The Maitre d': A Legacy of Failure (in Pixels) - Part 1
I started cleaning out my My Pictures folder today. Being down to 2GB of hard drive space, it was sort of a necessary evil, and I was pretty sure there was all manner of crap in there that didn't need to be there. Heck, I've been using GIMP for pretty much everything image-related since 2000 or so, so at the very least there were bound to be tons of .xvpics temporary files.
Now, I should make it clear that almost all of the content under My Pictures are actually my pictures. I don't download much stuff off the internet (because, frankly, I can always go back to the internet and get it if I really need it). And I don't share The Chef's porn addiction, so the contents of My Pictures is 100% clean.
But in the process of cleaning out these folders, I realized that I had a ton of nifty stuff from ages past. Ages before I knew most of the people I know now. Ages when I was still doing level editing in Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, and found my way into that community. (We'll revisit those stories as we go.)
Basically, I found a bunch of stuff that might be neat to show off, instead of letting it rot on my computer. So let's get to showing them off.
Art
The first folder (alphabetically speaking) that I have in My Pictures is simply titled "art." It's gutsy to even name a folder like that, because despite what my art teacher in college said, everything is not art. I think I'll prove that point here in a bit.
I should mention that I delude myself into thinking I have artistic talent. And writing talent for that matter--which is why I'm actually posting articles to the Buffet instead of letting the professionally-trained Chef do all the writing. Both of these things are spurred on by my tendency to dabble in lots things until I think I'm somewhat decent, and then stop caring.
To start out, let's go back to Christmas 2001, where I created this logo for the Massassi Temple Holiday Logo Contest:
As a bit of history, the Massassi Temple was one of the premiere Jedi Knight editing sites. I never really stuck with editing for later Star Wars games like Jedi Outcast, so I really have no clue what they're up to now. Or anyone in the JK community, for that matter.
That said, I ended up fleshing this logo out into a Christmas-themed wallpaper. I used Terragen to create the landscape. That was the first time I ever used it, and I haven't touched it since.
If you really want a copy of this wallpaper, let me know. I still have it in all its 1024x768 glory.
While we're still in the Christmas spirit, here's a Christmas skin I did for Jedi Legacy, home of the -ites. (I would go into -ite culture a bit more--because it was something to behold--but I think that's a topic for next time.) Sadly, I don't think this skin was ever used, because someone with more talent cooked up Christmas and Festivus skins.
Next: let's look at some more crazy GIMPed-out wallpapers!
See more articles from: The Maitre d': A Legacy of Failure
Comments
Discuss this article on the Chainsaw Buffet forums.
