October 29, 2011 Thanks for the Influence

[Huronna]

THANK YOU
to someone who influenced you in the beginning of your PSP career. (unedited)

HURONNA
In June of 2001, after being assistant manager and then co-manager of FERRET and MSN group, the other 2 managers were leaving and the control of the site was put in my hands.
Many of you remember the MSN group pages, your could paint can them of your could do some fancy pages. FERRET was all paint canned, with lots of photos.
One of the other ferret people I knew had her own Ferret site, We we never competitors but I sure envied her beautiful pages. I wanted to make my site more attractive. So she (her name is Lily) gave me some very basic html codes and links to where I could find tiles that people said could be used.
Using this information I redid all the pages in the site and there were many, and I was pretty happy. I remember googling for award sites, and strutting my site in from of Awards4You, DMAT, Impact Awards and a few others. After doing this I started wondering....How do people make these things?
PSP? what is that.

So in July 2002 I bit the bullet and bought PSP7. I learned how to make seamless tiles and then remade the Ferret site again, using tiles that I had made that looked like ferrety things. But I wanted more...and so...

I joined a site called Graphic Impact. You will recognize the name of the manager when I tell you...Hellonlegs...way back in the summer of 2002. Do you know I did not even know how to save or install a font? I remember the day, like it was yesterday. we were on Hotmail IM and step by step she told me what to do, I will never forget that day, nor the time that I was a member of her site, and then an assistant manager. She really gave me the incentive to try everything. I did so many tutorials I ran out of things to do HA HA
About a year after I joined her site, she closed it because she was opening an adult site...I did not follow her and lost total contact until around 2008 when I bumped into her on her site Simply Elegant.

And I bet all of you thought I would say that Animator was the influence in my PSP life. He was a great influence, but not my first

ANITA

Huronna
OK, You know when I joined the group some 7 1/2 years ago, I knew absolutely nothing about copyright. I had to learn from scratch as many of us have had to do. There were times when I thought I would pull my hair out trying to learn this stuff. There were times when I sat in front of my computer and cried because I made a tag/tags and they were deleted because I forgot the credits on them or they were wrong. There were many times when I just wanted to say "I quit".

But you wouldn't let me quit. You kept working with me and encouraging me to learn more and more and keep at it till I felt like I at least knew a little bit of what I was doing. And now I know how to read TOU's and where to find them and MOST of the time I know what they mean. Sometimes they are confusing, but I get it figured out or ask you. I have learned so much in those years and even now, as manager, there is more learning going on. Always something new because the artists change their TOU's or decide they want to go PTU, etc. You just can't ever stop learning around here.

Animator.
He was a great instructor. I forgot now what I was working on one day and I kept having to do it over. Well after all day of that I got it the way it looked pretty good to me so I posted it and told him I was moving on to something new!! NOT.....LOL. HE had other ideas. He told me I needed a lot more work on that particular animation and I should continue working on it before I moved on to something else. YIKES. LOL

So yes, Animator and Huronna are my biggest influences in this group. And I can't thank them enough for all they taught me.

MANDY

Neophyte:
Our very own one and only.. .
When I was lurking and plucking up courage to join I watched her work with awe. "If only I could do that" I thought to myself. And I joined and hurrah! Neo had written vector tuts! People know I'm the worlds worst tut follower but I sweated buckets and did every one. I dreamt nodes. So my pick is Neo. Not only did she influence me, but inspired me as well.
And I still want to be like Neo when I grow up

Thank you, Neo

BETSY
I was fascinated by all the cute little animations that would thru my e-mails. I wanted to be able to make them. My DIL sent me a copy of PSP8 which I installed right away. Then I had to find tutorials. In June of 2006 I found PSPUG. They have some excellant tuts. Then I found Unique Boutique in the MSN groups. And finally I found Animation Lessons. I was hooked and have been since. I've since expanded to DAZ3D, Bryce, Terragen, and most recently (early birthday present) Ultra Fractal. I'm like the energizer bunny... I have to keep going and going...

