Just an old fart sharing a old story: About 8 years ago I came across a fledgling Runescape Beta and this very resourceful website. I went under the alias of silent009 and spent countless hours on the forum, namely the image gallery sub-forum where I devoted most of my time creating "sigs" and other images. Back then it was a much, much smaller community and pretty much everyone knew one another. People would have design services and contests from time to time -- I'm sure not much has changed since then. It might be a silly thing to say, but a lot of memories were made here, though they are far and distant now. This kept up until around 2004, when these forums underwent a massive overhaul and everyone had to register again. I was about ready to quit the game anyway. I signed up with a new user name, made one test post and never looked back...until one day I thought about it and wanted to see if my old account info still worked. It did. So here I am. I remember a bunch of artists formed a club called the Digital Art Group (DAG) that specialized in creating graphics. I remember when fellow old fart Greatsilverwyrm revealed a new sig (designed poorly on purpose) to show how many people kissed [wagon] to the more popular users. Plus many other memories long lost. I came across some of my old sigs one day while cleaning up my ftp server and it all came flooding back to me. I enjoyed art so much that when time came for college I decided to major in Graphic Design. After spending 4 years in the art department at the University of Florida, I think I made a pretty good choice for myself. While putting together my portfolio and getting ready to enter the real world (aka scary hell), it occurred to me: This forum was the reason why I started experimenting with digital imagery. Runescape is the reason I am a now a professional graphic designer. If you ask any well-established artist or designer out there how they got their start, I'm pretty sure none of them would say it was because of a java-based MMO. Which makes me a weirdo. Anyway, I just thought I'd share my own personal history with this place. It goes to show how even the most seemingly unrelated events in your life could be so life-changing. If anyone is interested in looking at my work and where I am here and now, I have an online portfolio and a deviantart account. Maybe other ghosts from the past here will remember me. http://www.huangstudios.com http://www.huang.deviantart.com [hide=I'll end by sharing my most inspirational-driven piece (as well as the one people seem to rip the most)][/hide] Never stop dreaming. Over and out. tl;dr version: Web forum for java game somehow turned me to professional design.
