Signatures Similar to Circuit ones

[Mirime]

First of, Hi to all fellow warlocks

I have been searching for some time Signatures to use in forums without any luck till now, sadly only today i remembered to check this wonderful warlock forum and discovered Circuit amazing work.

I understand that he no longer do Signatures to the "public" so i wont ask that.. What i wanted to ask its if someone with knowledge on this kind of work could give some hints on how to do it, i´m trully amazed with Circuit art and i dont mind at all to give some hours of my spare time to create something similar for me.

Thanks in advance and sorry for my English, not my first language.

[Warpy]

By the time I'd found this forum, Circuit had already retired, but left behind many samples of his work, and many words of advice, such as this link to a model viewer: WOW Model Viewer - The Warlocks Den Forums

In general, if you are fairly familiar with a graphics editor like GIMP or Adobe Photoshop, most of it is easy. A model viewer enables you to take a good picture of your character, and there are several of these, although these take a little learning as well. It took me about a day to make my sig, including some learning curves and computer issues.

[Mirime]

Thanks for the nice reply.

Sadly i dont have any experience with a graphics editor but i´m willing to learn ;) I´m going to check the thread you linked, if i have any question i will post it here.

Thanks again

[Warpy]

Adobe Photoshop is expensive; GIMP is free (GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program), but they use the same interface, and it takes a little learning. The user manual for GIMP can also be downloaded for free, but it's a big file, so I haven't downloaded it yet! One thing I was careful of was never to save over anything after changing it; I always gave it a new file name in case I liked the old version better! I also keep an editable version of my sig (*.xcf for GIMP) since *.jpg files are nice and small, but very difficult to edit!

For backgrounds, I use pieces of screenshots, edited in GIMP. At the very least, you'll need to crop and resize images to get the right shape.

Your character + pets + other game graphics come from the model viewer. The one Circuit recommends (WoW Model Viewer) depends on OpenGL, so doesn't work well on Windows Vista. It needs to be installed on a computer with World of Warcraft, so it can use the graphical models stored in the game. You'll rebuild your character as you did when you first generated him or her, choosing the race, face, etc., then pick out each piece of equipment. You can pose him or her (includes using emotes) and take snapshots using different colors of background (use one that is generally the same color as the background you'll use in your sig.). You export those snapshots as *.jpg files, then trim away the background, crop/resize your character, and place them and any other images you want on the background you chose for your sig.

Text: look for free fonts! I've been using Download Free Fonts - 1001 Free Fonts but there are a lot of nice ones out there. Text in GIMP (or any graphics program) is frustrating. It's got to be in a new layer (goes there first by default), and if you want to outline it, use paths. I was surprised at how much I had to learn there!

[Circuit]

What Warpy said...

If you take the time to search for my posts on this forum you'll find where I explained a lot about signature making.

There are many tutorials online to learn Photoshop/GIMP with. As far as I know GIMP doesn't look like photoshop at first but can be made to look and operate exactly the same.

It is well worth learning. Just take your time and do some tutorials then get some ideas and put what you've learned to use. The biggest and most important thing is to save your work as you go and EXPERIMENT. I've been using PS for years now and still only use about 20% of the whole thing.

$900 Photoshop or FREE GIMP. You choose.

No OpenGL on Vista... just one more reason not to "upgrade" to Vista.

...YES... I'm back. Been back in WoW for a week now.
...NO... I'm not doing signatures anymore. No spare time for it.

[Mirime]

Thanks a lot for the nice replys and for the help, i will search your posts and with that try to learn more about how to use GIMP program.

[No_LiMiT]

I've never met a single person that bought photoshop o_O

Guild Inn Home is nice website, lots of tutorials and helpful people

[Terrorist]

i picked up ps skills just as a side hobby and it is quite fun, not just for sig making but for many diff things. I even use it to make animations for friends or w/e. Anyway another good site for tutorials to help you learn about diff tools is good-tutorials.com they even have some ideas for general sigs. That way you can have a base to work from. Gluck make sure to post so others can see

[Demioz]

I started making signatures for friends in EQ1, then in EQ2 I got PS:CS2 and started making visual effects screenshots, motion screenshots and animations. I left EQ2 and then started making them for a Battlefield 2 community. I have often thought about getting back into it but when I saw Circuits work, I didn't want to step on any toes.

The thing that keeps me from starting up again is having more than one graphical artist doing signatures, you will start to get replies and requests from people who are using both artists and play each artist's work against the others.

Competition is not fun. I would look for mabye a demo of Photoshop CS2 or CS3 from Adobe.com, its a 45 day trial and you can do just about everything with it.

[Manic]

Gotta highly recommend Gimp also. I've been using it for years, it works great. Not that hard to learn either.