As far as who inspired me most, I would have to say Huronna and Neo. I still get very frustrated with vectors, but I try hard. I want to be like these ladies (and several others here at AL) when I grow up.

RUTH
Carol has always been my inspiration.....from a site where we used to make garden art from concrete!!! When I saw her using tags with animation, I had to know how to do it....she's the one who told be about PSP...then I found Animation Lessons and told her about it....so we're still together!!!

Animator (for his ability to animate) and Mike (for his vectors).

SUSY
Christmas morning 2000, I opened a Christmas gift from my daughter and it was a iPaq, $99 from RadioShack, which is like a laptop only with no hardrive.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPAQ
So, we plugged it in and came online.
I hardly knew anything about computers, and it had dialup, and it turned out to be my hobby, as you would say.
Every day I spent hours online, and I was working a 4am to 3pm shift and the rest of the time I was online.
I started doing graphics and stored them in my email.
It's hard to explain the ipaq so I won't go into detail, but, it was my life.

About a week after I plugged in my little lifeline, I met a woman from New York by the name of, let's say, Jane Doe, who basically introduced me to the www and pc technologhy and graphics.
Of course, I had dialup, so I had to take notes and I have 6 composition books full of notes that include most of what I have learned about graphics.
I couldn't do anything along with her because I had dialup and I couldn't be on the phone and online at the same time, so. I would take notes and when I got online I would figure it out.
Two years went by and I thought I was an ace at graphics and I was on cloud nine, but then, my world crashed around me and I ended up having to have heart surgery.
Well, that wasn't so good but then I had all the time in the world to play online once I recovered so my hubby bought me a Dell XP for Christmas and I was able to run with the big dogs.
Jane told me about a paint shop program called PSP7, so, I got the anniversary edition ($100) and she said that she didn't know how to use it, so we spent hours on the phone and online (she had a phone system that was $25/mo to call anywhere) .... learning together.
Jane knew the pc technology and I figured out the filters and such.
We opened a MSN group and off we went into the world of tags and siggies.
We joined other groups and started doing WWO's.
So, along came Marilyn too, who has been a close cyber friend for about 10 years.
She got her first Dell not long after I did.
We have also learned PSP together and we learned how to build web pages, which I still do occasionally, and she became a whiz at it.
Eventually the group faded because I did all of the work, in the background and unfortunately Jane got all the glory and I never seen it coming.
One morning I woke up to tons of stuff deleted from our site and Jane was gone.
Eventually I learned that Jane had opened another group and found another friend.
It's a long story, and kind of sad, but I won't go into it.
Even though I was "bamboozled" into teaching her, and she robbed me blind of everything that I saved (links and PSP info), I still think of her and I owe her for teaching me a lot.
I've had other groups also, but, I'm just not manager material.
I'm too picky..........can't you tell? LMBO

Marilyn and I still keep in touch and we are still learning together, occasionally, but, she has always been my crutch, a shoulder to cry on and a super cyber friend.
She listens to me complain, (so does Heidi and Anita), and she gives her opinion and sends me on my way when I'm bad. LMBO
Occasionally she will still email me with a PSP question, and vise-versa, just to keep our PSP knowledge up to par.

So, thank you Marilyn, for, well, for just being there.

KELTIC MYST
Hmm, PSP, I found a group on Aimoo which did something called signature tags, I was very noob and didn't have a clue how to make them so decided to ask, they told me about MSN groups and other such places which could help me learn my way around PSP, i bought psp 9 at that time, not sure what year as my memory is really bad, but I was hooked, trial and error, relearning once cr rules became important, so i knew what i could and couldn't use. I don't remember any names as I tended to find tutorials and just hash on and hope for the best.

Animation, I found huronna i believe it was in DLT, asked how I could learn to do the animations that she did, and taadaa here i am and here i stayed, I would say everybody has been inpirational to me, each of you have your own take on animation and it is what gives this group such colour.

