Sorry that it took a while for me to respond. I had school stuffles.
Oh I know her. She is my fellow countrymate
Good to see you back ^^
You know Sharon? That's pretty awesome. Oh, and it's good to be back.
These are cool! Although I have to say I don't know any of them. :< But awesome work, Fire, you're really good.
Thanks for the compliments! But you really don't even know Cloud from Final Fantasy VII, one of the most popular RPG's of all time? You are a rare child. Very rare. (^^)
Nice work. These are great!
Arigato.
yayyayayayayay another artist <3
I took the liberty of looking at some of your other works via the links provided within your signature, and I've gotta say you're a fantastic graphic artist! You've got a lot of talent, and you should certainly be proud of yourself. There were some things I saw, however, that could use improvement. I'll use two of the images you used as examples in your thread (your Cloud (#1) and Sharon (#2) sigs).
1.) The signature as a whole is very dark, and very dirty looking. Can sigs look dirty and come out fantastic? Absolutely! But you kind of missed the mark on that by making it too dark. I'm going to assume you put too much contrast in it? Or at least severely lowered the brightness? Either way, you should go at those settings a little easier, otherwise -- though bold -- they come out too dark and sometimes excessively grungey.
2.) Though the background and border on this are excellent, my main problem lies within the render herself. My issue is essentially the very opposite of the first signature: it's too light. Though I can see how it mostly fits in with the signature, overall her skin looks far too white. I would just take it down a notch, unless this is how the render initially was, then I completely understand. Otherwise, I'd work on adjusting contrast and brightness a little bit more.
On a positive note, I think your second example is absolutely perfect. And when I mean perfect, I mean I can't find any flaws about it. The lighting is spot on; the colors work wonderfully with one another; best of all, it all comes together in the end. If you could crank out signatures with precision and accuracy like in this one, then I have no doubts in my mind that you'll become an even better graphic artist than you are right now. Never give up hope!
This is the first time in years someone has seriously critiqued my graphics. I feel the right thing to do is post a serious response to match.
First, I would just like to say that, for the most part, the creation of each signature was completely different. Other than some of my favorite effects, I was winging the entire process, due to me not remembering my regular art style. Each of these were experimantal, but that doesn't mean I was just goofin' around. Plus, I learned or remembered valuable information for my future graphics, which will not go to waste.
Cloud was had a background made with, well, Cloud. The full size render had to be highly distorted to make it unrecognizable, leading to a grunge-like effect. What caused so much black was, unavoidably, Cloud's already dark attire. I put in gradient maps, fractals, and effect C4D's to compliment the two, but I went a little overboard in the end.
My second signature had a stock placed in for the background. I duplicated it and moved them around, with varying layer modes and filters, to give it a light source and texture in advance. With the render planned out in advanced, Riki was placed in. A similar process was followed to specifically make him blend into the premade background. A few color adjustments on the entire image, some text, a border, and I was done. Part of me knew what it wanted the final version to look like, which is probably what lead to the overall aesthetics of the image.
The last signature's base layer was a photograph of Sharon, not a render, an approach that I've taken only only thrice before. It was relatively boring and dull, so the first thing done was lower the birghtness a little and raised the contrast by a considerable portion. This made the background more interesting to toy with, but the focal simply got a little brighter with every layer, no matter what I did. That went on until I just stopped before it she turned solid white. The border was just me using some random filter I stumbled across earlier that day. This came out like like two of the three - mediocre.
I appreciate you going out of your way to offer the constructive criticism. It won't go to waste any time soon, that's for sure. My signature will take a Riki-esque approach; of course experimentation will be allowed. Peace.
My old one is all the way on the second page, so why bump it? 
