*KitKat blushes*
Thanks guys. I'm really glad that you liked them. Like Phoenix said, I nearly backed out of the competition each round due to heinous amounts of schoolwork that I had, but somehow I couldn't resist the photoshop and found a bit of time each week to come up with something. Congrats to the other winners as well. There were some neat sigs in this comp, and it was nice to see some styles and themes that we don't normally have around here.

I thought I'd briefly go through my sigs since PSJ suggested I reveal to you my technique for the final one and I can't just talk about that one and snub the other two because that would be mean.

First sig: Orlando Bloom = <3 x 100 *KitKat swoons*

Second sig: This is probably the one I spent the most time on. Each element is from a different place. The brick is a little square for a background pattern I found somewhere and ditto with the ground. The trashcan and the bottle were extracted from different photographs I found searching google images. And I think that pic of Bender is a fanart of some sort. It took a while to arrange all these until I was satisfied, and light them properly, but it turned out pretty well.

Third sig: Yes, as most guessed, this was a straight-up photomanip. I didn't have much time to work on it because I was in dire danger of failing and not graduating, so I only allotted myself a bit of time to work on it. I started out searching 'car' on google images, and couldn't find a picture I liked. I know, I don't really know anything about car. So I recruited my housemate to find me a good pic, and he put on an episode of Top Gear and took a random screenshot for me.
Here is the original picture:


I did a bunch of colour adjusting, and took out the wall behind the car on the right (you can actually see part of the wall in the sig, since I was rushing and didn't manage to be too precise). The speed effect was basically using the 'Wind' filter, and selectively erasing it over parts of the sig that I didn't want it. Kindof a rough technique, but fairly effective within the time restraints I was working under.

Masa (or anyone else), you're welcome to pm me or find me on AIM/IRC anytime if you'd like any help. I still don't consider myself to be very good at photoshop yet, but any help that I am able to give, I'd gladly share.

Kudos to you, Phoenix. You did very well with setting this up and organizing. I especially liked having surprise themes and the challenge of working with images I normally wouldn't consider making a sig from.