• 11Jul 09

  Guilty Pleasure.

  Just an update blog.

  So I started playing Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus, not a big fan of Guilty Gear games, I'm more of a KOF guy. Not like I'm any good in either or many fighting games. The last Guilty Gear game I played was on the PS2...I think it was just called Guilty Gear X or something, my friend was a big fan of it, his favorite was Chipp Zanuff and he was really good.

  So far my favorite characters are Millia, Jam, and Kys. The game is a blast even if I suck at it. I think it'll be a nice warm up if I ever get BlazBlue (which I was looking for yesterday).

  Anyways I've also started playing PANGYA: Fantasy Golf on the PSP, it's this weird anime styled golf game involving, it's addicting though. I'm not too big into sport games or any kind for that matter, but something about this game makes me want to keep playing, highly repetitive though, a lot of the same holes and such. I don't understand the rules of golf, but that doesn't matter, this is pretty fun.

  Lastly, I got a new external hard drive (640 GB) and it's so much fun filling it up, my computer feels free from all that junk and I don't have to worry about deleting or anything when it comes to saving space on this very limited laptop.

  Oh and I'll also be temporarily working for the whole week next week, so I might be a little inactive.

  Also thanks everyone for the suggestions in my previous blog, I started up Secret of Mana, slowly but surely I'll beat it xD

  • Posted Jul 11, 2009 3:18 pm PT
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• 4Jul 09

  SNES RPGs.

  Been hearing a lot of word about some of the best RPGs being on the SNES, mind sharing some? I'm a bit clueless and I can't seem to find a good list naming them all.

  I won't go into detail into how I'll be playing these games, but I think it's pretty obvious

  To be honest, I didn't plan on doing this for awhile, but I decided to give my PS2 a bit of a break once I finish Persona 4.

  So, name away!

  Oh and Happy 4th of July to you Americans, hope you had a good day!

  • Posted Jul 4, 2009 3:36 pm PT
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• 23Jun 09

  My signature making process.

  I've been getting some positive feedback about my current sig. But I just wanted people to know that it's not all that hard to make at all! (To be honest, I think my sig is rather plain compared to other people who really know how to fiddle with Photoshop). Now I'm no expert on Photoshop, I've only recently started experimenting with it, so don't think I'm all that!

  I'm using Photoshop CS, I know there are newer versions but my CS3 thinks my fonts are corrupted and won't let me write Text...so I'm using CS.

  Now onto the process on how I make my sigs.

  I'm currently making a new sig (updating my current one as I no longer have Yukiko's Konohana Sakuya Persona since I maxed out her Social Link, thus I felt the need to update it to Amaterasu).

  First to start off, open Photoshop and create a new image, let's call it P4-TALESOFVESPERIA

  

  Now if you can't see that (which most of you probably can't, my monitor is at a 1680 x 1050 resolution so it gets cramped on places that don't fit the picture...) Anyways, make your width and height, for me, I put 550 x 150, this is because my current sig is 575 x 150, course that doesn't fit on GS if you haven't noticed. For resolution, I put 300. (I can't remember why, a friend told me to just put 300).

  Next, cut out the picture. In my case, I cut out Amaterasu and dragged it onto my New image. I then resized it accordingly. But I'm not done there! Even with the magic of Magic Wand, I was only able to get most of the silly background out. Since the picture of Amaterasu is pretty complicated (unlike Konohana Sakuya), I'm gonna have to pixel by pixel erase color I don't need.

  

  It's a painful process. This part took me roughly an hour to get done. I tried my best in erasing pixels I didn't need all at the same time keeping it smooth and making it look natural when you zoom back out. The problem with the Magic Wand even at 1 Tolerance is that it's hard to get the exact pixels, hence why I used the Eraser. There's probably an easier method, but whatever.

  Once you're done, you should have a clean looking picture. Or an almost clean looking picture. Try to smoothen out any jags that are obvious. Check and get rid of any background color that might be tucked away hidden in the picture. Don't worry too much about the finer details, if it looks smooth, it's fine.

  

  Now that's finished. I'm then going to add the Vesperia pictures (Yea I realized I should've added Yukiko first...but whatever). Now the neat thing about finding good images is that if you can find pictures like I did for Vesperia, most of the work is done for you. In my case, I already found a neatly cut out picture of Judith and a simple picture of Estelle with an easy to cut white background. Remember when making sigs, the better the picture, the easier it is to work with! Especially the quality, higher quality = easier. Lower quality = annoying and might not be possible.

  

  Beautiful pictures right? So all I do is the same as I did for Amaterasu, drag em over to my new image. I should also resize them accordingly, also checking that both pictures are pretty close in scale (Since the Estelle picture is slightly bigger than Judith). This makes it consistent, which is good in a signature.

  Once I dragged them to the right side, and resized them accordingly. I can then make my divider. Click Layer and select New Layer. Now that you've got your brand new layer, you can make your divider on. I used the polygonal lasso tool to make a nice diagonal rectangle. (Remember to close up the lasso) I then clicked Edit and chose Fill and filled my newly made rectangle with a nice color of white.

  

  With that done, all that's left is to outline. Right click the layer the divider is on and select Blending Options. Select Stroke and chose the color of Black with the length of the stroke being 1 pixel wide. You can then move your divider around until it's neatly placed in the middle of the two. Once that's done, you're ready to erase any thing overlapping the divider.

  This is the real easy part, chose the Eraser and select a random width, I chose 36 pxl. Then chose the Amaterasu layer, start erasing anything on the Vesperia side. You can also erase over the divider (this doesn't erase the divider itself since it's on a different layer) giving it a nice clean erase and cut. Do the same for Judith by erasing on the Amaterasu side (after clicking Judith's layer). Aren't layers a beautiful thing? Making erasing things just that much more simpler.

  

  Once I was done with that. I added Yukiko, the P4 logo and the Vesperia logo using the same method I did with the other pictures. Once again, finding good and easy to use pictures is always beneficial in sig making.

  

  And voila! Done! All that's left is adjusting the divider and pictures so it looks pretty close to the middle. I can also touch up each picture my fiddling with Filters, Blend Options, Curves, Contrast and other stuff. But for now, this is pretty simple.

  Lastly save the picture as a .PNG file. This step is crucial or else by default (i.e JPEG), there will be a white background. Not to mention .PNG produces a much higher quality picture compared to JPEG.

  Here's the original sig:

  

  And here's the updated one:

  

  Much better no? No probably not lol. I prefer the older one mainly because Konohana Sakuya looks like she has some kind of face or something. But oh well, Yukiko just had to evolve her Persona into a faceless one. I'll probably also make the lighting on the characters somewhat consistent and probably make the divider thinner.

  Reason for this blog? Because I have nothing else to blog about

  Thanks for reading.

  Edit: Whoops, I forgot to clean up Estelle on my newer one.

  Also my sig represents what games I'm currently playing, hence my weird P4 and Tales of Vesperia hybrid

  • Posted Jun 23, 2009 5:26 pm PT
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