New to graphix; Criticism please!

[Briaah]

So I recently got into making these and I'd like to become really good at it someday! Right now all my stuff is pretty plain so I'm looking for 2 things: criticism and inspiration!

Rules:
You can use anything you see here just please don't take credit for it
You can request if you want but like I said I'm a beginner so I can't make all too much
Be nice
Have fun

Alright, so here's what I've done so far:

Thanks for looking!

 

[Gabriel]

Okay, some basic tips.
Just about the first gif, for now.

The text is hard to see and read, because it has a light color and lots of whites on an also light and white background (the font is not the luckiest choice either)
The background flashing is not pretty to keep, but annoying enough to lose. It doesn't raise the quality of the gif.
Backgrounds shouldn't have so big differences in colors, especially with so small-print decoration: Yours has black, white, blue, so whatever you put on it, it will not be easy to see. If you put something white on this background, you won't see it because of the white parts, if you put something black on it, it will melt with the black parts and not see those. Unfortunate choice.

The Pokémon pictures. For one, they are too small. More than half of the picture is empty with the background, while the Pokémon are too small to see well. Their size also makes the quality to drop of all of them - you can see how the contours (lineart) disappeared on Celebi, the lack of lineart makes Mew hard to see, the contours party disappeared/pixelated on Victini, makes the details (and the Pokémon overall) hard to see with Jirachi, and Manaphy is just small and doesn't look very good on blue background, being blue herself.
Also, Jirachi and Mew appears to have the white outline from the cutout.

The second picture has awkward color choices, and the girl suffers from low-quality because of the size reduction, while also sporting the unflattering white outline.

The third uses an uncomfortable font, lots of empty spaces, big size with lots of tiny details (strains the eye) and the star of the picture being very small once again. Also, it doesn't seem to have a color theme (like the other pictures) having blue-white-yellow-purple-silver theme with a little limegreen mixed in. It's at least 1-2 colors too much.

The fourth is awful to look at with the flashing stars and text. Choose a font that's easier to read, drop the flashing stars and the glittery text, and make the Pokémon bigger. It's the real star of the picture afterall, no?
At least this time the background is better (no needless details) and the colors complement each other (bright purple for the faded orange of Victini, also matching the eyes) which is very important. But usually the background should pack less color value than the object we should be focusing at, because the eye catches the brighter colors first, which is in case the background (not good).

I hope this helped.

 

[Ophie]

I'm interested in knowing what image program you use to make these. That way, I'd know what kind of advice to give to make them look smoother.

 

[Spammy]

To sum it up:

Don't make the canvas (the background) so large. Don't make the renders (those would be the Pokemon) so small. You're off to an okay start. Look at the work of other experienced Graphic Artists to get ideas.

 

[Briaah]

@Gabriel- Thanks for the tips! I'm sorry if this is an obvious question, but what does gif mean? And you're basically saying I should make the pokemon bigger and try to be less flashy? Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

@Ophie- I'm using Photobucket (the free one) for now. I want to upgrade to Pro once I get the $$. I've tried GIMP but my computer is always crashing when I use it so I just don't.

@SPM3- What size should I make the background then? The reason I did it so big was because I heard I should do 700x200 to start...what's a good size?

 

[Futa]

On average, whenever I make my sigs, I usually do 350 x 150 px.

 

[MrGatr]

Your starting pretty good, but I would recommend that you remove the white borders around some of the images in your sigs. They just don't seem to flow. And photobucket, is not an image making/editing program, he ment something like MS Paint, Gimp, and Photoshop. Photobucket is an image hosting sight. I would also like to see some single Pokemon sig, that would look better than like 5. Try to make the renders a lot bigger, it looks like a tiny tiny little image.

 

[Briaah]

@Gliscor- Ok, thanks! I'll try that next time

@MrGatr- Yeah, I'm still getting used to cutting them out :/ I've also sorta figured that out about Photobucket but right now it's the best option I think...GIMP messes up my computer and I just can't seem to use MS Paint correctly Never tried Photoshop though. Is it free?

I'll do another pokemon one next but here's one I just made:

I was at a loss for this one...it was more or less something a friend challenged me to do

 

[safariblade]

The newer Zelda one is a big, big improvement.

