PF 10th Birthday - Day 6: Meet The Staff... Again in PF News Forum

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PF 10th Birthday - Day 6: Meet The Staff... Again

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BonzaiRob

PF 10th Birthday - Day 6: Meet The Staff... Again

Lead

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Posts: 2646

Sep 9 11 1:58 PM

Pokémon Factory VIP

Tags : None

We're not great at regular updates, here at PF. As you've heard many times before, we're all busy people with lives and jobs outside of the Pokémon Factory. We're different people, from all over the world, with different interests, goals and outlooks, only to be joined by one common thread: The desire to bring suggesters' ideas and creations into being, just to make them happy.

We all take that bit of time out of our days to do whatever needs to be done - art, sprites, coding, maintenance, forum moderation, data entry and writing. We do it because we enjoy it, and because it makes others happy. But what do you know about us? After all, to you, we're just more fake pokémon.

And so, those of us who have been able to have decided to give you some more information (depending on comfort, of course) and have some fun while we're about it. It's time to meet the staff, once more.

Additionally, most staff SuperDex entries are now available. We'll be back tomorrow, with just one last little thing.

Last Edited By: BonzaiRob Sep 10 11 5:55 AM. Edited 1 time.

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BonzaiRob

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Posts: 2646

Sep 9 11 2:16 PM

Pokémon Factory VIP

Real Name: Robin Hayes
Age: 22
Nationality: British

I found PF, post-reboot, by following a link in Poryhedron's signature, just after the start of the PF2 gen. It was great to recognise the site that I'd spent ages looking for. Unfortunately the one old staff member I'd been in contact with, Aspenth, had left (although he very kindly made us the RSE font a few years later). I practically begged Culthulhu to hire me, and for some reason he did, after giving me what was probably the first aptitude test, which all potential artists must pass. I'm not entirely sure why he hired me; as you can see from my first sprites, I was a terrible CG artist (although starting me off with Culthulhu's idiomatic art style was trial-by-fire). All I can think was that he must have seen potential in me, for which I'm forever grateful.

I've been lucky to watch PF regrow over the years, and had my own skills grow with it. The first major website that I made was the PFA layout; my spriting has improved by orders of magnitude (or so I hope) and now I'm only clueless about site errors until I got and find what bit of the code I did wrong.

My favourite part, though, has been making friends with staff old and new, and watching everyone else's skills improve at the same rate as my own! Call it the unofficial aptitude test: to be a staff member, you have to be a friend. Skill, maturity and a sense of humour will take you a long way!

Last Edited By: BonzaiRob Sep 9 11 4:00 PM. Edited 1 times.

Shining ShinE

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Posts: 7573

Sep 9 11 4:02 PM

PF Executive

Real Name: Eric van Moorten
Age: 26
Nationality: Dutch [the Netherlands]

I first noticed the existence of PF at the Fake Pokémon section of serebii.net, where three of PF's GSC-style SE dexes are shown. After a frantic search, I found PF's site and forums and was amazed by the number and quality of the fan-made Pokémon. As a fan of collecting stuff, and this includes collecting Pokémon sprites, I am at happiest when my collection continues to grow. And because PF focuses purely on creating new Pokémon species, I was an instant fan.

Of course, I wanted to join PF. However, my artistic skills were non-existent at the time. Instead, I offered to do shinies. Back in the GSC and RSE era, the color patterns of Pokémon were simpler and there were clear patterns of colors and the shiny versions, and I based my shinies on these patterns. Apparently Culthulhu liked the idea of having shiny dexes alongside regular ones and Poryhedron was able to code the website to make the shinies appear. And thus, I was hired.

I was – and am still – very grateful I was offered a chance of being part of the staff. When the number of artists reached an absolute low, I slowly started doing sprites myself – sometimes from scratch. And now I must say that I am the living prove of how lots of practice and even more practice can make you very good at doing something, since I believe my sprites are able to match Nintendo's in terms of quality now. (And I hope you all agree with me, of course!)

