undeadorcjerk
The Ulitimate TheHelper.net Lurker
- Reaction score
- 225
What's up guys, I'm Nile. I'm here today to finally write my story after saying I was going to do it like two weeks ago. I suck at introductions so we'll just get into things.
The Beginning:
So waaaaay back in 2006 my young fourteen year old mind was greatly interested in the amazing world of Warcraft 3. Well, that's not actually true, I got sucked in way before that even but I was a kid living with my parents, they didn't buy me anything. Finally one day I managed to convince them to buy me WC3 in all its glory and I started a sick obsession that lasts even to this day. I currently have the Warcraft: War of the Ancients archive sitting next to me as I type this. (I'm currently reading it through the second time I love this story so much)
Man have I gotten off topic already.
Back in 2005 I joined four individuals in making Clan RwK on U.S. East. We dedicated ourselves to playing custom games on WC3. One long weekend in July of 2006 I had an idea to delve into the world of custom map making. Triggers are pretty easy to get the hang of once you know what you're doing. I'm a person who explores and experiments with things so figuring out triggers was pretty easy thing for me to do.
So how did I get on a website for people who need help? Timers. Apparently. I looked back to my first post. I remember posting this, but I for the life of me can't remember what I was doing that required a timer.
My 14 year old mind would probably say I was doing something with your mom, but that would be immature. *Checks profile*
I guess some of us just stay immature... XD
Becoming A Part of the TH Crew:
As time went on I became more adapt at World Editor, even lending my knowledge out to fellow "n00bs" on the forum. I started looking around TheHelper once I realized it was more than just a website for helping "nubs."
Late May 2007 is when I made my first post out in the "real world"of TheHelper. I tried to get involved with the community a lot more than what I currently was. About a week later I made my first post in the Graphics Zone. I had lurked the Graphics Zone before that. About that time was when Ryan Wieber of Ryan VS Dorkmanfame started releasing tutorials on how to rotoscope lightsabers in Photoshop and After Effects. It was a combination of my lurking in the GZ and Ryan W. being such a badass that really kicked off my interest in graphic design and digital art altogether.
I had took my stab at signature making in photoshop, to which I posted everyone of them on the Graphics Zone along with my terrible, terrible jokes. (Seriously, I'm ashamed at my 14 year old self right now.) I took place in almost every signature contest that the graphics zone has held and even won a few. Even though I made signature making my go to thing, it wasn't what brought me to the "spotlight" so to speak.
I don't remember what brought me to it, but I found a program called Pivot Stickfigure Animator. I remember making the first animation of humanoid figures "punched" each other and then stopped moving as though they had died.... even though they floated in the "air" since there was no defined ground. Man it was a terrible animation... that spawned into a phenomenon on the GZ. I remember posting it one weekend on my summer vacation from school. I left for hours and came back to a massive response to the like I've never seen before on my own posts. (There was probably like two responses in those few hours but that was big for me back when I was 15 and no one knew me.) Today my stick figure animation post is the fifth most viewed and third most replied to thread in the GZ out of over 3,000 threads. That made me feel like I was on top of the world for a very long time.
It was at this time when that thread sky lined that I developed my insatiable hunger for more reputation points. For those of you that have been here long enough you know what I'm talking about. For those of you that don't... they're little green boxes that fit snuggly under your profile picture and your life isn't complete until you seem them.... many of them. This is where I explain the tie in with the title of this thread.
Back during my graphics days my user title was always my reputation level plus a thanks to whomever gave me my last rep. It got so crazy that I had to deal with the character limits in user titles and I even had people +rep me just so they could be in the user title. (insert half an hour break here from typing as I look for a picture I swear I used to have that showed proof of people wanting to be in the title...) I swear I changed my user title several times a week and even to the point where I changed it a couple of times per day
The Prose:
During January of 2009 Miz sent out an invitation for anyone on TheHelper to write articles for a weekly “news” articles collectively called “The Prose”. I quickly chirped up and offered to write a graphics focused article. Each week I sent in an article to Miz until he canceled it in in September. Each week I brought to light deals from Adobe, Corel, and other graphic software developers. I also wrote about contests being held across the interwebs and linked to tutorials for graphic designers and signature artists. Finally I ended each article with a spotlight piece of art or even an art gallery from an artist or multiple artists.
Personally, I loved writing for The Prose. I even continued that tradition of writing on my facebook page through notes, although it was a weekly movie review as opposed to a weekly graphics article.
Transferring into the Real World:
Late in June 2008 I got my first job as a part time high schooler working McDonald's. Working there quickly became my life. I loved it. My focus on becoming more than just the bottom feeder crew person and focusing on school (HAHA, yea right. It was really just playing games with my friends) led to a lack of me posting on TheHelper. At work I quickly rose through the ranks becoming a manager in 9 short months at the age of 17 in 2009.
I continued this daily trend of getting up too early for school, going to work, then staying up too late to play games with my friends online through the summer of 2009 and even until I graduated in 2010. Anytime I wasn't playing games with friends I worked towards what I felt like I wanted my main focus in college to be, graphic design. I still continued to post works of art on TheHelper semi consistently but I didn't go very far outside the graphics zone anymore.
