Emma's Mess

[hermione_granger4life]

AVAILABLE-ONE NEW EXAMPLE AS OF 11/16!!!

Username: hermione_granger4life
Name: Emma
Age: 21
Graphics program of choice: I'm a GIMPer (:
How long you have been designing: Since around 2006. Seriously? Maybe two years. It's kicked in recently more though.
Specialties: I like simple things. I love taking pictures from a photoshoot where they look somewhat similar and rearranging them and placing them together. I also really LOVE colorization.
Favourite FanFic Category: Dark angsty romance!
OTP: Draco/OC and Dramione (:



Form it up:

Title of your Story:
Author Name: (If you'd like it on the banner)
Catch phrase: (Only if you’d like one, of course)
Overall look of the banner: (i.e. colors, images)
Fonts: (i.e. specific name of font or a general idea)
Characters: (Specific Characters in the banner? If so, would you like movie characters or images of your choosing or my choosing)
Story Summary: (So we can get a feel of your story, a link would be peachy as well)
Banner size: (So it fits in with the rest of your signature; may not exceed 300x500px)
Have You Requested This Banner Before?:
Anything else?

TOP NEW AS OF: 5 SEPTEMBER
Examples:

Deathly Hallows










Ginny Weasley Blend
Dramione-We'll be Together Again (500x550)
Severus Snape (800x476)
Harry/Hermione (483x763)
Draco and Hermione-Love you forever (600x400)

Tutorial Attempts:
These are going to be my attemps at recreating tutorials from this BA thread. (I hope no one minds, it's just me practicing.) I added my own spin to things but tried to keep the main parts the same.

Original version by Sainyn Swiftfoot

My horrible attempt at remaking it my way

Basically I just kept the color instead of washing everything out with the white. I kept the people in the same position, but changed the text on it. I used about ten-twelve different gradients. I went back in with some brushes to add some more texture and a little more of the purple color Sainyn Swiftfoot.

I may update this with a few more later. Most recent ones listed at the top. Like I said, I need lots of help on some blending and on using textures!! Any help would be appreciated so request away (:

**Emma

[FawkesToTheRescue]

Hi! I think your banners would be EVEN MORE AWESOME than they already are if you didn't make things so transparent. Putting important things on transparent makes it look much worse. Basically a rule of them is don't make things transparent. But you're on the right track to the BA!

[hermione_granger4life]

Thank you so much for giving me some input! See, I thought it looked nifty with it transparent but thank you for stopping me from doing too many more like that! Haha!

So, going off what you said, for example doing something along these lines:

instead of just squishing Draco and Hermione over something and making them transparent? I know their backgrounds were similar so all I really had to do was copy, paste, flip, and rotate certain sections in but I was just trying to see if you mean to make sure you leave the people...non-transparent I guess? Haha. Oh, as a side note, this isn't the final version, I haven't blended everything yet. I just fixed it up quickly so I could ask to see if you mean something more along these lines. Didn't want anyone thinking I was messy with cleaning things up proper!

EDIT: I've been making a few more things. I believe this one is too big to post the img code but I really like it so give it a look: Draco and Hermione-Love you forever.



**Emma

[Laurskii]

So lovely! THIS came out wonderfully - the colors are lovely, though I'd darken the contrast a little.

THIS Came out so good! A few notes - Draco's shoulder and arm (his right, our left) is a little blurry. Next time you're erasing or using a layermask, use a hard edge brush (rather than a softer one) and zoom in to cut it close. Also, the banner would be a little more believable - that is, that they're actually standing next to one another - if you matched their skin tones, either by using adjustment layers or using a colored overlay layer on a low transparency on one of them to make them match. Right now, it looks as though Hermione is under a much warmer light than Draco, which leaves the viewer a little confused.

IN THIS CASE, you should keep in mind that text (especially background text, instead of the title/catchphrase) and textures over faces isn't usually a good idea. I'd suggest trying to erase the text from over their faces, and see where that takes you Your placement, however, is wonderful, though I might make Draco and Hermione's heads the same size - I'd probably resize Draco to match Hermione so they look like they're on the same plane.

On the whole though, I'm very, very impressed with your work! You seem to understand placement and the dynamics of a banner well, and with a little more practice I think you'll make the BA no problem! Keep up the good work!

-Laur

[hermione_granger4life]

O: I think I died a little when I read this. Only because you are seriously like amazing so you taking the time to comment on any of my stuff like blows my mind haha.

thanks for all the ideas on how to fix things! I really do take the things people suggest to heart and try to make corrections next time I do something. On the second one you talked about with Draco's blurry arm--I never did finish blending that one so I know there's a few other spots you were nice enough to not mention haha! But his arm was so blurry because well I think I might have accidentally cropped off his arm thinking it would look better, then noticed it looked like crap so I rebuilt the arm haha. I took various pieces and flipped them and stuff then blurred them so yeah, it is rather terrible on that part of it haha.