I still love doing shinies, although it sometimes drives my relatives nuts when they hear my frantic clicking on the mouse buttons when I am changing a sprite's colors. That never keeps me from doing them, though!

To sum it all up, I still enjoy being part of PF as much as I did eight years ago – and I hope to stay part of PF for many more years!

Oh, and as a final note: You might have guessed ShinE is shaped like an E because my name starts with that letter. I've always been fond of drawing characters based on the letter E. Of course, it took me a sketch from Antarctros to make ShinE ever look as 3D as it does in its current sprite. And for that, I am forever grateful to him.

Poryhedron

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Posts: 3640

Sep 9 11 5:02 PM

Suggestions Board Manager

Real Name: Scott [surname withheld]
Age: 31
Nationality: American (United States)

Waaay back in late 1998...or was it early '99...I had just learned HTML and decided to make a web site dedicated to information about Pokémon. Back then, most Pokémon-related website owners named themselves after pokémon species in the game ("Charizard's Awesome PokeSite!" etc.) I wanted to be more creative than that. So I put together a whole new species of my own...Mewthree. Gag-worthy now or even a decade ago, but I had no clue at the time that anyone else was making up new species. The first other website I saw where someone else had also made a Mewthree...was a little place called Mewthree & Frogglet's Pokémon Factory.

A few months or so later, I created a Porygon evo to call myself to avoid mixups with the Pokémon Factory's Mewthree. I gradually became a staple of the site's community of fans, and when the site died out around the turn of the century, and one of the staff members decided to try to re-start it with a new business plan, I was one of the people he turned to to help get it running. I've been here ever since, performing a range of duties including Message Board Administrator, Chief Suggestions Reviewer, webmaster and coder, web host...it's been a thrill and a privilege, and I don't doubt it will continue to be so for a good while yet.

Miravistel

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Posts: 1832

Sep 9 11 6:49 PM

Pokémon Factory Worker

Real Name: Rose Simpson
Age: 25
Nationality: American (United States)

I first found the original Pokemon Factory just before it closed down, and followed a link there to Poryhedron’s personal website. When the PF reboot opened, I found out through Poryhedron’s site and migrated right back. In both the old and new versions of the site, I was excited by the creativity of the community, and especially the staff. It was great fun to see fake pokemon made into pokedex images, looking like they came right out of the games. I eagerly joined in the revived community, suggesting several pokemon, and was delighted to see my ideas brought to life.

Over time I grew to wish I could join the staff, a group that seemed prestigious, mysterious, and so very talented. I tried to think of ways I might be useful to them; at one point I toyed with the idea of making up move lists for all the old G/S/C pokemon that didn’t have them yet. Obviously I didn’t, as I quickly grew bored with the idea. Years later I'd learned to sprite, first by making splices and recolors, then progressing to making sprites from larger images. One day realized that the staff seemed like it could use spriters and I thought I could sprite well enough to help them out. Long story short, I applied, was tested, the staff liked my work and I was invited to join them, which I was exceedingly proud to do.

Since then I’ve mostly done sprite work, but sometimes moderated the RPG, moderated the forums, helped review suggestions, performed various other tasks, and just once I drew the concept art for a user’s suggestion I chose to sprite. I love a chance to be creative and to help people in any way I can, and this site offers plenty of opportunities for both. Nowadays I may not seem to be the most active of the staff members, as life tends to get in the way. But I check the board constantly, and I’m always around and reading the posts. Much like my staff avatar, I watch all over the place even if I’m often not seen much.

And yes, I'm a girl. A rarity among the staff, to be sure. :P

Last Edited By: Miravistel Sep 9 11 8:59 PM. Edited 2 times.

