Help
‘Ello. If you ended up here, you either probably got here by accident and I have wasted your time, or you’re curious how I made a signature, and I’ll probably waste your time even more. I’m warning you though; you have to have a basic knowledge of Gimp. That doesn’t mean I won’t help, if you don’t understand parts of it, just ask, and I’ll make that step a bit more detailed. Here’s what we’ll make:
Click here for the XCF
Or if you want to get all fancy:
Click here for the XCF
THIS IS JUST FOR LEARNING RIGHTS DO NOT RIP YOU NOOBCAKES <3 <3
I felt this was necessary after discovering someone ripped layers off of it without asking =/
Before you start though, download these brushes:
-The Nightsky Brushset by ~crashdowngrrl which was converted to Gimp by Fencepost (Thanks to both of them)
-Cloudy Brushset by Basmann which was converted to Gimp by ~Booler (Thanks to both of them)
ONTO THE TUTORIAL
1) Open up a new canvas. I always use 360x150, but it’s up to you how big you want it. Using your Paintbucket tool
, fill the background with a nice bright orange. I used fbb40b colour by the way
2) Click Ctrl+L to bring up your Layers Dialogue. Make a new layer, rename it Land (Creative right?), just so we won’t get confused later on. Using a cloud brush, brush with black around the bottom. Fill up a little less than half of the height of your signature.
3) Duplicate the Land layer. Go Layer>Colours>Invert. Go Select>All, and move it up by about 10 pixels. Go Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur Set both the horizontal and vertical blur radius to 6. Go Layer>Transparency>Alpha to Selection. Go Select>Feather. Leave everything as is, and just click ok. Press Ctrl+I to invert your selection, and press Ctrl+K to clear away the outside edges a bit. Move this layer below your Land Layer.
4) Make a new layer and label it Stars. Brush in white using a Nightsky Brush. Place this layer just at the top of the Background layer. I remember seeing this somewhere, but I can’t find it right now… In your Brushes Dialogue, you’ll find something like this at the bottom:
Pick New Brush. And make something like this:
Brush around using that brush in white.
5) Make a new layer, label it Sun, and place it just above your background layer. Using a default circle brush, pick a bright yellow colour and make a circle. Make your foreground colour white and brush inside that circle. Don’t worry about it not being a perfect circle and whatnot. Go Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur. It’ll be pretty much depend on how big you made yours, but about 30 should be enough. Go Layer>Transparency>Alpha to Selection. Then go Select>Feather. Again, it’ll depend on how big you made it, but the default setting should be enough.. Go Select>Invert, then Edit>Clear.
6)Using your Path Tool,
make a long triangle going away from your sun, like so,
Make a new layer, label it Rays, and pick your Gradient Tool
Change the settings as follow: 
Go Select>From Path. Starting from around your sun, make a gradient going towards the outer edge of your signature. Keep repeating this (The triangular path and the gradient) until you're satisfied. When you’re done, set the layer to Normal at about 50%
My paths:
---It’s time to put some silhouettes. If you’re lazy, go to Google and search for silhouettes in images. If not, just follow steps 7a and 7b for the two methods I used.
7a) Sometimes, you’ll find outlines of various objects, people, animals, buildings, etc.
Here’s how I made it into a silhouette. Go Layer>Transparency>Add Alpha Channel, if you can’t click it, don’t worry about it. Using your Select by Colour Tool
click anywhere that’s white and go Ctrl+K to take off the white parts. Go Select>None. Fill the inside black, then go Layer>Transparency>Alpha to Selection. Keep brushing in black until you can’t see any blue anymore. Done!7b) Often times, you’ll find a picture you’ll find that you want to make a silhouette, but the background doesn’t have one single colour.
Layer>Transparency>Add Alpha Channel, if you can’t click it, don’t worry about it. Pick the Select by Colour Tool
If you double click that, you’ll see something like this:
Why is threshold sticking out? Well you’ll be playing with it. Using various thresholds, start clicking and clearing the background. If when you click somewhere and a large chunk of the tree is selected, your threshold is too high. Eventually, you should be left with the tree. Go Layer>Transparency>Alpha to Selection then keep brushing in black. Done!
8) Paste and resize your silhouettes into new layers.
9) (Note: I’m making this into a different canvas so it’s a bit easier to see what I did. Do this in a new layer in your signature) Make a new layer and call it clouds. We’ll be using the path tool again for this one. Make a rough, path
Those dots are where I clicked. Don’t have too many of those though. Click on the path you just made and drag it outwards to make a curve
Keep doing this and eventually, you’ll get something like this:
Yes I know, bad example… Anyways, go Select>From Path then fill it with white.
