a scale of 5. Now this scale is relative, meaning that say if GuyA's signature was the best (in my humble opinion) he automatically is awarded 5/5. And since we have 5 contestants the marks will then scale back down to 1. At the end of this, the top 3 will be selected. If there is a tie in the standings, I will re-evaluate the signatures and decide the standings. Following each score there will be a commentary as to why you got the score and what things you can improve on.
Wolverine
2/5
Anime - This is a good piece of work for a beginner, but of course there are things that can be improved on. The first thing that really caught my eye was using those winter breeze brushes. To me brush work is very delicate, and illusionary in the way that you are trying to use brushes effects but also tricking the viewer into thinking that you're NOT using a brush. Take some of my signatures for example, they are by no means perfect but anyways I like you really enjoy using the winter breeze brushes. However when I use them, it has a different feel and that is because I integrated the brushes INTO my signature, whereas here it feels like they are floating on top. That was my main concern the other problems aren't as important, such as your text. I don't really know what you were trying to get at with the bended text. Some good parts of the signature was the background, I like how you went from dark to light, this gives depth to the signature. Also your render placement was good, you showed only the important parts of the baddest(awesome word) person in DBZ. Before I end off... I would suggest you pick higher quality pictures since your render is kinda blurry.
3/5
Given- Again a good signature, appears to have followed my tutorial which is perfectly fine. Your render placement was good again, however I personally think it would have been even better if you made him a little bigger and cut down some of the waist. Now on to improvements, if you read my other guy on flow this signature would have came out even better. Right now it feels quit messy with all the winter breeze brushes everywhere, and destroys the natural flow of things. But I do like the fact that the color of your background matches the primary colors of your render, this makes it easier to integrate your signature into the background, so it doesn't look like your signature is just floating on top. Another point of concern would be the text again, it really stands out, to the point where it takes away from your render. But over all this was a good signature.
Phoenix Enforcer
1/5
Anime - A very simple gradient background, which is perfectly fine, however it would have been better if you spiced it up a bit. But that's not my main point of concern. What I want to talk about is render placement and render choice in general. The important aspects of your render is the head and the gun. However since this is a forum signature, it's not possible to fit both without making belittling one or the other. Therefore this was not a very well chosen render. Secondly the fad in behind your main render is so prominent that it seems to over shadow (sorry for the pun) you main render, this is largely because of render choice as pointed out before. Now on to text, I don't like a lot of text on signatures. You want your views to read the pictures not the words. And also so much text limits your ability to add other effects to the signature.
1/5
Given - I'm not exactly sure what you were trying to get at with the background. If it was following my tutorial, and you where trying to color the background layer, I think you forgot to use the overlay setting. Now because of that, your background became very mundane and lacks effect. You tried to compensate for that with another fad in, which is reasonable. The good thing though, is that your render placement was a lot better this time around. Now on to your text, bleeding cowboys is really... really... really...really... overused. It's not even funny how many people use this font. Though it does look good (which is why a lot of people use it) it has become clichéd and takes away from your actual text.
Supreme_King
5/5
Anime - Very, very well done signatures. I especially like the brush work, it gave the signature flow that many other contestants lacked. As a result the background was very clever and definitely worked with the signature. Also the text was well done, this may seen contradictory, even though you used the simplest font out of all the contestants, yours was the cleanest. I was only able to find two areas that weren't done well and one of them is really minor. So let's start with that one, the lighting of the sig is a bit strong, it made the main focus of your signature a little hard to see, but that can be easily fixed. Now the bigger problem is the semi-fad in Jaden behind your primary render. I thought it was overkill and took away from your awesome background, I really think that can just be flat out removed and your sig would still look good.
5/5
Given- Again very very good signature. The funny thing was, if you combined the good points of this signature with your other one, it would have made a near perfect signature. The render placement of this sig was very good, and also you didn't use a fad in effect which would have been over kill. The text is again very clean, which is good. The lights this time around is great, it was just strong enough to illuminate gambit but not strong enough to hurt the eyes. xD However this signature lacked flow, unlike your other one.
DanceJonDance
4/5
Anime- A well done signature, you went with the more advanced stuff and tried to integrate C4Ds which in this case I think it worked. However what I don't like about the signature is the overkilledness (awesome word). If you just kept the render on the left, this signature would have had great flow and depth, however you added another render on the right. Like I mentioned before, I am a retarded viewer, if you give me 2 things to look at my brain would overload and I don't know which one to enjoy. So with that extra render you really shot yourself in the foot and destroyed your flow. Now on the topic of render choice, for a signature I think that the one on the right would have made a better signature, however that might not have been possible due to the fact that it was a cut off so I'm not gonna dock you on that. But I did like the little smoke effect you put in ^_^. Since the right render is not very usable, we go onto the other one, this render was poor in that way that it was hard to capture the essence of bother characters. However I think you tried your best to pull it off.