Remember that you don't HAVE to show all of the characters' figure. You can 'zoom' in a bit onto their faces if you want.

 

[Ophie]

What happens when you try to load GIMP on your computer? GIMP is a great program to use if you don't have a lot of money to spend.

Photoshop, on the other hand, costs a pretty penny. They go for hundreds of dollars.

One last note: Zelda is squished. When you want to zoom, unless you're specifically going for an effect, make sure you shrink or expand the image the same horizontally and vertically.

 

[Gabriel]

And to do that, hold down Shift while you transform it, the same way you can make perfect circles.

And you asked what I mean with "gif". Gif is the file type of animated pictures. When I said it, I was talking about the given picture.

The Zelda one looks better, but there are still some things that could be better.
Too many characters, and not of the same style either. They are once again too small (especially in the middle) to see well, plus because you put like three logos on top of them and each other.

It would have been better with just Zelda on it on one side, with some zoom on her face (like, up until her bust - it's completely unnecessary to show her skirt when it makes the whole picture small) and the "Twilight Princess" text written next to it in light blue like the markings on the wall. (with the text not overlapping the markings)
Go for simplicity and aim for some color scheme.

Try something with just two matching colors and their shades, like the Victini sig (purple-orange) and see how it will improve.

 

[MrGatr]

The new Zelda is a big improvement, I would just recommend making the renders a little larger.

And Photoshop, you can get for free, you just need to know a company that has it, and would be willing to share. For example, my Mom does book keeping,(secretary) and her work has photoshop (for whatever reason a construction company would have that) so she downloaded it here at my house so that we could all use it.

If your computer keeps crashing, I would recommend that you get someone to look at it, because gimp is not a virus. You may also have clicked the wrong gimp site, so it does turn into a virus.

 

[Briaah]

Ok, thanks everyone for the tips!

The thing with GIMP is that every single time I open it up my computer slows down a lot. Sometimes it freezes. And then I keep getting Adobe crash reports. Does anyone know about Pixlr? A friend recommended it to me; does anyone know if it's good?

So I re-did the Victini one; how is it now?

I decided to go with a smaller size this time

 

[Gabriel]

Much better!

The Victini looks better, but its outline is still pixelated. Use some light blurring on just the Pokémon's layer, that will help.
I'd drop the semitransparent Victini under the text - It makes orange on top of orange, which is not good, and the two Victini pictures are the same anyway, so it doesn't add much to the picture but makes the text harder to read. The text could be morphed a little, just to make it a little more interesting, but that's optional. Experiment with it, maybe you'll find something you like.
Maybe you could change the shade of the text a little - It's a much better color choice now and it's fine as it is, but the color/darkness value seems similar to the background, so in a way, it blends in. If the background has low color value and high darkness value (dark-grayish colors) then high color value (well-saturated) and bright colors look good on it, and vice versa, but that's a little more advanced color theory thing.

Good job, by the way, you learn easily. Forgive my nitpicking.

 

[Briaah]

Thanks! And don't worry! They're all great tips!

I just finished this one

thinking about changing the text or something...

 

[MrGatr]

^Looks good, but a future recommendation, Do not use text that is bubbly, and well, like the kind you used here. It can be hard to read, and misunderstood easily.

 

[Briaah]

Yeah..I kinda realized that about the text after I saved it

Just made these two:

They're for my brother so he chose the font and images

oh and another quick question, what's a good size to make avatars?

 

[Ophie]

I actually don't like how the Pikachu in the middle is a way different art style than the others, which have pretty consistent styles. Also, why are some parts of it blurred?

 

[Gabriel]

Maybe he took my advice too literally to use blur on pixelated images.

I'll explain it better.
What I meant was not the use of the blur tool, just add a light blur to the whole image (of the given pikachu) before you shrink it. This will make the lineart of the small version of the picture not be so pixelated.

 

[Briaah]

@Ophie- well, my bro chose the images so..

and yes, I think I used the blur tool a little too liberally :/

@Gabriel- ok, thanks for the explanation! that helps

*face-palms* just realized the white background with the tcg one....meant to make it transparent

Two new ones...anyone know how to make the white background go away other than cutting out the image?