I only recently started trying new stuff with my graphics program so I LOVE getting feedback on stuff. Like this next piece: Another Dramione 500x550
I have a LOT of issues with how I made this one. Like Hermione in the bottom left corner--her color looks like it needs to be adjusted. And then the picture on the bottom right didn't show up that badly when I was making it. Looking in between Draco/Hermione on the bottom, I couldn't decide if it would look better with/without the background from the picture.
That one was for a friend and really just an opportunity for me to work a little more on blending separate pictures together. (I'll try to get up links to all of the pics that I used in this one. I think there's like...ten-ish)

Thanks for all the help everyone!
**Emma

[hermione_granger4life]

Double posty-ness for some help: Does ANYONE know a good tutorial for working with text along a path? I looked up five videos and two written tutorials for it and I STILL can't get it to work :/

Also, double postey-ness to show up the most recent work that I need opinions on. I thought the face of the original looked a bit too wonky so I tweaked it a bit. The idea of putting the people inside the pocketwatch is something that randomly came to me so I wasn't sure if that itself worked or not:

Original coloring I did:



Then I tried to fix it somehow (I tried to think of things the BA members could say to critique it and I could just hear someone saying 'her face is too purple what could you do to fix that?):





(I'll post up a larger version of just the pocket watch as soon as I finish tweaking the larger size of it some more and edit this with it).
Also as I said before, this use to be bigger than this but I cut it down so I could fit it in with the img code. Tha's why part of the F is cut off and why her head looks somewhat cut off.

Thanks in advance for any critique!

**Em

[psijupiter]

Oooh, I like the images all in the pocket watch! I know you said you cut it down, but I actually think where you've cut her head off looks alright, lol. Normally you shouldn't, but it works, cause with the blur it looks like she's moving, and the direction her eye is looking kind of guides you down the blur to the text, which is ace, it gives the banner a nice flow. It sounds like your trying to fix the text, so I won't comment too much on that. I'm afraid I am not a GIMP user, os I'm not sure how it works.

I like the second two banners much better. I like the purple colour, but the purple/orange blur obscures her face too much and washes out the pictures in the pocket watch. If you want to keep that colouring, maybe experiment with another layer of the girl/pocketwatch images over the top of the purple/orange layer, set to soft light or overlay and mess with the opacity a bit. But all in all, lovely banner!

[hermione_granger4life]

Ah thank you so much for commenting! See, that's why I made the second two, I felt like in the original one her face was too purple and contrasted and I knew that would need to be fixed. I just happened to make the other two by messing around with gradients haha. I'm going to work more on the pocketwatch concept, I'm going to try and get it bigger and have just pictures inside of it and make it the banner in itself. Not too sure if it'll work out or not but I'm glad someone else likes the concept!

Text is not my strong point AT ALL so I had thought about leaving out the text altogether in her banner. I probably should have actually haha. Text is something I'm always trying to work on, it frustrates me.

And your banners are amazing as well, I love them! Just thought I'd add that one in. I may be requesting from you soon actually haha.

CLICK ME PLEASE I'M AN ABSOLUTE MESS BUT I'M SOMEWHAT NIFTY AT THE SAME TIME

That little number right there happened by complete accident. I had the background part done and then I tried to use a brush to put in a text box (made for a friend hence the text box) and I set the brush to something weird and it highlighted only certain parts of the picture. So I took those, colored two of them, and placed them back in. I realize there's about a MILLION things wrong with this banner (well it's bigger than a banner but...) It WAS meant to be a little bit offset with the top section, though the part in the middle where harry is cut off and its a little bit off compared to the other one wasn't supposed to happen, I just didn't notice it until I'd already uploaded it.

My question is: Does doing weird color and offset things like that actually work? Does it look okay or does it just look amateur and stupid? Because I'm not very skilled but to me (minus the middle section I completely messed up) it looks really kinda cool. Again, not very experienced here but I thought I'd ask opinions to see if stuff like that is acceptable in the bannermaking world or if it's better left to the experts.

Sorry it's so large. I cut it down a bit; it was originally being used as a layout background so it had to be large. (Also sorry for the rant hehe).

**Emma


EDITTT: A friend told me I should work on doing some coloring things, so I've been messing around with that a bit:

I've been watching GIMP tutorials online like crazy trying to figure this stuff out lol.
If anyone has any good tips for text placement please let me know, I'm absolutely horrid at text.

[FawkesToTheRescue]

That HBP banner looks REALLY good now that you stopped transparency. Very nice.

[hermione_granger4life]

School has taken over my LIFE so I've barely been able to work with my poor lil graphics program :/ Not too proud of these next too color and text wise, but I've been working mostly on trying to see if I can put different pictures together and SOMEWHAT make them look like they could go together. It's my new weird thing I'm focusing on (I should focus on my basic skills, but I guess I got bored and wanted something different). Several of the ones I'm posting up on here aren't really a banner at ALL, more on the photomanip side of things. Just seeing what people think about my babies lol:

Hermione/Harry/A little Draco thrown in--with Lesley Roy lyrics

Dramione again of course

Harry/Hermione Tent

Harry/Hermione Woods 1

Harry/Hermione Woods 2

Hermione Color/Texture Edit

Okay, not very much progress but as I said uni has been kicking me badly this semester and I've been sick too many times to count. This is all I've accomplished with my poor little skills lol.
I'm having a LOT of trouble with coloring so if anyone has any tips I'd love them! And text tips. I've never mastered text.

**Em