If I had to pick a name, it would have to be Huronna for introducing me and everybody else for keeping me going when the going got tough!

Thanks to you all!!

HOLLY
I've been computing since about 1983 but one of my programs included a version of Adobe Photoshop, very basic and I used it to work on my photographs. Then I bought PSP 6 and only used it for photography and not very extensively either. Since I tend to upgrade stuff, I got 7 and 8 but never took the time to learn anything about it until I believe it was 2001. I went on line and joined a forum called "The Place" run by an American gal who met and married a Dutch fellow she met on the internet. I am so ashamed to say that just this minute I can't recall her name. They call the site a message board and it is definitely g-rated and she was about as copyright compliant as I guess it was possible back then. I know we used images we probably shouldn't have but there was an attempt.

I struggled through what I consider now to be poorly written tutorials where I had to do them a couple of times before they made any sense, but learn I did. Then they introduced me to Virtual University where I went through all of their PSP courses along with Javascript, Anfy Filters and Cascading Style Sheets. I upgraded to PSP 9 at that time as well. After that I took lessons from Moon Designs, and other online folks including Winni's. There was no thought of copyright compliance with any of them that I could see. Sometime along the way I left the Place and joined a forum where they claimed to be copyright compliant but it was very loose to my way of thinking. I became a mod there and met Rich and Saskia at that time. When Susy said she did all the work and didn't get credit it reminded me of my experience. So many of these folks were ill and I stepped in and did stuff to keep things going and got chewed out for it. So, I finally left and joined PSP Playground, Kim's forum, as well as Dragon's Lair. It may have been the same time that I joined Animation Lessons and the Zone but just popped in once in a while. The Zone scared me off with the adult content and I guess I wasn't ready to pursue animation at that time. When PSP Playground closed I had more time and became more active.

So, long story short, there were a lot of ways I learned PSP but I guess the Place was my beginning and I'm grateful for that. Also, I made a very good friend there and we are very close. She has visited me a couple of times and we are in touch via Skype, email, Facebook and the phone. My PSP addiction and a friend as well.

DIANE
When I got my computer my neighbor told me about a group called OWBB II. There were lots of people who had some great tags, but it was not a learning site. That is where I met Dottiemaye. Over time the group got so big that it was hard to keep up.
PSP 7 came with my computer. Dottie sent me some tuts and I tried but had no idea what I was doing. Of course there were no copyrights on anything I made in those days.
I did find several PSP learning sites and learned a lot on them. Some of them disappeared over time and never did come back once MSN shut everyone down.
Dottie also found this site and told me about it. Animator was still here when I joined and he was always so kind when offering suggestions. Huronna made the most amazing things. I did the lessons and got better over time. I was never very good at making eyes blink.
I would have to say that Dottie is the reason I can do any of this stuff since she pointed me in the right direction. We have become good friends over the years.

SILK
My son talked me into buying a computer when he went to live in Singapore...we could email each other. I told him I was probably too old to learn. How wrong I was. I had four lessons and from then on it was of course experimenting.
I wanted to have an online support group for haemochromatosis since there was so much ignorance about the disorder and Doctors knew little. I struggled to get it up and running and Dogscout did the webset for me. I was intrigued.
Through joining MHM group I saw tags and wanted to be able to make them myself. Ben, my son gave me psp7 but I didn't touch it for a year. Then I joined Robbies where the members were very helpful I also joined another small group where I met Susy. So I can say with help from people and a ton of tutorials I finally made tags and from there websets which I loved making. Susy was great at making blinkies and gave us a weekly challenge ;although I tried I wasn't much good at them
From there I joined Simply Elegant and from thence saw something about AL so I joined hoping some animation would rub off.
I am not brilliant at it but I have come a long way from where I was. Members at Al were very helpful except when I used a tube with cleavage...LOL Wow,!!!
So I can say that many people helped me along the way and I was a tut a holic too.
I now use psp9 and I love it.
I am truly amazed at how AL members do vectors and to me complicated animation.
Oh, my memory has been jogged...I was a member of Beyond the Horizon and remember seeing Huronna who said she was an animator but it was quite sometime before I found her at AL.

