Nico

Well, I haven't shown my ugly mug around here in, what's that, about a year now? I suppose a couple new pictures wouldn't hurt. I'm not too awful fond of this picture, really, but it's the only one I really have that where I'm actually wearing my glasses, since I only wear them when I'm not at home staring at screens all day. I find this one to be much better, since I'm actually smiling and such. Me and my girlfriend Andrea all cuddled up, so why wouldn't I be grinning? :3

Hey there, guys! I've got my newest wallpaper posted up and available for all to see, and I figured this would be a good place to share it, of course! Introducing the 'Background Pony Select' wallpaper, harking back to classic beat-'em-up character select screens for its inspiration! Let me know what you guys think! I look forward to hearing opinions on this. ^^

Okay! Time for a few design tips for the day! What will I be providing my advice on today? ~*THEME!*~ The most important thing to know when designing a banner is a theme. This is for obvious reasons, really, as without a theme your banner is just, well, a mess. Sure, you can go into designing a banner without having anything planned out prior to starting, but planning a general idea in your head first will help out in the long run, even if it's just as simple as deciding the pony you want on it. For the example I'll be showing off today, I'll make a Twilight Sparkle banner, just for kicks. Having decided that she is the pony I want in the banner, my first step should be to figure out what pose I want of her. In this case, I decided to go for a bit of a deranged, wild look. Now that I've got the wild Twilight placed how I like her (and, importantly, a place where she'll be clearly visible), I need to re-tool the colors of the image to match Twilight, or if I wanted something more than simple colors I would create an advanced background scene. For this example, though, I'll just change up the colors to complement her. Obviously, purple would be a decent choice since it matches her, but colors such as blue and pink could also work well with her. I'm clearly going to avoid colors such as green, yellow or bright reds, though, as they would heavily contrast her and it wouldn't be a cohesive piece. I decided to go for a gradient of purple, bright in the center but slowly desaturating and darkening toward the edges. I hid the MLP Forums layer for now, as the color of the text made it hard to read how well the color went with Twilight, and was simply kind of an eyesore. Now, though, I need to alter the color of the text and apply it as part of the image, as well as alter the colors of the buttons to match the new banner. I will simply focus on the color of the text for now, as positioning it now would be pointless should I decide to add a new object into the image and would therefore have to adjust the text to fit it in. I'll also adjust the colors of the buttons until everything seems to go together well. Pro-Tip: To adjust the color of your Logo, simply select the layer using Ctrl + Left Click (Cmd + Click for Mac) on the layer's thumbnail image. This will select the text for you without the need for a selection tool. After this, go to Layer>New Fill Layer and choose Solid Color unless you feel that a gradated logo would fit in. Doing this preserves the integrity of the original logo layer (simply hide it) while also allowing you to easily switch the color of the new layer just as you would the buttons of the template. As of now, though it doesn't look ugly, the banner looks boring. It's at this point in the design where, if you didn't have ideas prior to now, you would decide on things you could add to your banner to make it have more 'pizzazz' while also holding together thematically. In order to make the banner appear more lively and interesting, I'll add in an object or two related to Twilight Sparkle in one way or another. For this example banner, I'll put in Smarty Pants and Twilight's cutie mark. To unify the image overall, as well as make it appear more visually stimulating, I rotated the logo and added a banner parallel to, but underneath, the logo, sort of like a ribbon. And with that, we have a passable banner design! Obviously, don't forget that your name will appear in the very lower-left corner, so don't put any little-bitty detail there that you want to show up. I should expect that you can come up with something more spiffy than this banner with some time and effort, so go on and give it a shot! It's not too hard if you simply take it step-by-step and have a plan from the start! If you'd like to download the PSD of this example to get a more detailed look at the layers and pieces, you can get it here! It's good to be back, really. I've had my computer in my living room for quite some time since I moved out with my new roommate, so I haven't really had any privacy. I recently moved it into my room, though, so now I can actually do stuff on it! I'm glad you liked it well enough to add it to the Resource Map, and I hope more people like it as I continue to expand on it! ^^

No problems! It's my goal to make banner creation more accessible to everyone, and to make it easier even for those who already were into it! I hope you can get something up at the top of the site sometime! I don't know how well this template will work with Paint.NET, but I hope it serves you well in some way.