Once you’re done making clouds, set the layer on Normal at about 50%. I also placed it behind the silhouette layers.
10) (Note: I’m making this into a different canvas so it’s a bit easier to see what I did. Do this in a new layer in your signature) Make a new layer, and call it birds. Zoom in to about 800% and make a path that looks a bit like an upside-down “V”
Like last time, click and drag on the path to make curves.
Go Select>From Path, then fill it with a black colour.
11) I found an outline of the maple leaf here. Using step 7a, I took off the white portions and coloured it orange instead of black.
Resize it, copy and paste it into your signature. I continued to copy and paste, but I resized it some more, Flipped it Horizontally (Layer>Transform>Flip Horizontally), Flipped Vertically (Layer>Transform>Flip Vertically)
Pick the Dodge and Burn Tool
and change the settings if you have to, to this
Now, to make some lines in the leaves. Click and drag on a leaf to make that part of the leaf slightly darker. Just keep repeating this at around the same spot and eventually, that part would look a very bright red.
12) Looks kind of stupid, yes? Make the colour of your foreground into ffc600, a light shade of orange. And your background into a26b00 which is a brownish colour. Make a new layer, and go Edit>Copy Visible. Paste it, then go Filters>Colours>Map>Gradient Map. Set this layer to Colour at 70%
13) Add all those tiny little tidbits like text, border, etc. For the text, I used a Visitor font at 10, went Layer>Transparency>Alpha to Selection then added a white to orange gradient.
If you want to, you can stop right there. If you want to add a little bit more, then by all means, go on. I deleted my border layer, as I’ll replace it later.
If you’ve been following this tutorial with the xcf, make sure to refer to the second xcf from here on out. Also, to the people who haven’t upgraded their internet browsers to support .png transparency, the following steps might look stupid.
14) Go Select>Rounded Rectangle. Leave the settings as is and click ok. Press Ctrl+I, then press Ctrl+K on every layer that has something filling the corners (The background, Land, and Gradient Map layers come into mind). If you added some text in the previous part, just move it. Pick the Ellipse Select Tool
Click and drag and make a 15x15 circle around one of the corners. You should be able to find how big your circle is by looking around the bottom.
Go Ctrl+K, then clear those layers again.
15) Pick your Background Layer, which should have a hole in one of the corners, and is a rounded rectangle. Go Layer>Transparency>Alpha to Selection. Using your Paintbucket Tool, fill a new layer with Black. Go Select>Shrink. Leave the settings as is. Go Ctrl+K. You should now have yourself a border ^_^
16) (Note: I’m making this into a different canvas so it’s a bit easier to see what I did. Do this in a new layer in your signature) Go Image>Canvas Size, change the width to 400. This should give you some space to work on to place some circles. Make a new layer and make a 50x50 circle and fill it with black. Don’t deselect yet though, go Select>Shrink. Shrink it by 2 pixels. Fill that selection with a shade of orange. Shrink this selection by 3, and fill it with black. Shrink it again by 3 then press Ctrl+K.
17)Go to your Layers Dialogue(Ctrl+L) and duplicate your circle layer twice. Go Layer>Scale Layer on each of those 50x50 circle layers. Make them smaller than the one before it. In the end, I ended up with a 38x38 circle, a 31x31 circle, and a 20x20 circle.
18) Adjust the position of the circle towards where you placed the hole, from biggest, which overlaps the hole, to the smallest. Go to your Background Layer, and go Layer>Transparency>Alpha to Selection. Go back to your largest circle layer, and erase parts where the circle shouldn’t overlap, and should look like it’s going into the hole. Alpha to selection this layer, then go to your second largest circle layer and press Ctrl+K to erase a part of it. The last circle might be a tad bit tricky… Go to your smallest circle layer. Copy the top right part of that circle and nothing else. Go back to your second largest circle and Alpha to Selection that. Go back to the smallest circle layer(Irritating no?) and press Ctrl+K. Now your smallest circle might look out of place. To fix it, just paste the top right of the circle to where it once was. If you've been reading up to this point you'd better stop, since it finished :w:
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Results:
By CelibateButDashing
By Keyblade_15
By LazyWhiteBoy
By Gus
By Sydney
By Parrappa
By TehSabbingSlayer
By Stellacat
By Hairy Munky
By Fierce
By Furicuri55
By Morgmaster70
