crazies: a guide to the mdc

what not to do on a graphic part 2

here are more suggestions on what not to do on a graphic by meatball and sammich. 

ugly lighting textures: (inspo by mukehood). this is when a person uses a lighting textures (usually set on screen or lighten) and place it really ugly on the graphic. this is a problem bc it just looks really messy and weird. if you want to use a lighting texture, at least use it in a useful way that doesn't make it look like you purposely put random white streaks at the top for extra ugly points. personally, i use lighting textures on soft light/overlay and move it around to fix the lighting and to kind of pinpoint the main parts of the graphic. some good lighting textures are the ones by Evey-V on deviantart, who also has a wattpad, but i can't remember her name.

"by:": unless it was specifically requested, don't do 'by:.' The colons normally look out of place, weird, and set an ugly divide between the words. they are also unprofessional and not worth the extra character. we suggest doing username, by username, written by username, or things like that.

cursive caps: Cursive is nice, but if you are using a font similar to brush script mt (fonts like this that are cursive), the letters don't connect and they just don't look good. Try using either all lowercase of only the first letter to a word. and even if they are connected, all the curls look weird. initials might look okay, but whole words that are bigger than 3 letters will look weird. and by weird, we mean ugly, so please stop while we tell you now. unless you're a friggin god, it is very difficult or impossible to use cursive caps effectively. 

grain, lines, grudge, etc. Textures everywhere: these can be good things that make everything go together, but dude. if it looks like it has shit quality rather than a nice grain to it you need to fix that. And then that line and dot texture, don't just slap it on and change the mode to darken. EXPERIMENT. PUT IT IN AROUND THE MODEL, PUT THE DOTS IN IMPORTANT PLACES. MAKE THE MODEL CLIMB O N THE LINES. IDC, JUST ACTUALLY PUT SOME EFFORT INTO WHERE THE DOTS AND LINES GO.

imbalance: so we all learned symmetry and how to balance things in elementary/grade school. Apply this to your graphic. if you have a soccer ball, a cat, a dog, and a naked twerker on one side and a pig on the other, your graphic lacks balance. It doesn't need to be exact, but try having almost equal amounts of color and things on each side. however, remember to still let it be out of the box and have a main focus. if you literally put 3 identical Francisco Lachowski's along a perfectly symmetrical banner, it is difficult for the eye to determine which is the focal point. this is very important bc you don't want to hurt people's eyes just trying look at your graphic. 

face blending: Okay so i actually like these, but only when they are done correctly. Like if they are the or close to the models skin tone. Of course, if the model has a nice tan while you make her face white af then this doesn't work. Also, make sure you color ALL or at least the important parts (If you want to keep the lips or something). No one likes those weird dots without the coloring on top of it (ie. white on the face, but 3 dots that are green o.o). you can just smudge a portion of the face but make sure it is the same color or select a color on the skin and make a new layer. proceed by leaving a few small strokes on the face. afterward, you can smudge it all over the face in order to blend it in. 

recoloring the lips badly: So when you desaturate or make the image black/white, for some reason EVERYONE wants the lips to be colored. So then you get your red brush, paint over the lips and set it to overlay. Then, you realize the lips are orange or a very dull and ugly red. To make it red, i recommend just using the original red/pink lips on your image then erasing around it. Or maybe trying something else like not desaturating the model or getting a little creative like making worms come out of her mouth, her hair snakes, and 9 inch long nails. (Remember, after like an inch nails start to curve >:P)

manip shadows: i think a lot of people, including myself, mess around with shadows and usually end up having horrible shadows. the thing that irks me most about manip shadows is when they're so out of place. for example, you see a shine on the model's forehead that is so obviously from light coming from the right of the graphic. therefore, you make a shadow that is stretching to the left. but of course, you're blind enough to make it stretch to the right as if it wasn't obvious enough that the light source is from the right; not the friggin left. and then you cut out some more stocks and stuff and place it in there. some of them don't even have a shadow or just an oddly placed one like the one you did on the model. please pay attention to the lighting. it is not always from the same direction. you can free transform and horizontal flip your image if that helps. and then when you make the super long shadow that is obviously from duplicating the model, color overlaying it with black, distorting it, and then giving it a gaussion blur. no, shadows do not always work like that. it all depends on the lighting, you guys. sometimes shadows are short and sometimes they are long. remember that the farther the shadow is from the model, the more faded it is. so try to add a gradient to it in a layer mask or something. (that was probably hard to understand, but think of it like this: ps term, ps term, make your shadows more realistic.)

the limbless lady or man: 99% of the time, us graphic designers are forced to use images that are missing parts. for example, one could be missing a pair of legs, hands, arms, or all of the above. in the end, you are a left with a limbless person that you must somehow incorporate into a graphic without seeming so limbless. please don't blatantly leave the model limbless. you can just cover it up or something. no offense to people who are actually missing limbs bc you can't help it. however these limbless models can be helped by effectively using the program and resources. yes, people, resources exist. learn to use them. 

copycat: this graphic is the worst of all. it's worse than doing everything wrong by doing everything exactly correct, to the pixel, of a tutorial and then calling it your own. if it is a tutorial, it is not your graphic. you are simply doing a tutorial. calling it your own and putting it into your examples is completely false advertising bc anyone can follow a tutorial and put it in their examples. creating something from your own mind that is horrid and revolting is better than doing a beautiful tutorial graphic and then watermarking it with your name. it is graphic stealing and completely wrong. please stop now.

please leave any that we are missing in the comments and we may use it in another chapter for "what not to do on a graphic." also we hope you like this and maybe even take these "do nots" for your own graphics. they are very simple and easy to follow (we hope), and can make a huge difference. 

-co-written by meatball and sandwich