I just put the 'Allegro.cc Banner Network' script to my page and now i'm in the middle of creating a banner for my own page to add to the network:
1:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/bannerbg.png
2:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/bannerbg2.png

Which one do you think is better? (I personally like #2 more.)
Second question is embedded in second image.
(btw, the backdrop was created with dcgg(see my sig). dcgg file is attached.)

I guess #2 too - probably because I can see the words better.

You should put questions about the banners in the post rather than the image itself.

The second looks good.
I would put the contents of your website.

Either:
" Games - Music - Applications "
or:
" Project A - Project B - Project C "

I find that the banners which advertise a specific project are more likely to get my attention and make me click them. You could make a banner specifically for FSA.

It was supposed to give an impression, how the 'to be found'-text i wanted to put there would look.

A good idea, now i have two images to choose from again and now it is to decide, which one is more appealing...
3:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner01.png
4:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner02.png

Use both of those and make it so that it changes the image by random (They look pretty nice, btw, only if you could make the black text more visible and maybe give it a white border or something)

Too much going on with all those sprites. Keep it simple is always the best plan. Much more elegant.

Something like this would suite you
http://retrospec.sgn.net/bush.jpg

Neil.

http://www.allegro.cc/go/http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner01.png
Makes me want to click the version on this page...

I have a banner, not getting used on allegro.cc. =P

http://www.ukato.com/images/nyanban1.gif

You can't add two banners to the allegro banner network or did i miss something? I'll see what i can do about the text visibility.

Maybe i'll go with number 4 then(the one with DCGG on it, because it is the more recent project).

I bet some german soccer fan could get upset about it, but not me, i could not care less.;)

Maybe i should use both banners, one for each odd month and the other for each even one... hm...

EDIT:
NyanKoneko: You posted while i was writing and when i got the 'give credit' option, i credited everyone, assuming that your post was something on topic and useful, without having read it.;D
Btw, your banner has the wrong dimensions to be usable by the allegro.cc banner network.;)

Engrish is to make excitement of the rungs
Much enjoy and raughter

OK, I was just sharing above.

I'll give some helpful advice.

First of all, keep things simple and organized. Secondly, add a border to the banner.

- EDIT -
To me, there's just too much going on in the banner. I'll start working on something...

Ok, credit earned!:) I'll come back tomorrow.

Here's my first idea. I added the gimp version with all the separate layers so you can add / change whatever.

{"name":"basic2.png","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/9\/e\/9e0bc40dffed14e27e31ca4b5025cf2a.png","w":468,"h":60,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/9\/e\/9e0bc40dffed14e27e31ca4b5025cf2a"}

What about #3 but make the sprites partially transparent and spread out?

Thanks for the effort but i am sorry to tell you that i do not like it.
But there is a good thing about it: I like the 'scanline' effect and incorporated that into my changes.:)

With the 'scanline'effect, the sprites are now put back a little. I also made them visible only 75% so they even less distract the eyes from the text, which imho makes the whole banner appear much less cluttered now.
For a border, i added the infamous button effect(I know, it might be a little overused these days, but still i think it fits this banner well. I had tested a plain colored border in every possible color, but that always looked boring.)

So here are the final versions of both banners:
5:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner03.png
6:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner04.png
(they appear a little dark here, because the forums bg color is so bright)

Dennis Busch:
I think that your banners all look fairly poor, amateurish. You use to many colors and shapes which are all over the place. It's hard to focus on something in your banner and draw some conclusion of what your site is about (and thus get interested in clicking on it). It's just IMHO though, perhaps I am wrong so don't take it to hard.

Seconded. If I really had to pick one, I'd take the first one (in the op) but take the URL from the second one - but if I had a free choice, I wouldn't pick any of them.

I disagree. The sprites on #5 are not all over the place but arranged in a well thought of way(a way that actually somehow fits, how the objects could appear in the game, though the saucers never fly that low). The colors of the backdrop are many, that is true, but their temperatures fit together very well in my eyes.
What i also disagree about: It is not hard to focus on the questions and these banners both advertise a single project each and not the entire site.(The site has no consistent 'What is it about?' theme, which is not too unusual for most personal pages.;))
Basically, if someone sees these banners they will read the question, then if they answer them with 'yes' for themselves, they may be interested and click it, if not, they don't.
About colorfulness in #6:
This one is advertising my 'dynamic color gradient generator'! It has to be colorful and vibrant! All the small images on it have been created with that generator, so they perfectly well belong there.

That's of course also just imho and maybe something is totally wrong with my eyes and my perception...

Yes there must be. I know that the background image and the small mini-thumbnail images are from your gradient generator. People who sees the image won't though, they will just think that you just have discovered gradients and WordArt (for the text).

That was the idea behind my first redux. Keep things simple and organized. You'll notice I even faded the colors in the BG image. Obviously, it was only a template to be used to add to it, but I was trying for a very clear, simple base. If you let me know what you want out of your banner design (your website itself is sort of not inspirational), then maybe I can try working on something more complete.

