I don't know if anyone's noticed yet, but I changed the image in my introduction. With that new art of Link from Zelda: Twilight Princess having been released around E3, I just had to use it. The wolf is still there in the background (I really like that art of the wolf), but Link takes the main focus in this one. I think it's a nice change from the previous image as well as an improvement.
Of course, whenever new Zelda art is released, you'll always finding me knocking on James' door with one of those stupid grins that says, "Do me a favor?" Or you would, except that this is the internet, so an instant message and a grinning smiley has to suffice. Either way, Jeh is awesome about hooking me up with high resolution versions of official Nintendo art, so I came away quite pleased with a 3026x2521 version of that Link art. Many thanks. ^_^
The new intro image wasn't enough, however; the art was just too awesome. I needed a banner for OtakuBoards as well.
As some of you might know, I used Paint Shop Pro 7 to make all my banners for quite some time. It worked well enough at first, since I was basically just fumbling around in the dark. I never looked up any tutorials or anything, I would just open up the program and mess around with stuff. And since I've always liked figuring things out on my own, that provided a nice little hobby for me. Learning how to use the various effects to crop and edit images (I've never been very big on original design) to fit them into banners was and still is fun.
And, as a few of you may also know, I recently got my hands on a copy of Photoshop 7. When I first started using it, fumbling around with the interface was frustrating after having gotten nice and cozy with PSP's interface. I continued to do most of my graphics work in PSP, only importing things into PS if PSP couldn't do what I wanted. My recent Scrapped banner is an example of that, where I did most of the work in PSP and then shuffled it over to PS for better overlay effects.
My new Zelda banner, however, would be different. I decided I was going to start from scratch in Photoshop and make myself get used to the different interface. This I did, and in the end, I'm glad I pushed myself past the initial reaction of, "What the hell? That's so much simpler to do in PSP." While PSP does have a simpler and more user-friendly interface, I think, Photoshop provides a lot more options. And now that I actually have a clue as to what I'm doing with the program, I'm really appreciating its extra depth.
What I ended up with, then, is this: The Twilight Approaches. I say, "ended up with," but I'm becoming kind of notorious for going back and tweaking my banners over the following few days after I put one in my signature; what you see there is actually a first revision of the original. As you can see, I was so pleased with the new intro image that I followed the same pattern for the banner.
But that's not the end of the story. I happen to currently be watching the anime series Martian Successor Nadesico. And that particular series happens to include a cute--and smart--little girl by the name of Ruri Hoshino. (If anyone remembers the Sasami-chan banner I made after watching Tenchi Muyo! you can probably guess where this is headed.) So there I was, just having gotten comfortable with making banners in Photoshop, with some prime subject material sitting in front of me. Yes, I am a sucker for cute little anime girls.
I didn't exactly have this in mind when I first made that Sasami-chan banner, but I think it spawned a series. Ruri-chan would be the second addition to it and I get the feeling more will follow.
I actually kind of surprised myself with the Ruri banner. At first I was just trying to make it live up to the Sasami one, which was a favorite out of my more recent banners, but I actually ended up surpassing it. I'm liking this new one even more. . . . Though it's a shame I won't be using it on OtakuBoards for a while, since I just put up the Twilight Princess one.
That does give me some time to tweak the Ruri-chan banner, I suppose. Just watch, I bet tomorrow I'll find something to nitpick and I'll be forced to tweak it. I always do, no matter how much I like the original "finished" version.
And that's pretty much all I wanted to talk about today. I figured it would be a waste not to show off the Ruri-chan banner somehow, if it's not going into my OtakuBoards signature for a while, so I figured I'd put it up here. Enjoy.
P.S.
I swear I don't have a loli fetish. >_>;
