My First Tag - please help!

What can I improve on? I really got confused on how to blend in the render... I don't know if I did it correctly.

 

Hmm I don't even now what u were trying to do I'm guessing blend in that c4d. But it looks good for a first sig.

blending tips: (ctrl + u) is always nice for blending.
smudging is always nice also
bluring and sharpening is good for depth

also if you really want to get into tag making I would join PR http://planetrenders.net/forums/
they help a lot

 

Thanks for the blending tip, it really helps. Also, Planet Renders Forums are down... or messed up... or something.

 

I feel like the render and the background don't really fit together. Possibly if you recolored the render/the whole thing using a photo filter it would look better?

 

My advice is actually helping

Yes! I also agree you should try to get the colours matching up a bit, they currently seem to blend in nicely together, but it might just need a little touch-up in order to have it look better.

 

Honest advice:
Render - Is far too small, for c4d's and tagging, you generally want to leave them fairly large (or original size) then just move them around to give nice effects.
Text - Wouldn't bother. From an aesthetics stand point, this generally doesn't look great or add to the tag in any way besides detracting from the flow.
Blending - Too sudden, erasing parts with a soft brush is almost never the way to go unless you do it more gradually (think gradient here) so it really looks as though it's part of the tag.
Effects - Brushing in one colour on top of everything else doesn't look great, use brushes for subtle background type textures rather than as main effects
Lighting - It looks very flat at the moment, it needs some areas of light and dark tones. Once you have more effects going on, it's a good idea to use the darken/lighten tool (after applying image on a new layer).
Colouring - It's fairly monotonous at the moment, but the render is a different colour to the background which doesn't help with the blending either.

All I can think of right now, I hope this helps you and if you aren't sure, ask

 

Normally is one supposed to let the render fill up the canvas vertically? (The top of the render touches the top of the canvas, bottom touches bottom)

Okay.

I don't understand how to do this, do you mean put a new layer + gradient map on low opacity on the image?

I kind of get what you're saying. Are you saying that I should get some brushes, blend them into the background to create a texture...ish thing in the background?

I honestly have no clue how to use the darken/lighten tool. Could you help me on this?

Would it be better if the render was a darker/lighter shade of the background?

 

Hmm, nah I meant using c4d's as effects rather than as the subject/focal point of the sig. Having a small c4d as your focal point doesn't work too well unless you have some really great atmosphere, colours, depth and everything else spot on.

No, I meant think of using the soft brush blending as a gradient - it gradually gets stronger the further in you go. Either way, I still find soft brushing to be a fairly bad technique for blending when lighting can do it 100x better.

Basically, yeah, that'd be a good start. Brushes in general don't work great as solid foreground effects for these types of signatures. Before when I said leave c4d as its original size or only slightly smaller, I meant so you can use the c4d as your actual effects.

Yup. Make a new layer, then Image > Apply Image. Click the darken/lighten tool and click away

Not exactly. Check out this site: http://www.adobe.com/products/kuler/ for some good colour schemes. Changing the tones isn't enough, unless you're doing a black and white piece. For coloured sigs they look far better if you can incorporate a few complimentary colours (or schemes, ie. those on the Kuler site.)

Hope this makes things a little clearer, and if you need more help let me know!