AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

How do you make it?
I've seen a lot of people having banners in their signatures with their toons and the banner changes for every toon. Is there a web site for that or you have to know how do make it yourself? Tutorials?

Well, the easiest way is to ask someone who already knows what they're doing to make one for you (i.e. Maryn or Qualiz).

Or me! *cough*

Or you could just be different and not have one.

If you have Photoshop and Fireworks you could probably figure out how to do it with the help (although I've no idea how ... mine was made by Jaydn and Qualiz).

Galenson wrote:

Or you could just be different and not have one.

It's so nice to have you back, Galenson.

Regards,

Can one post the tutorial please? I dislike troubling others for it and I have photoshop. Would be much appreaciated

Make a signature image no wider than 500 px and no taller than 50 px. Save this image as JPG (for images which are complex and have many colours) or GIF (for images which are simple and have comparatively few colours). Or save as both and pick the one which looks better or takes least space.
Upload your image to Imageshack, or any other site which lets you host images. They will usually give you a link to your image that you can use.
Open your Profile page here on Amia, and scroll down to where it says Signature, then enter:

Code:
[img]http://your.imageaddresshere.com[/img]

Obviously you want to use the link you were provided with, not the example one I used.
Then hit Submit, and that's it.

If you get someone else to do a signature image, just skip the first step above.

Should also note that you can use the BBCode size tags to reduce your font size in signature like I have. But it will count towards your 255 character allowance.

I think he was after the information in your first step, Selmak, such as how to make the images (and how they change).

Last edited by BlackDahlya on Wed, Dec 30 2009, 9:25 AM, edited 1 time in total.

Drakos_Vek wrote:

Can one post the tutorial please? I dislike troubling others for it and I have photoshop. Would be much appreaciated

I remember offering when we had the Vhaeraunite faction. :P

Still want me to do it?

As for making signatures, I do, too. But I am too lazy to try figuring out tricks like the ones used by Koragi. >_>;;

So, in other words, if you want something simple I can do it. Though, yes, I would recommend Koragi, Qualiz or Maryn.

Qualiz, if memory serves, is on a break.

And Maryn, unless if something changed, has been very busy. I have been on a break, so, I cannot claim to know for sure about it. Might be she is already back and making signatures.

I could probably throw one together in my spare time if you really want one. It would be nice to refresh my skills again.

Do you have specific pictures/words on there that you might want? PM me anything that you have regarding the signature you want.

Jaydn wrote:

I could probably throw one together in my spare time if you really want one. It would be nice to refresh my skills again.

Do you have specific pictures/words on there that you might want? PM me anything that you have regarding the signature you want.

Right, I forgot about Jaydn too! He was the first to come up with offering siggies!

Yes, i am easily forgotten i suppose.

Haha i still see some of my signatures in use today, and that makes me happy.

Well, I don't remember how it's done in Photoshop, but the principle should be the same as far as animation goes.

You have one layer per frame. To make a transition from one character to another, you can take two layers you already have, adjust the opacity of one of them, and make a copy of what is visible, and paste that as a new layer. To keep the frames in the right order, you may want a separate canvas to put finished frames on.

Opacity is the slider that makes a layer transparent so that you can see the layer underneath.

The smoother the transition, the more frames you will need. In other words, you have one at 25%, one at 50%, one at 75% for each transition.

When you have your frames in order (it's usually first at the bottom, last at the top) you need to export them as an animated GIF. It may be that when you just try to save as GIF, you will get prompted to do the necessary steps. Just don't pick an option that says 'flatten' as that's for non-animated GIF.

You may get an option to optimise your animation. If you can do that to reduce file size, without noticing any reduction in image quality, that's great. You may also notice an option there regarding animation speed or the time that frames are on screen. If you want a slower animation, you need to increase the time that frames are on screen.

Okay, as far as actually creating the reference frames go, it's merely a case of lining up a suitable character picture with a background and their name. Or some other suitable text. If you're familiar with moving things around on layers, and cutting things out of images using the selection tools, and using the text tool to create cool-looking text, this should be a doddle.

Just remember that you need to avoid things with too much colour variation, as your final work will get reduced to 256 colours with GIF.

Using a Rectangular selection set to 50 (height) by 500 (width) or alternatively a 1 by 10 aspect ratio, draw a rectangle around the parts you want in the signature, and then crop. If you have used the aspect ratio to get something that runs larger than 50x500, use Scale Image or equivalent to reduce your image proportionally.

And copy to a blank canvas.

There's nothing wrong with just not using transitions at all and simply leaving each character up there for a long period of time (30000 ms, or 30 seconds) as this will reduce file size considerably.

Yeah, my signature is pretty big in file size. >.>

Koragi Mydnite wrote:

Yeah, my signature is pretty big in file size. >.>

Two and a half meg >.>

Signature banners with characters?

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