How to make a sigbox

[eliethewolf]

Since I've seen so many people asking how to make a sigbox or imagemap I thought I'd post a little tutorial. Brushes used are by Aka-Joe on Deviantart.

To make one you'll need an image host (photobucket, tinypic, imageshack, etc), and an art program (GIMP, Photoshop, etc).

First you start with an image. For this example I'll use a picture of my fursona, Elie.

Open the image in your art program. I use GIMP because it's free. Make sure you make the canvas size the size and shape you want the sigbox to be. To fit in your signature you want it to be a medium rectangle. Example

Now you can decorate the image however you want to. You can use brushes to add designs and make it pretty. I make a separate layer underneath my base image for the decorations. Example

Then you add the text. You want to make each word have its own vertical space because you are going to be splitting the image vertically. For this one I just used pets, trade and wishlist. Example

Then you merge all the layers together. Save the whole image now, in case you mess up. Now you split the image into pieces. You don't want any space between the pieces or it won't look right. Each word has its own piece. Make the piece with the rectangle tool, copy and then "paste as new image". Save the new image (Save as a .png if there is transparency) and go back to the old one. Right where the old piece ends, use the rectangle tool to make a new piece and repeat for each word. Example

Now upload each piece to your image host account.

Now is the easy part. You just treat each piece as an image link. So for the first piece I'd write

Code: Select all

[url="link to my pets"][img]Link to my image[/img][/url]

and repeat for each piece.

So it ends up looking like this



Hope that helped.

[cafemochi]

AWESome!

[BadDogAlliance]

That realy helped me

[sylphland]

Elie, you have just saved my life! Thank you so much <3

[eliethewolf]

Hahaha, glad to help.

[BadDogAlliance]

can we use this sites drawing program

[DisabledLlama]

can we use this sites drawing program

Not if you want it to have a transparent background. You'd need to use an external program to split the image up anyway.

[sylphland]

You can erase the white layer on the oekaki and it will be transparent

[BadDogAlliance]

kk I think I get it....then I can use paint on top of that right

[Ultimate_Aero]

This is such a good guide!I will get one soon,do you have any places you'd recomend to get a sig box made?