For all the avs, sigs and what-nots that get posted on this board, we don’t really talk much about it. I’m sure that by now a lot of the posters who’ve been contributing the most have developed their own styles and sensibilities into the work they put out, so why not take a moment to reflect on that? I’ll start. But please, someone respond to this thread with their own self-assessments, because if not I’ll just look sad.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/bpin/c_andre.jpg
I started using photography in my Photoshop work earlier this year, when I got my digital camera for Christmas. At this point I wanted to play with angles and perspective a lot, so every pic I took was either from above or below the subject. I like to integrate at least one random picture into anything I work on, and in this example I used a stock photo of a plastic grate tube. Something I love to do with photographs is try to make them look less like reality and more like something drawn. In this case I used the poster edges filter and tried to smudge up the subject a bit. This isn’t my best example so far of that technique, but I’m satisfied with it. The image that appears at the top right is of the subject embraced with his girlfriend, which I took a picture of while in the backseat of his car through his side-view mirror. I integrated that image into this one because I knew she was a significant person to him, and thus an important part of who he is.
With that said, I think one thing that IMM lacks in the work we produce is the emotion of narrative. We very rarely choose to tell stories with our work and neglect to stimulate the viewer with feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, or confusion. It requires both great detail to the subject, and to the context of the work. Many of the pieces we generate, tags to avs, focus on the subject, which is a sprite more often than not. We like to put detail into the effects, but it all gravitates around the sprite. Usually, the form of our avs depends on our sprites.
So, sometimes I try to explore subject and context and try to leave a hint of human emotionality into my work.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/bpin/asukacustomtag.gif
In this tag, I used some cute SD icons I gleaned from a Japanese (or Korean) Tekken BBS. Thinking about the customization of T5 characters, and wanting to comment on the proliferation of people who are afraid of innovation (like elitist fighting gamers, certain conservative viewpoints, and people who make sig banners using ctrl + u), I wanted to do something cute and maybe let people think a little.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/bpin/fly_elfie2.gif
Compositionally, this is my best tag. I found a photo I took of the highway, tilted it a bit, and what do you know, it was prime for a sig. The text originally said “GGPO BITCH!” but the contest I designed this for specified no cursing. So I just switched “BITCH” for “ABERCROMBIE & FITCH.” Somehow, I think it worked out even better. I like the divided color scheme, just almost invoking the classic Cowboy Bebop OP sequence. I scanned in some random white pages numbers for the shredded paper on the left, which was just one of my mixed media experiments.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/bpin/elena_cc.gif
Capcom City tag I made for credit, but I never earned enough to get me a Street Fighter t-shirt. ;_; It’s got a minimalist touch, looks kind of faded out, with the edge of the text just barely blending beyond the dimensions of the tag. That particular text effect I stole from someone at TagMonkey, who probably did it better.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/bpin/itachi_c.gif
I don’t think I posted this one here. I consciously went for the symmetrical effect, keeping in mind the dual-eyed nature of the Uchiha house Sharingan. I hope that the tag was effective.
Cute Taye has her moments