So far, I know you want something to show off your color generator and the name of your site, what else do you want your banner to convey?

EDIT:
Even I know that my first design was, meh. It might take a few tries to get a really good banner. I wouldn't reccomend taking any of the ones in this thread so far just because they are complete or that you worked on them. Being a good artist means learning to throw away your work.

It's not WordArt and i don't care if anyone thinks that way about the gradients.8-)

No, please don't. It would be a waste of your time, because i already made my decision.

I really like my final versions and i would not use one of them, if i did not like it.

Thanks again to everybody for your opinions and comments.:)

You know, the whole purpose of the banner is to attract people to your site. If you don't care what they think, why do you even have one?

Right but so far, there are only a few posters in this thread, who said they do not like it. So i can not assume that everybody thinks that way.

Remember that these people have a history in graphical design and have a good grasp of what people in general feel. I for one agree. Your banners are amateurish, garish, and far too cluttered.

And I understand how you feel about criticism (even when it's constructive to the max).

No, no and no, don't make me look like a fool that can not take criticism.
All the comments and opinions i got here, were useful and constructive and i did follow those, which convinced me.

Did i say otherwise?
Have i been offensive or impolite anywhere to anyone?
No i have not or do you disagree?

I don't have to agree to everything and i really don't know what that last comment of yours is supposed to say about me.

I never said fool. And how you look depends on what you write, not what I write.

And so...? I still don't know what you want to say, because you did not answer my questions.
Then what did i write and how does it make you "understand", how i feel about criticism?
Please explain, because i really do not see, why you are being so offensive.(At least i felt offended by: "And I understand how you feel about criticism (even when it's constructive to the max)" because it feels, like you are looking down on me, like i did something awfully wrong, which i can't see i did.
I accepted the criticism and gave my opinions in return, so what the hell do you want? (Sorry if i am getting a little angry now.))

First of all, calm down. And I think that it is obvious that I thought you were being a bit to defensive about your design. Perhaps I should have expressed myself differently and I might have jumped to conclusions about how you receive criticism in general, in this case I still got this impression. End of story.

It's Dennis's site. We are all willing to help in out as much as we can. However, it's important to respect Dennis's opinion. Dennis is quite an accomplished artist, if you ever been to his site, you would have seen his wonderful art. Sometimes artists disagree, but sometimes it's best to agree to disagree.

Dennis, I think you should do what you think is best. =) Furthermore, although my previous comments may suggest otherwise, I support your decision.

I know what he thinks is best I don't think he should do that. Funny, huh?

What?

We need a graphic designer to be the judge of these banners and to come up with some alternate designs! Anyone here do it for a living?

Don't you mean it's best to disagree than to agree?

Or we could stop caring and let him use whatever eye ravager he stubbornly wants to use!

Nyan, I agree.:)
I thank you for your support and i thank you even more for calling my art wonderful.

Others(please don't make the mistake of reading the following with some angry voice, it is supposed to be calmly explainative to "Why" i made the decision i made):

It might be true that a lot of people will not click my banners, but i just don't want to, pointlessly and under all circumstances, make people come to my site for no reason.
I don't want to waste anyone's time, so really only those who would answer the questions on the banners with 'yes' would get interested and come to my site.

Simply put:
If someone reads the banner and thinks "No, i don't want to shoot flying saucers." or "No, i don't want to create some colorful images." then they have no reason to come to my site, because there's nothing that could interest them there.
And if they think "That banner sure looks amateurish and poor." then they are not interested in its' content anyway and by that also have no reason to come to my site.(And i would not want them to, because it would only be a waste of their time and that could make them get angry at me.)

Why i decided against a so called "simplistic and elegant" design?
Because that feels so yesterday to me.
Simplicity on banners was elegant when it first appeared a few years ago.
Today the www is imho full of so called "elegant and simplistic" banners that just look boring and say nothing at all about the sites' content.
Sure i could make a banner that would just have four or five colors, saying "Dennis Busch's Homepage\n Free software(+full sources)" in some very simple colored font, or even in my own handwriting like this:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner07.png
But that looks boring.
It is absolutely no difference to the other gazillion of banners that say "Mr.Placeholder free software" and more importantly, it does not give any impression of "What software?".

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to make comments and share opinions.:)
I understand critique as something one reads and compares to his own views and opinions and as something to make one think about his work from a different point of view but not as something one has to unconditionally agree to in every case.
If you see it otherwise, well then your opinions differ from mine and as Nyan said, all we can agree about, is that we disagree.;)

Kitsch ahoy! Man the lifeboats! Inphernic first!

Simple solution: Make multiple banners. Log CTR. Go with the one that generates the most clicks.

Wont the top one (or bottom one if it's at the top) get an advantage due to people not wanting to move the mouse so far?

I agree that your banners seem a little bit "cut" and too colorful.

Indeed, I liked this one better:
http://www.allegro.cc/go/http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner07.png

Just would add some more descriptive content and maybe change the gray to a more bluish tone.

the (+full sources) make it look too ameture.

