What Am I Doing Here ?

So I’m chatting with Kode, founder of Fanart.tv and he asks me whether I’d like to contribute some tutorials to the site and I said ‘Sure’.

I’m here, I’ve cleaned my glasses (then the monitor screen as my glasses were actually OK) and thought to myself what have I just done! The last thing I wrote was a paper on the advantages on PNF stretching as opposed to other forms of stretching 20 years ago (don’t ask — google it.)

I thought, and thought, and thought some more…………..this actually feels quite daunting. It reminds me of how daunting it was attempting my first upload to Fanart.tv. Man, that was a while ago. I knew nothing…..NOTHING about photoshop — yes you heard it here first — seven years ago I knew NOTHING about photoshop. I mean how hard can it be ? I had managed to become quite good at most things I tried over the years so why not this ?

I bit the bullet and got myself a copy of photoshop, installed it and — well, complicated wasn’t the word — so many buttons, what do I press ? One sentence came to mind….. what AM I doing here ?

Google was my friend — first I picked up the basics…..So now i’m really good (3 days later !) — ready to add some of these ‘clearlogos’ — how hard can it be ? The first logo I did (I use the term ‘I’ very loosely — this will become apparent soon) was for the tv show Mork and Mindy — an easy one to start then I’ll work up to something more complicated (small steps, small steps). I found a suitable image which I had to cut out so I did (just magic wand and delete button for erasing background) — there, done — resized and aligned and uploaded. Number one in my long quest for clearlogo domination………..

The next day I had an an e-mail in my inbox — hehe — probably a thank you from Kode on such a brilliant logo (actually it was………….a denial). ‘ Check the edges’ says the moderator. The edges I thought — never really looked at them. I looked and yes, the edges were all white and blocky . The magic wand didn’t cut it out properly — damn it ! So I did it again — this time I refined my edges…………(hehe — gotcha now !)

The next day I had an e-mail in my inbox — guess what — (you guessed it — denial). I hadn’t got the edge correct again — the edge was still rough. To cut a long story short this happened about 9 times over a week until I think Kode had either had enough or was pitying me and sent me the Mork and Mindy logo already cut out so all I had to do was use a shadow to finish it.

This was the time when most would give up but it wasn’t going to beat me. In the end I became quite good at clearlogos which I suppose was quite handy because the queue in requests section was HUGE at that time.

So things were daunting to start with — just like writing this — but if you persist — you get there in the end.

Before I get any comments about this being a tutorial well, read it again. Its a tutorial on never giving up and staying the course no matter what. Perseverance is the key when you first start to upload images. If you’ve read (and understood) the rules and you have some skills with GIMP or PHOTOSHOP then you are a few steps in front of where I was when I started. A good percentage of people get disheartened when they get denials and never upload again. I’m asking all of you potential contributors to stay the path. If you are passionate about a community that gives to benefit the whole or if you are patrons of good artwork or just fancy yourselves as budding artists then this is the place to work your magic.

I would like to write tutorials for the people that are just beginning on their journey with fanart.tv so, after having read my little story add a comment on what you would like to see next time I dust off my keyboard.

Thanks for listening.