Post by Bunta on Dec 16, 2005 10:42:29 GMT -5
Master Skinnerz End Of Year Topic |
Hello to all members, thanks for taking the time to stop by once again. I must say, we have had a ripper of a year here at MSz and many people made that happen, including all of you. Around March this year we began to grow very rapidly, at first it was ten new members a week, then soon it was 5 a day! By the end of April we were growing steadily at a rate of about 8 new members every day. When S2 Alpha was released (June 24) things really started to get hot and our sign-up rate reached 15 per day and stayed that way up until very recently. Recent weeks have seen several new members join every day but I guess it must slow soon. If I recall correctly, we had around 740 members in March, we have come a long way in a ahort time. The big message we recieved from that growth was that we must be doing something right. We know we don't do many things as well as we might but we feel like our members have a real use for this forum and so we are probably on the right track. We promise to stay on track too. |
Skin Challenge This year we created the Skin Challenge and it has been a success for the most part. The public voting was very popular but sadly became impossible to police. The private voting seems fair and just, but we do plan to reintroduce public choice polls for future skin challenges. The level of quality for the challenges has been remarkably high and so we're feeling all warm and squishy about that too. The Skin Challenge has created interest and interactivity on the forum and has drawn in new members while providing some truly smashing skins for public use. 3D Renders We also introduced support for 3D rendering which was launched with the help of Grudd who provided a detailed tutorial on Converting CMX meshes to 3DS Max and setting up the textures and rendering parameters. Soon more members helped out. thunderX86 provided some of his cool Max scenes and Ian H provided his. It wasn't long before MSz members were helping each other to render their skins. These people deserve our thanks. In more recent times members like Looney have shown others some cool stuff and helped out with things 3D. zed28 recently posted his rims and tyres for rendering purposes, continuing the trend of helping others. I think it is fair to say that 3D rendering discussion has also drawn new members to MSz and has helped to generate interest in skinning and LFS in general. Well done to all involved, and all the dozens of others who supported this section of the forum. |
Master Skinnerz Staff Deserving of many thanks for their untiring support are our forum staff. Andylec has been scuttled with real life and a horrendous workload and so he hasn't been able to be as active as he would like these past 6 months or so. Grey Fox stepped up to help fill Andy's shoes and he has been a great well of support and motivation for our team. Al Heeley continues to bring his own special brand of skinning, humour, and generosity to Master Skinnerz, without Al we wouldn't have been where we are today, I guess that's true of a few people, but I feel like giving Al an extra big bear hug for keeping me motivated enough to continue with this project. Our moderators don't have a lot do, thanks mainly to extremely well behaved members, I am regularly and most pleasantly stunned that a forum with a memberhsip of this size could be so well behaved. We get no trouble here at all and everyone plays nicely together. This makes it easier to show up and do the chores every day. Still, our mods are all people who have taken a special interest in our project and are also skinnerz just like you and me. Casual is good. |
A special thanks to all the members who promote Master Skinnerz. Apart from our regular supporters like German Skin Depot, LFS Torque and Northern Ice Wolves, we can thank winDOS for hosting (kits and packs) support and helping with the skin challenge project, JustinZ for always supporting MSz with hosting of decal packs and kits, all the members who display our link in their sigs on LFS Forum: you guys rock! It really means a lot to us to see that kind of basic public support. Great stuff.
Ian H deserves another special mention for general behind the scenes support, great scenes, great skins and great enthusiasm. Life is occupying his precious LFS time as only life can and perhaps we will see him some more in the future. Until then, thanks Ian for all the good stuff, you made a difference.
[/td][/tr][tr][td]Future Plans
The core of Master Skinnerz is a small team of skinning enthusiasts and keen participants. We have been working on plans to bring you a better MSz very soon. At the heart of the changes will be our inevitable move to a private host. This will mean a brand new shiny forum for you all to drag your artistic souls though. The new forum will allow for many more features and options but will look and feel a little similar in some ways to our current setup. The addition of full multi-choice and multi-config polls is just one tasty morsel that will be devoured with glee. The freedom of a private host will allow us to better organise and evolve our projects.
A useful website will be included for things like the skinning kits, light sets, interiors, textures and assorted tools and add-ons. We won't be aiming for the moon with this, we hope to deliver you great quality original content that is useful. We would rather maintain our focus on skinning and skin help than become the "everything site" that we could never manage anyway. There is some interesting tutorial content in the wings which is not software-specific, meaning it will be useful to anyone. The skin challenge will be expanded. We are exploring possibilities of featuring more than just 3 skins per round, and presenting them in a better way. There may be some side challenges to take part in as well with special themes to follow.
The bottom line is: files will be easier to find and download, challenges will be more prominent with better and more features. Skinning help will remain one of our main areas and higher quality results will always be the main goal. A big move and some small but important changes should make Master Skinnerz better than ever before. We hope that our members will continue to enjoy and participate in Master Skinnerz for many years to come.[/td][/tr][tr][td]There are too many great people to thank for our success so far. I know I have probably left out some worthy names but here I want to personally thank Al Heeley, Grey Fox, Andylec, winDOS, teazR, Linsen, 9ra55h0ppaH, Grudd, ThunderX86, StAyX, HEIZER, Sudo, Ian H and splattael. There are so many of you skinnerz to thank too, and you're all bloody good skinnerz too, but too many to name here. Keep up the great work!
To all you contributors, you mad skinnerz, no matter what your beliefs and customs, please enjoy a safe and peaceful Christmas season and New Year. Please don't drink and drive, don't become a statistic. Please return safely to continue your outstanding support for Master Skinnerz and Live For Speed, The Online Racing Simulator[/td][/tr][/table]