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| I wanna silver gun too!!! |
| by Unorthodox |
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Unorthodox: So who are you? Where are you? How tall are you?Dachande: I'm Tyler Giffin, a 6' 2" 14 year old (yep you read that right :) with a love for Action Quake. I live in Glendale, California, very close to the moviemaking capital of the world, Hollywood! Unorthodox: Do you have a favourite movie, and does that have anything to do with your love for AQ2? Dachande: Die Hard, definately Die Hard! The perfect blend of plot, action, Bruce Willis, and cool cuss phrases (you know what I'm talking about). I guess that partially makes me love maps like urban and office3, and also where my online name comes from, John McClane. Unorthodox: So what gave you the idea to make gunskins? Where did you learn how to do so? Dachande: Well, when the AQ2AG first opened up, I saw Suislide's custom gold handguns. I tried them out, and I thought they were pretty cool. So I opened it up in Paint Shop Pro, and I went, "Hey, this doesn't look too hard." So I made a VERY primitive wooden sniper rifle stock, which thank lord, you posted on the AQ2AG. If you take a collective look at all my gunskins, you can see that they increase in quality from the wooden stock sniper rifle, to the metallic M4, to the newly released MP5. And I didn't really learn from anyone, I just sort of taught myself. 
Unorthodox: What kind of tools do you use for your gunskins?Dachande: Well, none of these skins would be possible without Paint Shop Pro. To all you skinners out there - Get this now! Without it it's really hard! Also, freeware on PlanetQuake, NPhermo's Skin Tool. For all those black skins, its invaluable. And QPed, definately, for making all my .pak files. Unorthodox: Any tips or techniques that you'd like to share with the rest of the people out there? Dachande: Hmm...that's a toughie. Well, always make sure you have the right palette loaded, you have no idea what a pain in the ass it is to have a skin and then have quake lock up because its in the wrong palette, very annoying. Lets see...well, there aren't any real techniques that I use, but a good tip for making metals look fairly real is either use the next color up or down in the palette list in the spraybrush, like this:  Or make left and right marks sorta like this:  Those give it a metallic feel. Unorthodox: Is there anything you're currently working on or are looking to work on? Dachande: Hmm..Well, i'm waiting for someone to make a half-life skinning tutorial so when AHL comes out I can make skins for that (oh boy oh boy oh boy :) And, once people start making custom models (oh if only i knew how to do that :( ) I'll do skins for those. So any model makers out there! I'm lookin' for work! Unorthodox: Well, we have a few that came out a couple days ago here, maybe you'll get your hands dirty with some of that.. Do you play your gunskins? Which is your favourite? 
Dachande: But of course I play them, I play no others. I personally like my MP5
because it's my best piece of work to date, and I like my blued steel
sniper rifle because its so much different then anything else i've made
to date.Unorthodox: Hehe, well, I'll have to put those up with this interview so everyone out there can take a good look at them - I've been playing your new MP5 skin a lot and have been loving it, incidentally how long does it take you to make a gunskin? Dachande: Well, It depends on how good i want to make it. The usual time is around two hours, however the MP5 took me a good six hours (euch!) Unorthodox: Phew! So what's your favorite map/model/skin? Dachande: Well, I have a few favorite maps. One, of course, is urban, and i've been taking a liking to kumanru lately. I'm more of a deathmatch person myself, but when I do play teamplay, I love either urban2 or 3, and teamjungle is always a winner. My favorite non-die hard model is SAS, definately. I either use the male/mcclane skin or the McClane model when i'm online. 
Unorthodox: That McClane model sure does rock, but what's your favorite non-quake game?Dachande: That's a tough one. I like the EverQuest beta (Suck it down UO!), and StarCraft once in a while. Unorthodox: Hehe, so there's a bit of a strategist running through you, ok, last question, what type of music do you listen to while playing Quake? Dachande: I don't really listen to music while actually playing AQ2, but I do listen to music otherwords. I like Korn, Garbage, and other alternative/hard rock bands. Unorthodox: Well thank you for your time with this interview, and of course many thank-yous from myself and the rest of the AQ2 community for putting your time in to making these awesome skins! |