Table of Contents: - Introduction - Theme Tutorial Hello there, one and all! This is Nico, reporting in to the forums after one hell of a long time away, really. Sure, I've made some blog posts here and there, and status updates hither and thither, but this is the first actual post in quite some time. What am I here to show you today? Well, allow me to introduce to you my detailed MLP Forums Banner Template! If you click the link up there, it will take you to my deviantArt Sta.sh, where you can download the PSD version of this banner template, complete with fully customizable colors for the buttons, as well as Smart Layers for the logo (it's the Original PNG from the site's first banner, too!), allowing re-sizing to your heart's content. All layers are organized for ease of use and to ensure that your designing is both streamlined as well as simpler than ever before. For those who might be a tad bit confused on how to use the PSD to its full potential, I will demonstrate the easiest ways to alter it to appear how you wish! First off, I'll show you how easy it is to change the colors of the buttons! Changing the colors of the buttons on your design can greatly aid in ensuring that your design is exactly how you want it to be, and the glows will appear just as they do on the site (more or less, it's not a 100% perfect template, obviously). Another advantage of this is that when you go to change the colors, it will provide easy access to the Hexadecimal Color Codes, which you will need to know in order for the administrator to properly alter the button colors on-site. Another nifty feature of having the template is the arrow on the New Content bar. Though it may not seem like much, the fluctuating from faded to full-white of the button can make quite a difference. Located in the "New Content Bar" Layer Folder there are two layers: 'Active New Content Button' and 'Inactive New Content Button'. Simply hide one and make the other visible to see the differences between the active and inactive buttons! Obviously the most useful part of this, though, is that when all of your customizations are brought together you can see a clear representation of what will appear on the site as opposed to a rough estimate. Simply replace the "Background Color" layer with the contents of your banner, make the color changes to the buttons, place and re-color the MLP Forums logo as you wish and there you have it! What makes this an 'advanced' banner tutorial, you ask? Well, don't ask that question, silly! I'm not done with this thread yet, not by any means! I will be updating it periodically with various design tips for creating your banner as well as to answer any questions you have for me on the subject! If you want to know anything about banner design, simply ask me! Design on, everypony, and have fun with it!

Back when I would design banners for the site, I had to design a template from scratch due to, well, the fact that this wasn't a thing that we did here yet. When I designed the template, it included all necessary components of the navigation layout, including the glows, border colors, font colors, etc. This way, when sending in the design to Feld0, I could also report the Hexadecimal Colors to him for each individual piece of the banner to achieve the exact look that I desired. Funny enough, I actually do still have my template for this, and if people would like, I would gladly post it up for everyone to use, in PSD form, even.

Okay, so it's time to express my gratitude to yet another person who has showed me love and changed my life drastically from here on the forums! This time it's not a bald man, so don't worry, guys! It's a lovely lady! But she's taken, so there's nothing to get excited about, either! This time around I'm expressing my thanks to the lovely @@PeachPalette! When I first stumbled upon Peach, it was just as she joined the forums. I was a moderator back then and stood watch only over the quaint (read: horrifying) little chat room we had. Peach caught my eye due to her amazingly designed OC pony of the same name. (Here, have a cuteness overload. You're Welcome.) I saw her skulking about in the chat room one day and hadn't honestly given much thought beyond: "Hey, that's a cool looking OC!" Did that stop me from opening up a private chat with her, though? Of course it didn't! I started chatting with her for a bit in the MLP Forums chat room and quickly we traded Skype info so that we could get onto a legitimate IM tool. I mean, it's not like we had any reason to not want logs of our conversations to be available to the staff or anything. But, seriously, we got to know each other pretty quickly, and it blossomed into a rather close friendship. She was a great friend of mine for quite some time, though recently we have grown pretty distant (I should really put in more effort to fix that). Things originally started out with us just being buddies who talked about various interests with one another and such, until it reached a point where I felt unnaturally embarrassed about a certain subject. A good bit of time was spent with her helping me to understand that some things aren't worth being embarrassed about and that it's simply for the best to be yourself rather than hide things. After that bridge was crossed I felt the need to express my gratitude to Peach, because by this point not only had she helped me sort out some personal issues, she had also drawn me an OC based off of my actual appearance. So, in return I did my first ever collaborative work with her, vectoring the original image of her OC. This led on to what would become a partnership between the two of us in which she would draw something, and I would vector it. We would call ourselves NicoPeach, because we're so original. This partnership of ours, however, pretty much came to an end as both of our lives changed drastically. I haven't been nearly as into vectors since I got my job, and she has gotten her own job, too. She does, however, still take commissions, one of which she is making for me soon. I would like, however, to build our friendship up a bit more again to resemble what it used to be. I miss her as a friend, honestly, and nowadays it feels more like she's some kind of celebrity that I order pictures from. So wish me luck in rectifying my mistake of letting us grow distant, and maybe you'll end up seeing more NicoPeach works in the future! For now, though, I'm just incredibly thankful to have had her as such a great friend when I did. No one person has ever turned my views on things around so distinctly before, and she helped me dig out a bit of a personality flaw that would have, ultimately, just hurt me later had I kept it around. On top of this, she was good to me and listened when I had problems, and I tried to do the same in kind and help her if I could. She is an excellent person and I'm glad that in the little I've talked to her recently she seems to be quite happy. Regardless of whether our friendship can get back to where it used to be, I know one thing for sure: I would have regretted not talking to this talented lass in the chat room that day.