As this is likely an area most of us do not have a firm handle on, I am curious how many in this community would consider themselves capable graphic artists?
Looking at some of the banners up there, we definitely have a need. :stare:
So if you're a capable graphic artist and are willing to partake in this section of the forum, make yourself known and also list areas which you feel you are weak in and would thus prefer for a trade.
05 Dec, 2009, jurdendurden wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
I have reasonable skills in Adobe Photoshop and could make some decent banners (better than some that I see but not quite as good as others… :P) for people if they were interested in trading for a bit of building.
Exactly, I do them for my own amusement and fun. As a designer I don't often get to do things 'i' want to do, if I do things for the mud I get to :). The guy who mentored me in programming C was the same way, he didn't get much fun from writing embedded code for contracts (or any 'ooh that rocks!' feedback) so he did MUD programming as his 'fun' version.
Looking at some of the banners up there, we definitely have a need. :stare:
Many of the banners suffer from existing graphics being scaled down too much. I even thought of starting a thread on this, as many of them are unreadable. You'll note mine is from an old design, as I can't scale my current design (used on my webpage and TMC) down to the size required here. (yeh, I could drop the cat face and just have letters, but I think the old drop-shadowed letters look better. :) )
For example, look at Skol's .sig, then look a his banner. His .sig definitely displays his talents. On the banner, the text to the right is pretty much lost. (not to single him out, others are worse, but Skol's right here, and I figure a pro can take a critique.)
Looking at some of the banners up there, we definitely have a need. :stare:
Many of the banners suffer from existing graphics being scaled down too much. I even thought of starting a thread on this, as many of them are unreadable. You'll note mine is from an old design, as I can't scale my current design (used on my webpage and TMC) down to the size required here. (yeh, I could drop the cat face and just have letters, but I think the old drop-shadowed letters look better. :) )
For example, look at Skol's .sig, then look a his banner. His .sig definitely displays his talents. On the banner, the text to the right is pretty much lost. (not to single him out, others are worse, but Skol's right here, and I figure a pro can take a critique.)
Some of the banners are out right awful! But don't worry, the banners with the better CTR are all non-skewed and fit the screen just right ;). People using images that don't look right usually don't get clicked.
Thanks! The texture was a macro shot of a maple leaf last year (still wet, had an amazing look). Zoom in and it's almost scales ;). But it also ties into the 'Autumn' theme in the start of the roleplay in Dragonlance.
My wife made this one, too bad I can't talk her into updating the address now :sad:
For those of you with access to Adobe Photoshop, there's a million tutorials online that show you how to do very simple effects. How you use the technique is more important than your skill with it really. I've seen some really cool looking banners that are little more than a few colors accenting some text. As long as it gets people's attention, that's all that really counts.
24 Dec, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
If you have a GIF editing program like ImageReady (which comes with Adobe PS IIRC), it should be very simple to update that to a new address by working off of one of the blank frames and adding from there. You might have to change the font if you don't have the old one available.
pff, MUD banners should be all text to reflect the nature of the game. :p
Everyone is talking about photoshop but it should be noted that The GIMP will work for most peoples needs as well without the cost of photoshop(unless you steal it but then you're going to hell).
Personally, I prefer to use Flash for creating banners, although my Flash skills are very basic… Luckily, you can make a little easy work look impressive if you know how.
Looking at some of the banners up there, we definitely have a need. :stare:
So if you're a capable graphic artist and are willing to partake in this section of the forum, make yourself known and also list areas which you feel you are weak in and would thus prefer for a trade.