My Journey with Graphics

[Gustav 6,100]

So I was going to try reviewing for my last couple bits of TPE this week, but then I got a couple sentences into one review and realized I was just going to end up writing a stupidly long amount of words for one TPE. So, here I am, doing the economical thing and writing a stupidly long amount of words for two TPE.

 

"Gustav," you might say, "you've been making a lot of graphics lately. Are you out of the article business?" You also may not say this at all, because I'm fully aware that not everybody thinks about me all the time, despite what the occasional self-absorbed article of mine might suggest (earlier tonight I was encouraged to write part 3 of The Gustav Effect after Hounds alumni and former AGMs of mine made up at least seven of the last nineteen hires into management, which, shall I add, nudge the numbers even more in my favor, but I digress). My answer to that question, which you've probably forgotten about already after that monster of a sentence, is no, not at all. I'm actually making (slow) progress on the single longest article I've ever written, something I'm 4,000 words or so into and not even halfway done with. Rest assured that you'll see me write quite a bit in the future.

 

But what's with me making graphics all of a sudden? I do graphics here fairly often these days, and I've even made a weekly graphic a thing of mine over in the EFL, where my activity has ramped up in recent weeks. I've hit 150 words already, but whatever. I've got nothing better to do.

 

I first started making sigs with Gimp, something I'd recommend to anyone starting out as a free option. These things were invariably trash, not really because I was using Gimp (though Photoshop >), but because I had no idea what was going on and took way too long to do what I wanted. A not-so-fond memory of mine is not scaling down an absolutely huge Buff Beav pic before cutting it out and spending three hours (yes, three hours) cutting it out to perfection for something that ended up looking godawful. Suffice it to say, my early graphic days were not fun, and I only kept my desire to make new stuff up by the fact that I ran a VHLM team and wanted to make some (just as terrible) sigs for my players.

 

Cue @Nykonax yelling at me that Gimp is trash and telling me I needed Photoshop. I tried an illegal download or two (Motza gave me a link which may or may not have led to me downloading something sketchy multiple times because I'm technologically incompetent) and eventually got one from Nyko that half-worked on Mac and also drained my battery to hell. I managed to crank out a terrible sig or two with it, and then one day I clicked "lighting effects" or something and the program proceeded to close the thing I was working on and delete itself. Well, that wasn't fun, and I thought Gimp was trash at that point, so I turned to Photopea and made (at the time) my best graphic, though, while I'd recommend trying Photopea, its quality was more due to knowledge than software.

 

Here, for reasons unknown to me, I decide to go and buy Photoshop. Whatever it was at this point, something went off in my head that made me actually want to make stuff and be willing to work for it. So, I get a free trial and find it great (though, in retrospect, I'd learned a lot since my Gimp days at this point and was simply applying what I knew with something else). I don't regret it, though--it's a great piece of software and will get things done a good deal better than Gimp (and, let me tell you, the way erasing and masking works so intelligently on Photoshop makes me want to take the little eraser square in Gimp and throw it out the window). I start working with it and make a few terrible sigs, leaning super heavily on Lightroom for stuff like color correction (here's a before and after of one of my earlier Photoshop ones). As time went on, though, I stopped relying on Lightroom so much and eventually learned to just make things work myself (a before and after of a more recent one has the "before" looking better). I won't go into everything I've made, but here, have three. Someone more experienced would certainly say that I've got a lot more to learn, and that's absolutely true. But I've made 50-ish graphics so far, and I think I've learned a lot already, mostly by annoying our graphics higher-ups whenever I make anything (thanks a bunch, gorlab/hatty/eno/motza/nyko/whoever else has been there, I'm sure I missed someone).

 

But why? I'm more than a media spot into a VHL.com article, and haven't answered that question yet. I just think it's interesting. I love writing (as you can probably tell), but graphics are just something different, something I can go and do if I'm out of article ideas and something that I'd love to be good at because there's nothing quite like looking at someone else's sig and saying, "oh look, I made that and they like it enough to show everyone." I think sig-making, while I don't want to make it my only thing, has increased my enjoyment of the league and taken away the stress of saying "well, I'm out of ideas, how can I fill up 500 words" by bringing in "well, I'm out of ideas, looks like [insert player of mine] doesn't have a sig."

 

TL;DR: 10/10 would recommend; go download Gimp and annoy @gorlab a lot.