New Custom Creator? Welcome to the Custom Forum!

[justjohn]

Welcome to the Custom Forum.
A Guide for Aspiring Custom Creators

I've noticed a big influx of new custom creators over the past couple of weeks. This isn't a bad thing, every one of us was new at some time. Some of us had a graphic design background, others, like me, had to learn from scratch.

Here's some advice for new custom designers (from my point of view, some other vets may agree or disagree with them):

1) Look through the Barracks and the Halls. This will give you an idea of who some of the veterans are. These people will often offer the most solid, well formed critism of your work. Most of the users who have thier work posted in either of those galleries have been at this custom thing, going on 2 years, and they've all been where you are at now. There are certainly plenty of other good custom creators who don't have their work showcased in either of these galleries, and I suggest you look at their threads as well. I just offered these 2 galleries as an easy stepping stone.

2) Make a card. I, for one, almost never read "customs" when people just post a bajillion stats in text form. There are 2 programs out there, that are free, that all you have to do is basically type text into boxes, and it makes a card FOR YOU. Take the extra effort, and people will take the effort to post more in your thread.

3) Take people's advice, and use it. The point of posting and asking for feedback, is to get feedback that can make your custom better. Often, even more so when you're first starting out, some of your customs may never get commented on, because either a) what you're doing has already been done or b) your work is full of careless errors or c) it may just have been missed. There are a lot of new custom creator threads out there.

4) Comment on other people's stuff. I don't want to make this sound like an "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" kind of thing, but I'm much more likely to look in someone's thread if I've never heard of them before if I see them actively posting in custom threads other than their own.

5) Use the search feature. Where figures come from, how to make cards, and almost every other "new" question has been answered half a dozen times.

WELCOME TO THE CUSTOM FORUM!

Vets, feel free to post any advice you think could help the aspiring custom jocky.

[Wintry]

Originally Posted by justjohn

There are 2 programs out there, that are free, that all you have to do is basically type text into boxes, and it makes a card FOR YOU. Take the extra effort, and people will take the effort to post more in your thread.

Names and link would be useful! :P

[Taelord]

Hey, I have a question? How do you pit a link to your costom thread in your sig without having it be a web address. I want it to say: "check out my customs. Comment please". could someone show me how to do it please?

[netherspirit]

What you want the linkt to look like goes here

What you want the linkt to look like goes here

[Taelord]

Nether, it wont fit in my sig because I have my CoNGS thing in there.

[netherspirit]

What do you want it to say?

[Taelord]

check out my customs. Comment please.

[netherspirit]

This is as good a place as any to talk about tinyurl. If you are looking to put multiple links in your signature the best way to do that is to use www.tinyurl.com it will take a long URL and give you a shorter one. For example, Taelord's Custom thread links like this.

http://www.heroscapers.com/community...ead.php?t=3778

Here is the Tinyurl version. It frees up a lot of characters.

http://tinyurl.com/ye3rx3

Taelord, if you use that like like this:

Check out my customs. Comment please.

That should fit.

[justjohn]

HCC (Heroscape card catalog) is located here.

This can be used to make fairly decent looking customs with little effort once you get the hang of it.

[hi1hi1hi1hi1]

You forgot the L in the first url.

[justjohn]

Fixed

[minimoose38]

Speaking of HCC, is there a way to get a picture into that without there being all the white from the cut-out background showing?? Can I can do something on the Gimp?