I wanted to drop some feedback on the latest images. Looking decent so far but there's a lot of room for improvement if you are willing to go way out on the dixie with this.
This is just sincere constructive criticism, nothing more:
Drop-shadow effects are best used subtly. If you examine the official template almost every object does use drop shadow effect, but it is used with subtlety. Low opacity and very soft shadows for the most part. Enough to visually separate it off of the object behind it, but not so much as to make it appear as if it's floating or obviously 2D. If you want to use consistent drop-shadow with the rest of the template you can use the Copy Layer Style option when right clicking on layers with drop-shadow and use Paste Layer Style onto other objects. There's a reason why drop-shadow is largely considered a cheesy and lame visual effect, the Comic Sans of visual effects if you will, that is because it is overdone and tends to be just slapped onto things without any sensitivity.
As for the 'tip text' that should be left out in all honesty. Tip text isn't baked into loading screens, it is superimposed and the text is read from the localized language the user has picked. People playing with French set as the language get French tips and so on. Also the position of the text is dependent on what resolution the player is using. You may end up having your baked text covered up by the actual tip text. So it's best to leave that area completely blank.
You should avoid having any object in front of the central image. That is the focal point of the loading screen. It's what people's eyes are immediately drawn to and stands as the image people are supposed to remember the most.
Avoid too much clutter. Your screens are so visually busy I don't know what to look at. The Desert Temple and Chateau loading screens draw my eyes to the revolver and the pen because they are so bright in contrast to the screenshots that are too dark, I can't make out what they are supposed to be. The official loading screens are designed to draw your eyes to the screenshots because those are the most important elements. The gun models are a little eye-candy but they are not obstructive, nor do they completely draw your eyes off everything else.
The PPK image you've used looks awful. The blue lighting on it completely contradicts the way the rest of the scene is lit making it look comepletely artificial. There is a PPK in the official loading screen you can use that was rendered specifically for the loading screens. I don't get why you've not used it. The Cougar Magnum is OK but it is perhaps too bright. It really detracts from the loading screens it's used in. The pen looks fake because in real life a pen wouldn't sit perfectly aligned like that and the drop-shadow used on it is far, far too much.
The post-it is also quite visually distracting. It is just a big yellow box more saturated with colour than any other element.
Anyway, that's my two cents. You can take it or leave it.