KALI
back in 2001 i was pretty new to the internet even tho i'd been using computers for over 15 close to 20 years, so i was sort of wandering around exploring. i met some people in a chat room and we decided to start a msn "community" to talk among ourselves. one of my friends there sent me a copy of psp7 w/AS as a gift - i knew nuffin from nuffin when it came to graphics, so it sat unused for a while. then i found community feedback and got acquainted with ~Bel~ and Lady Jericho who both managed psp groups.

i joined both Bel's Graphics and Smoking Rose Graphics (LJ's group) and slowly began learning just a little bit about making tags, and a tiny bit about animation. (one of my animation lessons involved moving eyes - i did it by taking a widely circulated non-copyright compliant graphic of bill gates wearing bunny slippers. i made the eyes on the bunny slippers roll.)

somewhere along the line (in CF or Bel's), i met Liz who managed Beyond the Horizon. now she was an inspiration and became a friend. BTH offered lessons and challenges on how to make web sets for msn groups! i got thru about 8 or 9 of the lessons and some of the challenges - struggling all the way - but i also paid attention to others who were doing the lessons/challenges. one of the people was a lady named Huronna - her web sets were always so amazing! around that time i somehow found DMAT and saw huronna's sets there as well. so i entered some of my web sets in their challenges.

then, one day i saw a lovely set by a member of BTH (whose name i cannot mention as it begins with an sssss) who had a credit on one of her sets for some gorgeous flower tubes. the credit was "animation lessons" with a url. me being me, i checked it out only to find that i couldn't get to the tubes without joining. so i read some of the message boards and i realized one of the managers of AL2 was... huronna!

so i guess i have had a lot of inspirations - Bel and LJ for first showing me tutorials and encouraging me to learn, then Liz for teaching me about backgrounds and websets and simple html coding, then huronna for inspiring me to learn to animate and use more complicated tutorials ... and do them my way.

oh, and i can't forget to thank my friend G for gifting me with psp to begin with.

MARIE
My first inspiration was Flagryl and its been so long that i can't remember how long, at that time we were both taking classes at PSP Imaginarium, she knew so much more than i did and helped me when i needed help. She was always there to give encouragement to me and others, she eventually became a moderator and no one did it better. Shes also the one that told me about AL, by that time i was already into animations. My next inspiration was Neo, she inspired me to get interested in vectors. No one i have seen does it better, but there are some that come close.

MARILYN
My story is pretty much like Susy's She got her computer a year befor I got mine so she was my teacher not only in PSP but also how to use the computer. She was my first teacher in everything. I learned a lot by hit and miss and then I found AL A I can't remembe where I got the url (this was on the MSN group) My animations are still in the infant stages but I have picked up so much, not only from the managers but the members as well. And everyone is so friendly.

I am thanking everyone. And a special thanks to Susy who got me started

MIMI
I can't even remember when I started computing. Hubby decided we needed to get one and I thought "Why?". We had one 25 years ago but of course, at that time, no internet to amount to anything.
My cousin asked for our email address and started sending some of the cutest things. My emails were dull and dry. I wanted to do what she was doing. She added me to her email group, just a bunch of ladies over the country. One of those ladies gifted me with PSP7. I was clueless, afraid to even open it up. Thought I might break something.
Another email friend suggested I go online and search for a group that teaches PSP. I did. That group is now kaput. I started looking for others. Somehow I found The Zone which had tubes. I lost them for a while but found other MSN groups.
After MSN did its thing, I had to go looking. I found The Zone again. They were introducing lots of FTU tubes and Animation Lessons was one of the places they introduced. I came, I looked around, I stayed.
I do have my own email group now. I was assistant manager in a couple of MSN groups and a friend has made me co-owner of a yahoo email group. Only she and I send but we have a good-sized list.
Computing has made this ol' broad anything but bored. I do credit my cuz,Donna with peaking my interest in graphics which led to psp'ing and animation.