4/5
Give - You actually went and used Ariel Lin. xD So kudos for that. It was a very good signature, however I do want to warn you about something. This is the advice I give to many beginner sigmakers who are just starting to use C4Ds. These abstract, or effect renders are used to supplement your render. They must not take away from your actual render. A good sig does not a C4D make. However in this case, I though you where very careful and did a good job. The only thing is the pink render on Ariel's head, it looks really out of place and jarring. I think you were trying to go for like a headband type of effect, but again like I said, C4Ds should be used like brushes, your goal is to make it so that the views almost can't tell it was a C4D. Also another overkilled factor was the fad in Ariel. You didn't need that at all, your background was already filled, and that fad in just made your main render look blurry. The text for this signature was very good, nice and clean with a good filler thrown in.
Janembo
3/5
Anime - Very good work, the render placement was excellent, you highlighted everything that was important. The background is done well, you used my tutorial effectively, however I would suggest you add more effect onto the background as it slightly empty. The text is also very clean which is good. So really things to improve on are just increase effects on the background, and also try to sharpen your image slightly. A solid effort.
2/5
Given- Another solid piece of work, the render was well placed and chosen. The background at first glance actually looks very unified however upon closer inspection you can tell the places at which you multiplied it and cut it off. I suggest you smudge the edges to make it more unified. Another point I want to make is the aspect of flow, in my flow tutorial I talked about major and minor flow. In this case the left hand of batman is the major and the right is his minor, yet you chose to use the minor as your primary flow. Also for this, since the background wasn't grudge, I'm not sure if the overlay effect worked out well. But overall another solid effort.
Reward
1st Place Supreme_King
The first seed will get on top of entrance..
1.Bragging rights
2.300SC
3.3 SP
4.50% Experience
2nd Place DanceJonDance
The second seed will get on top of entrance...
1.200SC
2. 2 SP
3. 40% Experience
There is a tie at the 3rd place. Wolverine and Janembo has both created execellent signatures, and I don't want to take that away from them. I know I said earlier that if there was a tie I would drop one and keep the other. However in this case.. it really is hard to decide for me so both of them will be awarded 3rd place prizes.
3rd Place Janembo & Wolverine
The third seed will get on top of entrance...
1. 100SC
2.1SP
3. 30% Experience
Thanks to all for participating! Hopefully there will be another contest some time later. xD
Originally, this was going to be a community involved voting experience. However later on I realized that since certain admins and mods (who will remain totally and completely unnamed) are participating, that would become a bias factor. As a result I'll be the only one that will be giving out the results in a completely objective manner.
Scoring Fashion
This is how it's going to work for each signature that you have made they will be graded on a scale of 5. Now this scale is relative, meaning that say if GuyA's signature was the best (in my humble opinion) he automatically is awarded 5/5. And since we have 5 contestants the marks will then scale back down to 1. At the end of this, the top 3 will be selected. If there is a tie in the standings, I will re-evaluate the signatures and decide the standings. Following each score there will be a commentary as to why you got the score and what things you can improve on.
Wolverine
2/5
Anime - This is a good piece of work for a beginner, but of course there are things that can be improved on. The first thing that really caught my eye was using those winter breeze brushes. To me brush work is very delicate, and illusionary in the way that you are trying to use brushes effects but also tricking the viewer into thinking that you're NOT using a brush. Take some of my signatures for example, they are by no means perfect but anyways I like you really enjoy using the winter breeze brushes. However when I use them, it has a different feel and that is because I integrated the brushes INTO my signature, whereas here it feels like they are floating on top. That was my main concern the other problems aren't as important, such as your text. I don't really know what you were trying to get at with the bended text. Some good parts of the signature was the background, I like how you went from dark to light, this gives depth to the signature. Also your render placement was good, you showed only the important parts of the baddest(awesome word) person in DBZ. Before I end off... I would suggest you pick higher quality pictures since your render is kinda blurry.
3/5
Given- Again a good signature, appears to have followed my tutorial which is perfectly fine. Your render placement was good again, however I personally think it would have been even better if you made him a little bigger and cut down some of the waist. Now on to improvements, if you read my other guy on flow this signature would have came out even better. Right now it feels quit messy with all the winter breeze brushes everywhere, and destroys the natural flow of things. But I do like the fact that the color of your background matches the primary colors of your render, this makes it easier to integrate your signature into the background, so it doesn't look like your signature is just floating on top. Another point of concern would be the text again, it really stands out, to the point where it takes away from your render. But over all this was a good signature.
Phoenix Enforcer
1/5
Anime - A very simple gradient background, which is perfectly fine, however it would have been better if you spiced it up a bit. But that's not my main point of concern. What I want to talk about is render placement and render choice in general. The important aspects of your render is the head and the gun. However since this is a forum signature, it's not possible to fit both without making belittling one or the other. Therefore this was not a very well chosen render. Secondly the fad in behind your main render is so prominent that it seems to over shadow (sorry for the pun) you main render, this is largely because of render choice as pointed out before. Now on to text, I don't like a lot of text on signatures. You want your views to read the pictures not the words. And also so much text limits your ability to add other effects to the signature.
