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Joined: Aug 2000
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Interviewed by: Stilgar
Featured Artist: Jamin
http://www.se7enet.com

UBBDev: How did you get started in graphics design? What is your background?
Jamin: I have been into graphic design and computers for nearly as long as I can remember. Back when I was probably about 6 or so, my aunt had a computer with Windows 3.0 and Paintbrush on it, and drawing this one picture of Snoopy was, imho, the only reason worth having a computer. (Remember, I was 6 at the time!) Now I'm far too addicted to computers and graphics for my own good. Photoshop is a far cry from Paintbrush, but we all have to start somewhere, right?

UBBDev: What tools do you use to create your artwork?
Jamin: Umm, for graphics I use Photoshop 6.0 mostly. I actually do still use MS Paint quite a bit, for slicing up big images into table-based layouts and for doing smaller pixel art. For non-graphic web design, I use either Notepad or CuteHTML (but I still type my own code even with that, I just like it for the color coding and line numbers). I used to use Frontpage, but it just doesn't offer the control that writing your own code does.

UBBDev: What inspired the newest look of Se7enet?
Jamin: The newest look, named "sv40," is actually an attempted recreation of the look from a couple designs ago, "sv20," because sv20 was my favorite piece of art I'd ever done and it was unfortunately lost in a hard drive crash. But the actual concept of sv20/sv40 came from the recent movie "AI". I don't know if you've ever seen the AI website, but it was, imho, one of the most beautiful site designs I'd ever seen. Very light and soft and pretty.

UBBDev: How has your time with UBBDev changed your artisitc style?
Jamin: Honestly, Matt Jacob has been a big influence on me. He and I became moderators at the same time, and I've always looked up to him. My biggest problem is that I have a very short attention span, and a lot of MJ's stuff, as well as the stuff on places like DeviantART and DeskMod, have helped me try to control myself enough to sit down for longer than a few minutes working on things. wink Also, with things like HTML and CSS, its been the people on UBBDev that have been big influences on me to sit back and think about all the standardizations and "clean" code, and junk like that. Before I got here, I didn't care so much about the means as the end... as long as it looked cool for me, I didn't care what kinds of hoops I had to go through. But now I try my best to use XHTML and CSS and make my code look good.

UBBDev: Do you do any non-digital art?
Jamin: My only "normal" non-digital art is drawing, which I do occasionally, mostly comic style. I've recently gotten into photography, but I use my digital camera for that so I guess that doesn't really count. But I try to find artistic values in almost everything I do... I have "artistic" clothing days, which have hidden meanings that usually don't make any sense to anyone but me. I have a bedpan and a bowling pin on a shelf above my computer because they look cool. I guess a great portion of my life is composed of my own style of "indy art." Does that count?

[Linked Image]

UBBDev: What projects are you working on now?
Jamin: Umm, Template² and Pixelspeed are the two big ones. Haloshift is my little blogger site that I keep trying various new layouts for. And I'm also working on a Winamp skin based on the sv40 artwork. Unfortunately, this current semester has been way too busy, and I haven't had hardly any free time, which is why T2 is so freakin late.

UBBDev: You have a natural talent to create great UBB Templates. What do you enjoy the most about your templates?
Jamin: The thing I love most is how easy it is to make them bend to my will, or something like that. I knew absolutely no perl at all before UBB 6.0 and the Templates came about. Now I still don't actually "know" much, but I've gotten comfortable enough that I'm usually able to make them do what I want them to do. Even though *some people* look down on template modders, I have a lot of fun with them. I only wish there weren't so bloody many of them! wink

UBBDev: What is your favorite beverage while designing?
Jamin: Mountain Dew. Hands down. I cry when I run out of it.

UBBDev: What is Pixelspeed?
Jamin: Hehe. Pixelspeed. Pixelspeed is a somewhat nifty idea I had that stemmed from a browser-based game I used to play called Netropolis. They got the wonderful idea that images stored on your computer download a heck of a lot faster than images stored on a website. And since a lot of my recent page layouts have been very image-heavy, I thought this would help alleviate some of the filesize complaints. So Pixelspeed is a little program that checks for, downloads, and unzips a file containing all the images on a website to a certain location on your hard drive. Then the website is hard-coded to refer to those local images. And what I'm currently working on is making the program extensible, so that any website administrator can simply add their site information to Pixelspeed and use it just like I do. It saves bandwidth consumption on the site because the users only download the images a single time, and it makes pages load WAY faster for the user as well. Kills two birds with one stone. If y'all are interested, you can check out the current beta (that only works on Se7enet for now) at http://layer13.se7enet.com/pixelspeed.shtml

UBBDev: What is your favorite color?
Jamin: Neon clear.

UBBDev: Do you have any advice for people just starting out?
Jamin: Ummmm, read tutorials. Tutorials are your friend. And just play around with stuff. Some of the most interesting effects I've ever found in Photoshop, I found by accident, just playing with which buttons did what.

UBBDev: Are there any websites that you would like to share with beginning artists?
Jamin: For some of the most amazing pieces of finished work ever, www.deviantart.com and www.deskmod.com are excellent. I use a lot of the stuff there as inspiration. Also, for good tutorials, www.wastedyouth.org and www.thinkdan.com are good. Wasted Youth in particular.

UBBDev: Before you became a moderator what drew you to UBBDev as one of your hangouts?
Jamin: My first ever experience with forums (and UBB) was at the old GameSages.com UBB. This was back in 1999 or so, probably. I thought, wow, this is a really nifty idea. Then a friend said he had a UBB and wanted to start a gaming board. I helped out there and became an admin, and eventually got my own license for my own site. I found the Code Hacking forum on Scriptkeeper, then ubbhackers and the code hackers hideout thingy (is that the right name?). I fell out of modding for awhile, but got an email that said ubbchh was changing to UBBDev. Got more interested, then started posting some graphic sets, and then entered myself in the running when they were looking for a bunch of new moderators. And the rest is history. smile

UBBDev: What lies ahead for Jamin and Se7enet?
Jamin: Well, I am trying to learn some more Perl, and also PHP/MySQL. I'm also just starting to teach myself 3D graphics, so soon you may get to see some of my horrible first attempts at that too. Won't that be fun. As for Se7enet, soon the forums will be even cooler looking than ever with my own customized version of T2 and some other really cool stuff.

Thank you for your time Jamin. You are a great artist and we're glad you are part of UBBDev.
Jamin's images are on page 2

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