2010 started many things for me. I managed a 2.6 million dollar a year business full time after high school and I fell in love with, at the time, a very wonderful woman. I put my main focus on life to working, playing, and spending time with her. I even gave up going to college to stay in my home town with her instead of moving across country. My posting rate on TheHelper plummeted. I started 4 topics in 2010 and all of those were before I even left high school. Its not to say that I didn't visit TheHelper ever. I looked, and still do, at the front news page multiple times a day because it was always so entertaining. That's why I changed my user title to "The Ultimate TheHelper.net Lurker". I even took some of the news postings to school where I showed everyone the things happening around the world. (Our high school science teacher would ask anyone if they had news to share with the class before every class with him so I got to do it quite often)
2011 went by without much of anything worth note except that I got engaged to that woman. 2012 I got even more responsibilities at work, bought a car, and moved out of my apartment with that woman into a house we rented. I also got to go on a snowboarding trip in New Mexico with two other guys that I've only known from online gaming, one of them was Bobby5589, and I started a youtube gaming channel, Unprofessional Professional Gamers, with some other friends. The end of the year was pretty turbulent though. A week before my 21st birthday in November I found out my fiancee was cheating on me. We broke up and I made a decision to get my life back on track. With my recent purchase of a car and renting a house there would have been no time for me to juggle school, a social life, and a job so I figured I needed a job to help pay for college. My first thought was to turn to the military for help.
I've always been against the military. Even to this day I still think it tears families apart. But I couldn't think of any other way to get a college education and still work to survive and pay off my car. On December 12th 2012 I went through the military enlistment process and signed up to join the United States Marine Corps. I spent every moment of my time with my friends as much as I could before I shipped out to recruit training. On March 29th 2013, the day of my 4 year anniversary as a manager at McDonald's, I worked my last day there. I spent the rest of my days completely free to video game and hang out with my new girlfriend, whom I'm still with, until I started boot camp on April 22nd 2013. On July 11th I earned the title and was handed my eagle, globe, and anchor on top of the Reaper in Camp Pendleton, CA.
Today I am awaiting the third and final phase of my training, my official job training, to begin in November. I still visit TheHelper every time I get on my laptop. I even have started posting again and I'm having a serious nostalgia for making signatures again since writing this. I got to look at all of my old artwork and watch as I progressed as an artist through all of my posts in the Graphics Zone.
So this was my story. Its quite a long one, maybe not as long as Tom Mai's (god damn, that's a long one.) but I've been here for almost eight years so it rightfully is quite a long one. I hope you guys enjoyed reading it.
I'll catch you guys 'round. Peace!
~Nile
The Beginning:
So waaaaay back in 2006 my young fourteen year old mind was greatly interested in the amazing world of Warcraft 3. Well, that's not actually true, I got sucked in way before that even but I was a kid living with my parents, they didn't buy me anything. Finally one day I managed to convince them to buy me WC3 in all its glory and I started a sick obsession that lasts even to this day. I currently have the Warcraft: War of the Ancients archive sitting next to me as I type this. (I'm currently reading it through the second time I love this story so much)
Man have I gotten off topic already.
Back in 2005 I joined four individuals in making Clan RwK on U.S. East. We dedicated ourselves to playing custom games on WC3. One long weekend in July of 2006 I had an idea to delve into the world of custom map making. Triggers are pretty easy to get the hang of once you know what you're doing. I'm a person who explores and experiments with things so figuring out triggers was pretty easy thing for me to do.
So how did I get on a website for people who need help? Timers. Apparently. I looked back to my first post. I remember posting this, but I for the life of me can't remember what I was doing that required a timer.
My 14 year old mind would probably say I was doing something with your mom, but that would be immature. *Checks profile*
I guess some of us just stay immature... XD
Becoming A Part of the TH Crew:
As time went on I became more adapt at World Editor, even lending my knowledge out to fellow "n00bs" on the forum. I started looking around TheHelper once I realized it was more than just a website for helping "nubs."
Late May 2007 is when I made my first post out in the "real world"of TheHelper. I tried to get involved with the community a lot more than what I currently was. About a week later I made my first post in the Graphics Zone. I had lurked the Graphics Zone before that. About that time was when Ryan Wieber of Ryan VS Dorkmanfame started releasing tutorials on how to rotoscope lightsabers in Photoshop and After Effects. It was a combination of my lurking in the GZ and Ryan W. being such a badass that really kicked off my interest in graphic design and digital art altogether.
I had took my stab at signature making in photoshop, to which I posted everyone of them on the Graphics Zone along with my terrible, terrible jokes. (Seriously, I'm ashamed at my 14 year old self right now.) I took place in almost every signature contest that the graphics zone has held and even won a few. Even though I made signature making my go to thing, it wasn't what brought me to the "spotlight" so to speak.
