#1: Introduction to signature-making art!

6:49 AM @ Saturday, June 11, 2011

Hello and welcome, once again. :)
In this first post we're gonna learn the basics of signature making, which absolutely every begginer must know.


1. "What are signatures anyway?!"
Signatures are small artworks often made with adobe photoshop that are used in a users “signature area” on forums. Signatures come in different styles and shapes. Signatures can look photo-realistic, abstract or have a grunge feeling; with signatures everything is possible. Signatures are also called sigs or tags.



2. "Renders!?"

Dynamic Render

Renders are the most important things in signatures, because they are the idea of your signature. For those who don't know, renders are pictures of people and objects whose background is transparent.
Finding a good render is the most important task in creating signatures. A good render should at least have a very good image quality and it shouldn't have traces of cutted-out background (those annoying white dots that can't get rid of nor blend it in somehow to hide them).

Static render

Then, if you plan to set the render as a crown detail of your signature, than you should find a "dynamic" render, a kind of render that attracts a lot of attention, is in movement, with pre-designed effects. In that case, you should keep your effects and background simple, but still rich enough to satisfy the dynamics in the
 render. If you want to design everything yourself and make the effects your crown detail, find a "static" render,  the one with minimal effects and less motion unlike a dynamic one.
Even these simplest rules in picking out renders will make your signature stand out, primarily because of its good quality.




3. "C4Ds?!"
C4D stands for Cinema 4D, which is a program for making 3D and 4D objects, like designing a future house, building or a car, so we could say it's pretty much an architectual software or a software for designers.
"So why would some 3D animation of a house or a car matter to a signature designer?"
Because, with Cinema 4D you can also create abstract objects that can easily be blended in your signatures as effects. In another words, abstract C4Ds are used to enhance the signature that would look rather dull with render and background only.

There are two basic kinds of abstract C4Ds:

1. C4D effects - basically, effects that are used either as a clipping mask or for enhancing the background and even a render itself.
2. C4D renders - a little more enhanced form of C4D effects, they are effects that are made into render's form. They allow us to mold, slice or blend them the way we want to, and they are more concrete than C4D effects.




4. "Backgrounds?!"
And last, but not the least: backgrounds.
Picking a good-quality and matching background is very important. A dull and weird background could kill your whole signature-making process. The same goes if you're attempting to make your own BG.

That would be it for today, I hope this helped. :)
References listed in Resources section.