POLLY
The first person that I am most thankful for is Nancy she helped me with PSP, she had a site Awesome Creations on MSN and I had joined her site to snag tags This was in 2002, I had gotten interest in tags from a group that I found from POGO-don’t recall the name but they had a site that you could get people to do your challenges for you if you couldn’t do them your self. There I met Jolene of Jazzy Tags also and then I met Nancy. I had downloaded a free DL of PSP 8 A girl friend of mine gave me PSP 7, later, my Husband bought me PSP8 from Ebay LOL It took me forever to learn anything but Nancy just kept on trying to help me and encouraging me LOL. I searched out tuts and I looked back at some of the tags I made back then and they were awful LOL. Then In 2003 I was very ill and gave up the PC for over a year and came back to PSP in 2005. Good ole Nancy was still about and still there to help me. She left the internet and I have lost contact with her. I kept doing tuts and trying different filters and I still learn everyday. I met Huronna on Simply Elegant site not sure of the year I think it was 2007-2008 and she is the one that got me into animations and I still am learning about that LOL

GB & NACHOS
My hero's are Mr. Animator, Huronna, Neo and Mandy the best animators on the net... I'll never be as good as them but I have fun trying LOL...
I bought PSP 7 and was afraid of it... Never could figure it out... Then I got PSP 8 WOW then things started to make sense... graduated on to 9, 10 then x2 each one better than the last...
I've told my story before so I won't go into it all... Just that I loves this group and feel we're the bestest on the net... But then all groups feel that way LOL
And that's my story and I'm stickin' to it

CAROL
My first thought was of Ruth...LOL...I'm glad you have a better memory then me, Ruth...thanks for being such a good friend over the years...I remembered being led to AL by you but I thought you might have introduced me to animating too. I can't remember how I first started...I think someone on a msn group I belonged to called Krafty Kreations first got me interested. I found a free copy of psp7 to download and AS. I started offering tags there (before being copyright aware! ) After huronna taught us all about copyright, I had to quit that group because no one would listen to me about it. I think I've forgotten most of the many groups I've belonged to...none have felt like 'home away from home' as this one does!
I'd have to list huronna, Neo and Animator as the biggest influences on me...I can never be as good as Neo~she is the BEST at what she does and huronnas tags are always top notch. And I can still just sit and look at Animators work and marvel!
Oh, and Ruth, mentioning the garden art and concrete brings back so many memories too...makes me sad that I let that hobby go and I do think about Stella, Tammy and the rest of the gang. I hope they are all well. And you always amazed me with your artwork there....so wonderful like all that you do!
Oh, I almost forgot....I came across a animator by the name of Laura too...she was so amazing (Dean knows who I'm talking about) but she soon had to close her group after I joined so I didn't get to pick her brains--LOL

DOTTIEMAYE
I have to say that all the originals from AL from MSN I own a big thanks to. Even with my first tag I made in here you all came and said how well it was and it kept me going with more things to do. I do have to thank the Teachers back then from my School For PSP also. Some of them are now gone from the group but if it hadn't been for them I wouldn't have gone on to join this wonderful group. You are all just wonderful folks and never cease to amaze me at how much you have come to the rescue with newbies that are learning and even us oldies still learning. So A Big Thank You too AL's Proboard . You all deserve a big HUG and THANKS.

SHERRY
Well...for me this is easy because I never would have know about this group or even the world of tagging much less animation had it not been for Barb Kermis. I remember when I first joined a year ago Aug...I could not even make the tip of the little leaf move. lolol! Everyone here has been really great and helpful in my adventure into tagging but without Barb...none of it would have even happened.

So Thank you Barb!


Thanks go to all those who came before us and open up the gates to the most enjoyable pastime there is. PSP/AS