- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
To clarify...
I've mentioned in another thread already, but in case you didn't read it, I'll explain.
Flash back to July 2000. Macworld New York - the first fanfest. Bungiefen are out in force, Myth II is still being actively played, Jinn still hasn't shipped and there's a close-knit community.
Aside from the wonderful Marathon Story shirts being sold there, there's a wonderful bunch of door prizes and then a chance to win... 5 shirts. These shirts aren't ordinary shirts. These shirts are worn exclusively by Bungie folks to commemorate their "sale" to MS. The front has a great picture of Ling-Ling's head, some humorous text and the back outlines Bungie's 7 steps to World Domination.
There's a series of Q&A with fans fighting each other for the chance to answer first to win one of the 5 shirts. When the smoke clears, my happy ass got to sing (in child-like fashion) the end of the Flintstone's Kids jingle to win mine.
A month later, I decide that since I'm spending so much time in OS X on my Mac, I need some swank Bungie icons. Finding none, I choose to create my own. Looking down at the uberswank™ 7 steps shirt on my chest, I decide to include icons based on that shirt. Finding only the low-resolution Grayscale image, I decide that I'd be better off using my "mad sk1llz" in Photoshop to make the shirt's imagery into iconography. Lacking a scanner, I do it all by hand.
Pixel by pixel, I lovingly craft that image of Ling-Ling's head depicted in my avatar. I go on to make another 10 or so icons in the set and forget about it for a few years (aside from the fact that I still have a hard drive with the icon and name of Ling-Ling's Head on my desktop).
Flash forward to last month. The avatar contest is announced and I think to myself "damn, if nothing else, Ling-Ling needs to come back home to Bungie as an avatar". I find my psd (recovered years ago from my son's almost-successful-attemp-at-the-age-of-1-and-a-half to erase my hard drive), do a little bit of love and voila - instant submission of artwork that I made.
I honestly didn't expect to win anything and did it for the reasons stated above.
Am I going to enjoy my prizes? Damn straight - my old b.net T-shirt (long sleeve, white with Trow strangulation) is, well, old. Like my DMUKYA, Myth TFL and Myth SB shirts before it, it is in need of replacement after having been worn with pride for numerous years.
I'm happy for everyone who won, and think that there really needs to be a lot less sour-grapes. Sure, first place would've been nice, but as I said, I'm happy to even have gotten the artwork back to Bungie.