Made a Gimp Chat button. Would really appreciate some C & C on it. Suggestions? Please?

I love everything about it, the colors the style and of coarse Wilbur. The button itself might look a bit less flat with some bevel???? maybe a small shadow for depth.???

I think it looks pretty good. Maybe reduce the amount of scanlines over the text or add a darker shadow behind the text to make the letters "pop".

I would have to agree with Fence, the lines make the words hard to see but other than that I really like it.

Thank you for the input everyone. You have given me lots of good suggestions.

I guess I saved my xcf file all merged. Need to start over but it wasn't that hard to make. Wondering if I had the scanlines under the text if that would be better.

I also have been debating about the Wilber on the button and this one. His hat is a Van Gogh hat. I like it too.

I think the scan lines under the text would be better, or up the saturation of the text. As it is, the top of the h and t sort of disappear into the highlight. I vote for the Van Gogh hat, lol.

First thing. I tried the Van Gogh hat and it kind of disappeared into the bg, so went with the bright cap.

Here it is two ways (and this time I saved all the layer in an xcf file, duplicated and closed it).

Molly I beveled the colored part. Can't tell for sure if it made a diff, but it's there.

Fencepost, I like your suggestion about the drop shadow around the text and it does make it stand out better.

As you can see, I put the text over the scanlines.

The top one has no drop shadow.

The bottom one has a small, light drop shadow.






LATER EDIT: I see that I left out the drop shadow on the brush. Will get that fixed and over-write the files.

STILL LATER: Drop shadow to brush added. You may need to refresh your browser to see it.

I like either one, but pick the drop shadow one just on principle, lol.

Really like the button, suites the site.

I'd lower the opacity of the scanlines. I made a lot of userbars when I first started gimp, trust me on the scanlines. In fact, there is a userbar tutorial on gimptalk (hope it's still up), You could look at it it and see if there are some things that will work on the button too.

Maybe try an outer glow on the text? (not sure, but I'd just try to see if it helps.)

edit-
Forget about the outer glow, just tried to make something similar, it doesn't work.

Much better! I like it way more now. I like the colors on the text. Looks much better and congratulations.

I lowered the scanlines opacity to 30%, did a soft glow directly on the text.



Here are the other two for comparison.





I am delighted with all the help and input I'm getting here. Thanks so much everyone!

If someone wants to work with it directly, I've attached my xcf file.

The new one is the best. The whole tag seems brighter.

Those are snazzy! Nice work.

Thank you.

I've been playing with it a bit and I think I like it best without the scanlines but with the background colours a bit darker (just using curves) to compensate for the scanlines making the background darker. Otherwise perfect, loving the glow on the text.

Obviously I kept on playing and didn't save that version so I ended up with these two:

Here it is without the scanlines. I tried to make the colors the same darkness as they looked with the scanlines.

Something weird is going on at the top.
I'll have a go at it tomorrow and see if I can do what I did before to show you what I mean. It's always a bit of luck to get it to turn out just right, at least with me it is.

If it were up to me, It wouldd be between your 30% opacity scanlines one, or my top one, because it fits the colours of the pencils a bit better.

I also enhanced the shading a bit by duplicating the layer and set the top layer on 40% opacity.

Started completely over. Made the button height shorter. Old = 36px, new = 24px.

I made new scanlines and spaced them 3 pixels apart. Other ones are 2px apart. I like the 3-spaced lines because they let more color through.

Now Wilber van Gogh's hat shows better since it's not against the colored bg as much.





Want to play? Here's the xcf file.

Love the top one!