Photoshop

A few weeks ago, I figured out how to make skins for weapons in one of my favorite games (CoD4). I found this extremely fun, and soon began using GIMP 2 to create my own weapon skins. I guess the reason I found this so entertaining was because I could make something, and then put it into a game, and it would be my own personalized thing that I created (bragging to my friends about it was also fun). Even though they didn't show up for other people that picked up my gun over the online server, it was still cool to be playing and then remember that thing that I created and put into someone elses work, almost contributed to. This also opened my eyes to more things I could do on the computer, like making just images on Photoshop. Not everything had to build on a game. So I went to http://www.youtube.com/jxtutorials and watched some tutorials on how to make cool images in GIMP. I started making some images just for myself, to experiment with what I could do with this program. I made backgrounds for myself, I tried messing around with new brushes (by the way, I get my brush packs from deviantart.com or brusheezy.com), and found some cool things that I couldn't do before, just by looking up some things on the internet. Then I thought about how it was winter time, and Christmas was slowly creeping up on me, and I really didn't have anything to give to my family, and I also didn't wanna spend any money. So I said, "Hey, what if I combined this skill that I just acquired with that?" and I decided that I would find out all of my families' screen resolutions on their computer, so I could make wallpapers for them for Christmas (and certainly more than one, and not just 2). Because most of my family has mobile computers (except for me and my grandpa), I thought it would be cool to make the wallpapers a week in advance or something, and then when we go on our ski trip starting on the twentieth, then on Christmas, they would boot up their computers and find a cool background for Christmas, and thanks to Windows 7 themes, I can make a slideshow of pictures that I make. I also thought about it from even a career standpoint. There are people in the world that live under great living conditions, and all they do is graphic design for a living. Most of them also do some normal photo editing for people, maybe even some photography, but I thought that would be a really cool way to make money. Or, there is a website called threadless.com where you can submit designs for t-shirts you make, and if they pass criticism from all of the people who vote on them, and if they make it in a certain margin of top votes, then you get around $5000, and your shirt gets printed and sold regularly. Plus, every time they bring it back to re-print it, they give you $500 dollars, which would be a cool idea for a job, even though it would be a bit chancy.