Cacapulse

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Posts: 1460

Sep 9 11 7:26 PM

Pokémon Factory Worker

[REDACTED]
Real Name: [REDACTED]
Age: 15
Nationality:[REDACTED]

[DATA EXPUNGED]

ALL GLORY TO MIENSHAO

Antarctros

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Posts: 3097

Sep 9 11 9:41 PM

PF Executive

Real Name: Diego Alberto García
Age: 28
Nationality: Argentinean

Seven years and a couple of months ago, something happened that would forever change my life. It was actually my birthday, and when I opened my inbox, there it was, the perfect gift: an e-mail from ShinE, telling me that I had passed my tests and was accepted in PF as concept artist! It was, if I remember correctly, the first time that the factory had hired someone specifically for that purpose. Boy was I glad, finally a place where I could put my experience designing pokémon to the test (during high school, a couple of years before finding out about the site, I had produced more than 750 species, many of them terrible by my current standards, but some of which have already been reworked into the site, or are awaiting for me to reintroduce them at some point).

To be honest though, I think that I wouldn't be so lucky if I had joined the site in recent times. I mean, nowadays we have artists than can actually take full advantage of digital tools! Me, I can't manage to use anything more complicated than MS Paint without having my brain shut down on me. And believe me, I tried: not even Terrankott in person could teach me how to use more advanced stuff. Oh well, being the pioneer isn't half bad anyway, and it is of course an honor.

Now, to list the many ways in which PF has affected my life positively would take too much space (and I hope others consider the inverse to be somewhat true), but meeting so many wonderful people at the board is in my opinion the most important. Special thanks go to ShinE, Bonzai and Poryhedron: they all in more than one occasion helped me with stuff that had nothing to do with PF at all, and if others haven't (I know they have, I just can't remember specific instances, but I digress) it's only because I didn't ask them. We've got a wonderful staff here, a wonderful community, and I'm extremely proud to be part of both.

My deviantART page: albertogr.deviantart.com

My friends' deviantART pages: Prostetiche BonzaiRob Niklix Mew Trainer Rose Cacapulse

Last Edited By: Antarctros Sep 9 11 10:04 PM. Edited 6 times.

elementalpenguin

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Posts: 2712

Sep 10 11 2:10 AM

Pokémon Factory Worker

Real Name: Zane

Age: 16

Location: USA

Oh man, I think it was about 5 or 6 years ago when I first stumbled across PF. I found it from, as many people did, Serebii.net - and I looked at the pretty pokemon, ooh'ed and aah'ed in fair turn, and went on my merry way. I came and checked back every so often just to see how things were moving along, and started lurking the forums quite a bit for a while... Then two years ago, I finally joined. I had briefly come off of a play-by-post RPG forum, my first ever active forum actually, and I was crazy about the stuff. So when I saw the PFL RPG was reopening, I jumped at the chance to join in. Of course, I didn't know how big an impact it would have on me.

Though at first I concentrated mostly on the RPG, since that was all to do at the time, I grew more and more eager for the reopening of suggestions... actually going so far as to copy my suggestions into a word document and post them the instant I saw suggestions, being the first one to post a new suggestion when they opened. Heh... I was pretty passionate about that.

What really is notable though, is my artistic skill improvement here. In the short space of two years, I went from abominations like this:

to the work you can see me doing now for PF. And for that improvement, I thank the creative atmosphere here at PF, the encouraging members, and of course, the staff, for teaching me what they know.

Just over a year ago, I sent some of my work into ShinE to see what advice he had for improvement. Eventually, he told me he thought my sprites were turning out well, and that due to my connection with Pokengine at the time, I could test for pokengine manager, doing menu and overworlds for that project. I sent in what I could turn up and, much to my surprise, got the job - and at this job I've improved my skills far beyond what I thought I'd ever do due to the wonderful guidance of the other staff and members here. I love talking to the members and the other staff, be it on irc or on the forums, because PF is a place of creativity and every person here is an engaging person to talk to. I've made so many friends and learned so much. I've loved my time on staff so far, and I hope the time ahead is even better!

Last Edited By: elementalpenguin Sep 10 11 2:12 AM. Edited 1 times.