I don't remember what brought me to it, but I found a program called Pivot Stickfigure Animator. I remember making the first animation of humanoid figures "punched" each other and then stopped moving as though they had died.... even though they floated in the "air" since there was no defined ground. Man it was a terrible animation... that spawned into a phenomenon on the GZ. I remember posting it one weekend on my summer vacation from school. I left for hours and came back to a massive response to the like I've never seen before on my own posts. (There was probably like two responses in those few hours but that was big for me back when I was 15 and no one knew me.) Today my stick figure animation post is the fifth most viewed and third most replied to thread in the GZ out of over 3,000 threads. That made me feel like I was on top of the world for a very long time.
It was at this time when that thread sky lined that I developed my insatiable hunger for more reputation points. For those of you that have been here long enough you know what I'm talking about. For those of you that don't... they're little green boxes that fit snuggly under your profile picture and your life isn't complete until you seem them.... many of them. This is where I explain the tie in with the title of this thread.
Back during my graphics days my user title was always my reputation level plus a thanks to whomever gave me my last rep. It got so crazy that I had to deal with the character limits in user titles and I even had people +rep me just so they could be in the user title. (insert half an hour break here from typing as I look for a picture I swear I used to have that showed proof of people wanting to be in the title...) I swear I changed my user title several times a week and even to the point where I changed it a couple of times per day
The Prose:
During January of 2009 Miz sent out an invitation for anyone on TheHelper to write articles for a weekly “news” articles collectively called “The Prose”. I quickly chirped up and offered to write a graphics focused article. Each week I sent in an article to Miz until he canceled it in in September. Each week I brought to light deals from Adobe, Corel, and other graphic software developers. I also wrote about contests being held across the interwebs and linked to tutorials for graphic designers and signature artists. Finally I ended each article with a spotlight piece of art or even an art gallery from an artist or multiple artists.
Personally, I loved writing for The Prose. I even continued that tradition of writing on my facebook page through notes, although it was a weekly movie review as opposed to a weekly graphics article.
Transferring into the Real World:
Late in June 2008 I got my first job as a part time high schooler working McDonald's. Working there quickly became my life. I loved it. My focus on becoming more than just the bottom feeder crew person and focusing on school (HAHA, yea right. It was really just playing games with my friends) led to a lack of me posting on TheHelper. At work I quickly rose through the ranks becoming a manager in 9 short months at the age of 17 in 2009.
I continued this daily trend of getting up too early for school, going to work, then staying up too late to play games with my friends online through the summer of 2009 and even until I graduated in 2010. Anytime I wasn't playing games with friends I worked towards what I felt like I wanted my main focus in college to be, graphic design. I still continued to post works of art on TheHelper semi consistently but I didn't go very far outside the graphics zone anymore.
2010 started many things for me. I managed a 2.6 million dollar a year business full time after high school and I fell in love with, at the time, a very wonderful woman. I put my main focus on life to working, playing, and spending time with her. I even gave up going to college to stay in my home town with her instead of moving across country. My posting rate on TheHelper plummeted. I started 4 topics in 2010 and all of those were before I even left high school. Its not to say that I didn't visit TheHelper ever. I looked, and still do, at the front news page multiple times a day because it was always so entertaining. That's why I changed my user title to "The Ultimate TheHelper.net Lurker". I even took some of the news postings to school where I showed everyone the things happening around the world. (Our high school science teacher would ask anyone if they had news to share with the class before every class with him so I got to do it quite often)
2011 went by without much of anything worth note except that I got engaged to that woman. 2012 I got even more responsibilities at work, bought a car, and moved out of my apartment with that woman into a house we rented. I also got to go on a snowboarding trip in New Mexico with two other guys that I've only known from online gaming, one of them was Bobby5589, and I started a youtube gaming channel, Unprofessional Professional Gamers, with some other friends. The end of the year was pretty turbulent though. A week before my 21st birthday in November I found out my fiancee was cheating on me. We broke up and I made a decision to get my life back on track. With my recent purchase of a car and renting a house there would have been no time for me to juggle school, a social life, and a job so I figured I needed a job to help pay for college. My first thought was to turn to the military for help.
I've always been against the military. Even to this day I still think it tears families apart. But I couldn't think of any other way to get a college education and still work to survive and pay off my car. On December 12th 2012 I went through the military enlistment process and signed up to join the United States Marine Corps. I spent every moment of my time with my friends as much as I could before I shipped out to recruit training. On March 29th 2013, the day of my 4 year anniversary as a manager at McDonald's, I worked my last day there. I spent the rest of my days completely free to video game and hang out with my new girlfriend, whom I'm still with, until I started boot camp on April 22nd 2013. On July 11th I earned the title and was handed my eagle, globe, and anchor on top of the Reaper in Camp Pendleton, CA.
Today I am awaiting the third and final phase of my training, my official job training, to begin in November. I still visit TheHelper every time I get on my laptop. I even have started posting again and I'm having a serious nostalgia for making signatures again since writing this. I got to look at all of my old artwork and watch as I progressed as an artist through all of my posts in the Graphics Zone.
So this was my story. Its quite a long one, maybe not as long as Tom Mai's (god damn, that's a long one.) but I've been here for almost eight years so it rightfully is quite a long one. I hope you guys enjoyed reading it.
I'll catch you guys 'round. Peace!
~Nile
Or a signature battle. I really wanted to do some graphic work too, but never got around doing it.