Well, nobody shall accuse me of being stubborn, unwilling to learn or even completely learn-resistent, so i continued to work on banners.

In fact after staring at 5 and 6 for a long time, i don't find them so appealing any more.
Note though, that i am highly convinced that this is because of the constant repetition of some posters here saying how they don't like them.
So in fact, i think i started to dislike them not out of my own free will, but more because of having been 'brain washed' in some way.(You guys destroyed a piece of my free will.)
(There is a german saying: "Jeder nimmt die Farbe seiner Umgebung an." I can't translate that without destroying its' sense but it fits perfectly here.)

Rockslave, i made it a little more blue-ish as you suggested and also played around with it some more, so here are quite a few different versions.

original 7:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner07.png
7a:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner07a.png
7b:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner07b.png
7c:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner07c.png
7d:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner07d.png

I also made an attempt to 'improve' the older versions.

8a:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner08a.png
8b:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner08b.png

And for comparison convenience, here are the original old versions again.

5:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner03.png
6:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner04.png

I think 8a has a lot of potential, but something seems off with the text. The placement, font and the text itself doesn't seem very fitting to me.

I also like 7b. 7c is also good.

7B. I can sleep at night by pretending that 5, 6 and 8* are not there.

It's for the best.. for everyone.

I really like the 8's, perhaps you should make the www.dennis... brighter? Oh, and the first two thumbnails are pretty useless, as they don't show anything cool (unlike the other 3).

http://www.monkeyblah.com/art/fsa-banner.gif

All of the pictures never seems to load for me at the same time, after lots of reloading I've seen them all. I like 7 and 7[abc], and X-G's version.

Well I said that the banner looked amateurish and poor, and I still find your dynamic color pattern generator very interesting. So your conclusion must be false then.

X-G's version looks cool. Darn you!

The http://www.dennisbusch.de/ text is almost unreadable

Yeah, that's what I meant about the colors, Dennis! Both 7b and 7c are very pleasing to the eye; grey and blue in the same circle were getting conflictant, it's pretty nice now.

I think that 7b and 7c not only look very professional, as they won't bug the person you're intending to attract. Yet, I think the text could be more "appealing", if you get what I mean.

EDIT: For instance, "free games and utilities", "Dynamic Color Generator", etc...

So be it, 7b seems to be the one in the cut set of the opinions here and so i uploaded that for the a.cc banner network.

I agree to what Derezo and Ron said about 8a and 8b, i'll see if i can further work on them tomorrow.

I also like yours X-G, only three little things:
First, what Miran said, though this can probably be neglected, because the banner will link to the site anyway.
Second, it may seem to be overvaluing the game a little and could awaken too high expectations in the game.
And third, the horizontal 'dust stream' is abruptly cut off by blackness on the far right before reaching the end of the banner.
I could live with the first two things and if the third would get corrected, with your permission i would want to include your design in a banner package which i want to soon put up on a seperate links section to my page.:)
(So far 7b and 7c are marked in my head to go into that package and 8* if they evolve to something better.)

Rockslave, i think i'll keep the text i have now, because there is only one game and one utility so far, so 'free games and utilities'(plural) also seems a little overvaluing the site, as it would be a plain lie and by that could also awaken too high expectations on the viewers side.:-/
(and free game and free utility as singular would look hilarious...;D)

Hahaha you're right about that. Then, make another game! (look who's talking)

I can still change the text in the future(distant future more precisely), as the content grows.8-)

I Changed the 8* versions again.
8a2:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/fsa-banner2.gif
8b2:
http://homepages.compuserve.de/DennisTapier/allegroforum/banner08b2.png

I like 8a2 a lot more
Increase the delay just a little bit, and take out the 'OF' in the second frame. It should just read "EXPERIENCE 100% PURE OLD SCHOOL ALIEN INVASION STOPPING".. although "INVASION STOPPING" doesn't sound right either

There is a space between OLD and SCHOOL? (I thought oldschool was a unique word, describing a certain style.)

Hm.. yes 'INVASION STOPPING' sounds odd, but i can't think of anything to replace STOPPING.

"Experience 100% Pure Old-School Alien Invasion Blasting/Destruction/Annihilation"?

Hm... no, those don't sound convincing.

Oh, heh. I didn't even realized OLD and SCHOOL were together for some reason. They should be separate.

Considering using them as a substitute?

100% Pure Old-School Alien Shooter

Hm... what about "100% PURE OLD SCHOOL ALIEN INVASION"?

[append 3 days later]
Ok, i think this thread is dead.
Additional credits for helping out go to: Kent Larsson, Inphernic, rockslave, X-G, Ron Ophir and Death Gauge.
(I could not credit you guys before, because i already gave credit before you shared your most useful thoughts. Special thanks for being so persistent and beating out those first 'welcome-to-kiddy-candy-rainbow-land' rubbish banners out of my head.;D)

Hey I like that.