Nittiyh

So we made an IRC channel for people interested in customization.
Feel free to show up and have a chat with some of the finest people to have walked this planet.
Server: irc.foonetic.net
Channel: #RadHacks

So.. This has been on my mind for some time now. I can't help but always reflect on how random things you do in your life sometimes have massive repercussions. This scares the heck out of me but it's making my life incredibly exciting, always bringing new things that I'd never expected, and always having me dream about what could possibly happen next.

When I visited deviantART for the very first time, almost 6 years ago, I was just looking for a theme to make my computer look cool, and man, I had no idea what I was stepping into. I remember looking at Turquoise VS by invaderjohn and being completely blown away by the possibilities that skinning had to offer. I was a 13 years old kid at the time and I knew nothing about computers naturally, but I was so amazed that I decided to do a bit of research and learn how to modify themes myself. It was a bit tedious at first, especially since StyleBuilder didn't exist for Windows Vista at that time, so it was all done through resource hacking. But sure enough I started modifying themes I loved to make them have my own caption and start buttons, I changed the taskbar a bit, and little by little, with the help of amazing people I built my first theme Pattern for Vista.
Seeing the amazing feedback was really the deal breaker for me. I loved every bit of creating a theme for myself, but now there was a whole another dimension to it, the community. It felt unbelievable to me that people would say such nice things about my theme. So I didn't wait a second and I went straight to making another one.

This was the very start of what I thought was just a hobby. The years went by and I got through high school, completely clueless about what I wanted to do in my life. I kept making themes though, and posting them here kept getting me incredible feedback. I recieved 3 Daily Deviations, Kiilki for 7 just passed 1 million clicks, Planisphere for 7 recently passed 1,000 faves and all my other themes have had hundreds. Those numbers are surreal to me. But they're just numbers. The most important thing is that my time here made me meet what I consider to be some of the most important people in my life. Slowly I started to realise that I wanted my job to involve creativity, I wanted to be able to go to work, make something, then when it's done look back at it and think "Damn, I made that.". The exact same feeling I had been getting when making themes. But for some reason, I myself never made the link between professionnal life and what I had been doing on here for years. It's these people who made me see it. They told me "Why don't you just go for it. You love designing on your computer. Make it your job.". It was so obvious and I had never realised it.

I am now 19. In September I went and signed up at a Graphic Design school. And let me tell you, it's been crazy. Crazier than what I thought my life would ever be. I'm learning to draw, I'm learning web design, I'm learning programming, I'm learning 3D modeling and animation, just to name a few. I am having a blast and it's making me hungry for so much more. It's tough work to still keep you guys updated because of the non-stop time constraints that I'm facing, but trust me there's a lot more to see from me in the future

I felt the need to share this with you all since you are the ones who made it happen. I'm not the best writer though so if you made it this far, thank you for your interest!

What a surprise, I certainly wasn't expecting that!

So today was the last of my exams. School is over and it's the end of a long and not-too-pleasant time of my life. In a few months I'll start studying design and hopefully that will prove to be good for me! So you can expect this gallery to fill up with things at a quicker pace, I guess.