So I got bored this evening, and got to tinkering, and I'm really liking what I've got so far. I'll try and get a rough version posted here in a little bit, but figured I'd ask you guys what you liked/disliked about the current one while I'm tinkering.

Well, I said I'd get a rough version posted so, here it is:



Now, this is just a rough draft, it could go another direction, but I really like the way that dragon turned out. (Sorry Samson, I had to up the height to 200px, the dragon looked like shit any smaller.)

Anyway, Thoughts? Feedback?

I think that looks awesome, though you did correctly predict one reaction. 200px is sort of big

I can show you the smaller versions, but the dragon looks crappy in them. =/

Agree on the dragon looking quite awesome. Sorry it doesn't scale well to a smaller size. I'd still be interested in seeing it either way though.

Sure, let's see the smaller ones. We can only judge the degradation by seeing it after all.

Epic work on the dragon. I will say the hosted image looks a lot better than the linked one. The words under the main title are a little rough on the eyes with they gray background. On a white background they pop nicely, however with the gray (as shown in the post), it diffuses and adds a blur to them.

Want to see more dragon!

ayuri

Haven't forgotten about this.. just busy. Will get back to this tomorrow, hopefully.

Just for amusement, I added a background because... well... I like scenery.

Alright, So instead of scaling the whole banner down, which wouldn't scale how I wanted to anyway. I just did a representation of the dragon at three sizes (200px, 150px, and 100px). So here you go.



And just for giggles, and because people said they wanted to see MOAR DRAGON....




As an Aside, the text is rather hard to read on the gray, but I think it'd be fine at the top of the page. BUt I might try and find a way to add a kind of gradient background to it where it starts at black in the middle and fades to transparent at the edges. I like the Scenery in the background of Quix's but using a rather low-tech solution, I super imposed it over the current banner, and the scenery didn't mesh well with the skin.

Actually, I'd suggest using an outer glow on the text, black color. If you ramp the size up enough, it'll make an irregular oval around the text.

I'm not seeing any huge issues with the smaller versions of the dragon.

The really big one is awesome though.

I also like the scenery idea so long as the text ends up readable.

The issues with the smaller dragons come in with a distinct lack of detail, certain parts of the dragon blur together because of how small it is.

I'd thought about a black outer glow, but figured I'd experiment with the gradient first.

Also digging the scenery / background version of this. Can't wait to see the final product, whatever it ends up being.

I've had 4 or 5 drafts done now that I absolutely hated. Hopefully the next one won't suck.

Just wanted to pop in and say WOW, I love the detail shown in the larger version. *drools*

That's why I hate anything smaller than 200px in height. You lose too much of that beautiful detail.

Sorry for the very late response, but just to toss my own 2 cents into the pot. Dragona and I really like the new banner suggestion that Kayle's come up with, especially as presented by Quix with the background. As Samson said, the huge dragon looks awesome but we don't see anything wrong with the 100px one either. I'm not so sure about the idea of adding glow to the text but the one with the gradient black isn't bad either. As Gateway said, I can't wait to see your final design whenit's ready for posting.

I want to say I didn't forget about this, and that it's coming along nicely, but that'd be a lie.

I totally forgot about this. Hopefully I'll find time to work on this sometime this week.

So, new test image...