ilikepie,
if you would like to know how something is done
or would just like some advice, please let me know.
Design is a very personal thing, and I really dont like to comment about what I see as faults in a persons work.
When you are first starting to develop a style, you should experiment a lot and try to develop new techniques to help you express what you see in your mind and feel in your heart.
Sometimes you get a feeling for what you want to create right off the bat, but a lot of times the concept for an art piece is hard to find, and everything you do to be creative fails. At these times, its a good idea to take a step back and gain some perspective on what you are trying to acomplish. Take your time, this is not a race. The object of Photoshop Tennis(AKA remixing), is to work off the ideas and concepts of others while infusing your own personal style into the design.
Each designer has their own personal design signature.
Erik Jordan from 2advanced.com's signature is using the dot sytax in his description text, i.e - 2A.V3.EXPANSIONS,or 2A.V3 //EXPANSIONS. Its very easy to see this brand in his work or a copy of his style.
I myself like to use muted colors, many layers of images,soft swooping lines, contrast and blurring in order to create depth of field and movement. Straight on text and images just turn me off.
Try working with photoshop layer styles and types. try using images over color and then changing the image layer type to hard light or darken, just experiment with depth and see what you come up with.
Using multiple layers of the same image, each with their own effect works well also.
Developing a style takes time, patience and lots of experimenting with alternative methods. Some effects I use on images take multiple effects and many steps to create. The girl in the right upper corner has 5 layers and about 9 different effects to achieve the result I came up with. there is NO RIGHT WAY to do something, it all comes down to personal style.
Again, if you need help with the technical aspects of your designs,just let me know.. Im always willing to help a budding designer.
i'll say this: i've been looking at battles here for about a month, and i've seen some really nice stuff. When i decided to start this battle, i knew that it wouldnt be as easy as it looks, but i'm really discovering just how complex it is!
the thing is, i can actually do plenty of stuff, and if i wanted to i think i could achieve a similar effect to a volley that i see. However, when i actually have to design my own volley, it seems that i just can't get an idea that clicks. i'm guessing that as i continue i will get used to it, so for now i'm just gonna try and explore ideas
i'm certainly trying to move away from my first two, which are just too cut-and-paste-ish for my liking... hopefully my next one will be more artistic
i'll have a volley back for you in a few hours i hope
well my next volley is done, i've sent it to primate again (as i still haven't organised my webspace yet) so yeah... although i'll link to it here as well just in case
i've tried the whole 'artistic' thing, but it's still a bit dodgy...when it's up i hope people will make suggestions. Personally i'm not sure, but i think it might be a bit too busy/crowded
the main area i see it is in the big butterfly at the bottom... i think that's because i enlarged it so much from your volley. I also ran a copy of it through the 'maximum' filter to give it a different effect, which may be part of it.
Also, i think Christina is losing clarity, because she's been used in 3 volleys now.
can you see obvious pixellation in any other areas of the image? i'll have to watch out for it in the future... also i think that my jpeg compression isn't so good, so i'm probably sacrificing too much quality to get the file size down. i'll try to optimise it a bit better next time
This one is about 130kb, I used such small text I had to up the size a bit.
About the pixelization I was seeing:
Yes most of the stuff that I saw was because of image resizing. Resizing images is not a good idea, unless you are trying for some kind of effect. I do see some other quality problems centering around the white streaks and text within your last volley..
BTW, this is also my first photoshop battle, although Im a member of designmarathon.com, Ive never done a photoshop tennis match..Pretty fun if you ask me..:o)
Do you want to end on this one or keep going
Let me know how many you want to do..k
the text in my last one was actually meant to be a bit rough, i ran it through the 'dust and scratches' filter... but yeah, i can see a bit of a dodgy line on some of the vector swishes
dunno when i'll be able to get back, hopefully within 24 hrs, but i can't promise anything. Also, i don't really mind when we stop this battle, but how about we say one more each, so you can finish from my next volley (unless you want to continue further, which i'm cool with as well)
Heya, sorry I havent got mine back to you yet, I was working on an image for a battle going on at were-here.com
I my last volley for the serve of a new battle..LOL
Vital, I would rather that you battle me than post silly comments that dont relate to the thread..:o)
Here ya go iLikePie..
Lets call this one the final image. I have another battle going on, and just like my battle with you, I like to give it 100% of my thought.
You did very well, and I could see good progress in your design style as the battle went forward. Anytime you want to do it again, you just let me know.
Hope you like it.
If you feel the need to do one more, go ahead..But this is my last..