General Category > General Discussion
Writing an article for VGT on this website, anyone want to be interviewed?
shenske:
I'm Seth, I was seventeen when i first joined. I've been a member here for almost seven years (as old as the site). I first found out about this site when i was following its "origin thread" on Cheap Ass Gamer.
Before my introduction to that thread and this site I used to cut pictures out of game magazines and make my own PS1 & Dreamcast covers for DVD Cases. This took between 3-10 hours to make each cover. My source for the magazines was a locally owned game shop a few blocks from my house growing up and they sold older game magazines for $0.50 to $1 a peice. I was obsessed once I finished one cover that I had to make more. I was introduced to Photoshop shortly after joining here, bought a new computer that could handle Photoshop and the rest is history.
I became a CoverAdmin exactly one year after joining this community and it is without a doubt the best most welcoming online community i have ever been a part of. I have made hundreds of covers here and the majority of Templates that we use on the site. I'm assuming a lot of people here who have been on the site for less than a few years know me as the guy who made the all the vertical covers and templates. Which is ok but i assure you i have done and continue to do more than that ;) . I used to crank out covers about every other day for a few years but high school and college are over. Its definitely a quality over quantity bases for the covers i make now. Lots of attention to every finite detail! ;D
I have a lot less free time on my hands now that the real world has been taking a hold of me. :P
I visit the site at least 3 times a day regardless of my schedule and I don't really take on a whole lot of requests anymore but luckily our community is so full of talented artists I don't need to fill that role anymore.
Like Larry said the "project" will never be finished as there are always more and more systems coming out. Not only the mass quanitity of new game releases but we have a large custom variation following too. Either completely making custom covers from the ground up or making slight alterations. Members sometimes make adjustments so they all are in the same style as one another. Genesis covers come straight to mind because there are so many different variations to how geneses cases/boxes were orignially released there is hardly any uniformity at all.
As far as game manuals go, we actually already host manuals. Problem is hardly anyone makes manuals for games. Its expensive to print and VERY VERY time consuming. Even a basic 10 page manual would take 5 times longer than your average cover because each page is basically a cover being restored in itself (I say 5 times longer instead of 10 because the pages are usually split down the middle).
In short, i love this site. I along with others are very dedicated to it and as long as Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony don't decide to shut us down one day we will always be here. There is definitely a strong interest from gamers & artists to make covers and we most certainly have the community to support it. :)
EDIT: Apparently i use a lot of smiley faces when I post too, haha
FritzWhite:
--- Quote from: shenske on June 27, 2013, 06:46:51 PM ---Before my introduction to that thread and this site I used to cut pictures out of game magazines and make my own PS1 & Dreamcast covers for DVD Cases. This took between 3-10 hours to make each cover. My source for the magazines was a locally owned game shop a few blocks from my house growing up and they sold older game magazines for $0.50 to $1 a peice. I was obsessed once I finished one cover that I had to make more. I was introduced to Photoshop shortly after joining here, bought a new computer that could handle Photoshop and the rest is history.
In short, i love this site. I along with others are very dedicated to it and as long as Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony don't decide to shut us down one day we will always be here. There is definitely a strong interest from gamers & artists to make covers and we most certainly have the community to support it. :)
EDIT: Apparently i use a lot of smiley faces when I post too, haha
--- End quote ---
Cool story about making covers out of old magazines before you had photoshop.
I am very afraid that one day I will click on the website and it will be gone because some corporate lawyer from one of the big 3 game companies decides to take senseless action against TCP. I've downloaded a lot of the covers for games on my want list in case they are unavailable later, but not all of them. Even though I'm new here, I've grown to enjoy the forums and interacting with other members of the community. TCP's pretty cool.
orion:
Any further comments? Are the covers being put here more for the purpose of preservation or for the purpose of printing out usable covers for game boxes? I notice the covers are not always exactly like the originals? When people "create" a cover rather than just replicate it, is that for the sake of art, or for copyright issues? A simple advice I have is to back up everything for portability of the site. I'm sure everyone knows this site is a likely target one day. If everything is saved, the site can probably just "pop up" online again like portable machine code! Although it may be harder to host each time. Anyone have anything else in particular they would like to share about the site to be printed in the magazine article?
larryinc64:
--- Quote from: orion on July 08, 2013, 11:20:03 PM ---Any further comments? 1) Are the covers being put here more for the purpose of preservation or for the purpose of printing out usable covers for game boxes?
2)I notice the covers are not always exactly like the originals? When people "create" a cover rather than just replicate it, is that for the sake of art, or for copyright issues? A simple advice I have is to back up everything for portability of the site. I'm sure everyone knows this site is a likely target one day. If everything is saved, the site can probably just "pop up" online again like portable machine code! Although it may be harder to host each time. Anyone have anything else in particular they would like to share about the site to be printed in the magazine article?
--- End quote ---
(If this seems a bit off, its 1AM and I can't sleep)
1) I'd say both, the practical use of the site is to give clothing to our naked games, But our current site standards for the covers are to make them as close to the original box as posable, so there is a preservation to the original boxes going on with many covers.
I'm working on doing a review show, and I'm using covers to compare how the game is advertised VS. how the game actually plays. The box art has a big part in how the game is advertised.
2) Custom covers are for the sake of art, people like Wiggy and JDavis love to customize the cases to how they want it to look, It is fun making custom covers, even though I want to keep my covers retail, I have been tempted to make some custom covers, It's fun and rewarding, seeing your fully cased collection after all the work you put into it.
I'll talk more tomorrow.