1/5
Given - I'm not exactly sure what you were trying to get at with the background. If it was following my tutorial, and you where trying to color the background layer, I think you forgot to use the overlay setting. Now because of that, your background became very mundane and lacks effect. You tried to compensate for that with another fad in, which is reasonable. The good thing though, is that your render placement was a lot better this time around. Now on to your text, bleeding cowboys is really... really... really...really... overused. It's not even funny how many people use this font. Though it does look good (which is why a lot of people use it) it has become clichéd and takes away from your actual text.
Supreme_King
5/5
Anime - Very, very well done signatures. I especially like the brush work, it gave the signature flow that many other contestants lacked. As a result the background was very clever and definitely worked with the signature. Also the text was well done, this may seen contradictory, even though you used the simplest font out of all the contestants, yours was the cleanest. I was only able to find two areas that weren't done well and one of them is really minor. So let's start with that one, the lighting of the sig is a bit strong, it made the main focus of your signature a little hard to see, but that can be easily fixed. Now the bigger problem is the semi-fad in Jaden behind your primary render. I thought it was overkill and took away from your awesome background, I really think that can just be flat out removed and your sig would still look good.
5/5
Given- Again very very good signature. The funny thing was, if you combined the good points of this signature with your other one, it would have made a near perfect signature. The render placement of this sig was very good, and also you didn't use a fad in effect which would have been over kill. The text is again very clean, which is good. The lights this time around is great, it was just strong enough to illuminate gambit but not strong enough to hurt the eyes. xD However this signature lacked flow, unlike your other one.
DanceJonDance
4/5
Anime- A well done signature, you went with the more advanced stuff and tried to integrate C4Ds which in this case I think it worked. However what I don't like about the signature is the overkilledness (awesome word). If you just kept the render on the left, this signature would have had great flow and depth, however you added another render on the right. Like I mentioned before, I am a retarded viewer, if you give me 2 things to look at my brain would overload and I don't know which one to enjoy. So with that extra render you really shot yourself in the foot and destroyed your flow. Now on the topic of render choice, for a signature I think that the one on the right would have made a better signature, however that might not have been possible due to the fact that it was a cut off so I'm not gonna dock you on that. But I did like the little smoke effect you put in ^_^. Since the right render is not very usable, we go onto the other one, this render was poor in that way that it was hard to capture the essence of bother characters. However I think you tried your best to pull it off.
4/5
Give - You actually went and used Ariel Lin. xD So kudos for that. It was a very good signature, however I do want to warn you about something. This is the advice I give to many beginner sigmakers who are just starting to use C4Ds. These abstract, or effect renders are used to supplement your render. They must not take away from your actual render. A good sig does not a C4D make. However in this case, I though you where very careful and did a good job. The only thing is the pink render on Ariel's head, it looks really out of place and jarring. I think you were trying to go for like a headband type of effect, but again like I said, C4Ds should be used like brushes, your goal is to make it so that the views almost can't tell it was a C4D. Also another overkilled factor was the fad in Ariel. You didn't need that at all, your background was already filled, and that fad in just made your main render look blurry. The text for this signature was very good, nice and clean with a good filler thrown in.
Janembo
3/5
Anime - Very good work, the render placement was excellent, you highlighted everything that was important. The background is done well, you used my tutorial effectively, however I would suggest you add more effect onto the background as it slightly empty. The text is also very clean which is good. So really things to improve on are just increase effects on the background, and also try to sharpen your image slightly. A solid effort.
2/5
Given- Another solid piece of work, the render was well placed and chosen. The background at first glance actually looks very unified however upon closer inspection you can tell the places at which you multiplied it and cut it off. I suggest you smudge the edges to make it more unified. Another point I want to make is the aspect of flow, in my flow tutorial I talked about major and minor flow. In this case the left hand of batman is the major and the right is his minor, yet you chose to use the minor as your primary flow. Also for this, since the background wasn't grudge, I'm not sure if the overlay effect worked out well. But overall another solid effort.
Reward
1st Place Supreme_King
The first seed will get on top of entrance..
1.Bragging rights
2.300SC
3.3 SP
4.50% Experience
2nd Place DanceJonDance
The second seed will get on top of entrance...
1.200SC
2. 2 SP
3. 40% Experience
There is a tie at the 3rd place. Wolverine and Janembo has both created execellent signatures, and I don't want to take that away from them. I know I said earlier that if there was a tie I would drop one and keep the other. However in this case.. it really is hard to decide for me so both of them will be awarded 3rd place prizes.
3rd Place Janembo & Wolverine
The third seed will get on top of entrance...
1. 100SC
2.1SP
3. 30% Experience
Thanks to all for participating! Hopefully there will be another contest some time later. xD