JDLJDL

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Suggestions Board Regular

Posts: 3232

Sep 10 11 5:56 AM

Wait a minute.
EP you don't look very indian.

Also HAHAHAHA Robin Hayes you are ugly

Hippie too. Damn hippie robin hayes

hippie

Sign by Danasoft - Get Your Free Sign

Give me Internets!

Last Edited By: JDLJDL Sep 10 11 5:58 AM. Edited 1 times.

Reverse Genocide Budgie

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Suggestions Board Regular

Posts: 367

Sep 10 11 6:05 AM

I demand team fortress 2 videos of this.

Thanks, and have fun.

SUP GUYS

Coolsteph

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Suggestions Board Regular

Posts: 1553

Sep 10 11 6:44 AM

Cacapulse's offline name is [REDACTED]? Hmm, I heard of some couple wanting to name their kid Superman, but that is...unique.
I doubt you will ever find someone with the same name as you, Cacapulse. I know no other people named [REDACTED].

[surname withheld] is also an interesting surname, Poryhedron. Is it German?

(Context: Interesting last names are speculated to be foreign, or German.)

Sableye, Lvl. 9 (approx.) (male)

Tiquail, Lvl. 7 (female)

Normgon, Lvl. 6 (female)

Sunny (Sunkern) Lvl. 7 (female)

Grubva, Lvl. 7 (male)

Dark Ariados is released.

Most recent battle: Against a Grubva

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Poryhedron

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Posts: 3640

Sep 10 11 3:11 PM

Suggestions Board Manager

Nah, if it were German it would look more like [this person's family name is currently unavailable for public access. -kerstein.]

DeckuZora

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Posts: 2318

Sep 10 11 4:50 PM

Pokémon Factory Worker

I'll be adding my stuff tonight (tomorrow for the rest of you) been outrageously busy. x-x

New Signature Pending...

JDLJDL

[-]

Suggestions Board Regular

Posts: 3232

Sep 10 11 9:06 PM

I should add my stuff too, because SOMEONE (hint hint hint hint hint not me) has been accepted as staff!

Also Cacapulse: NOPE

Sign by Danasoft - Get Your Free Sign

Give me Internets!

Last Edited By: JDLJDL Sep 10 11 11:19 PM. Edited 2 times.

The Chimera Virus

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Suggestions Board Regular

Posts: 497

Sep 10 11 10:20 PM

I'd add my stuff. But I got rejected.

Maybe we should make a thread to introduce our RL selves. Hmmm... Edit: By "we" I mean the non-staff, of course.

... My insides don't match my outsides, everyone. *sad smile*

Flying-types are passionate, wild and free-spirited. They are also blessed with an instinctive adaptiveness that can take them through almost any situation. - From "The Cave of Dragonflies"

Fun.
Critical.
Doctor Who.
Asperger's Syndrome.
Insomniac.
Loved.
Me.

Only Always

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Suggestions Board Regular

Posts: 682

Sep 10 11 10:53 PM

EP, your hair is amazing, and Miravistel you are very pretty. :>

Funny, I didn't realize that all the staff were as old as they say they are. Kudos to you guys for keeping your childhood alive and well!

Making your life a little bit sweeter, one post at a time. ; )

Miravistel

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Posts: 1832

Sep 11 11 5:24 AM

Pokémon Factory Worker

Thank you, Only Always.

Yeah, seeing everyone's ages made me realize that I became a fan of the pokemon factory when some of the staff were still small children. It makes me feel old. XD

Reverse Genocide Budgie

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Suggestions Board Regular

Posts: 367

Sep 11 11 6:01 AM

Mira looks completely different in her other photo.

Also hands up if ShinE looks exactly like what you expected.

SUP GUYS

ZeldaFan

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Suggestions Board Regular

Posts: 922

Sep 11 11 6:19 AM

This is all well and good but the question remains...

WHERE IS CACAPULSE

Follow Superbeedrill to my party!
--->

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