Wow it took my old bones a long time to hobble my walker up here to the podium. :Papy: lol
I actually started not long before that Dojo kid... early 2002, I was grabbing "replacement coverart" off the original DVDCoverArt before Matt closed it for a revamp when he partnered with DV-Depot. It wasn't until early 2003 before I felt confident to share my own work, but I had been dabbling with covers for about a year prior to that to cover "DVDs from questionable sources." After sharing covers and becoming a "legitimate" contributing artist at DVDCoverArt, I literally became a fast rising "star"... serious, anyone from those days will remember, I had numerous covers on the Most Downloaded lists; one of my covers had over 10,000 downloads (Final Destination 2)... I made over 40 covers that first year, a handful of which actually hold up still to my current standards. I have covers from those days still sitting on my hard drive (I keep all my PSD files) and many were not even uploaded to Replace the Case...
I made
the forerunner to Dagon's Den and it went live on August 4, 2003 at a FortuneCity account. I had spent that summer working with another artist DVDWizard (Alex) to expand upon the templates he had first created for Columbia-TriStar and we came up with a few. I wanted to provide a place and means to help other up and coming artists... and that would eventually lead to the creation of the actual Dagon's Den, which later became Replace the Case. Well my desire to help and a minor issue with MattD (owner of DVDCA) over creative control of my covers after a few incidents with thieves. I resigned my administrative duties and pulled all my covers from DVDCA in late December 2003 and launched Dagon's Den on January 18, 2004. I, of course, was still around to help Matt when he needed it, like when Fox/Lucasfilm handed down a cease & desist order and when things started getting hot with Disney.
I sometimes miss those days, lots of great friends and artists back then... Darth Vong, Sebastian, DoomBear, Desiree, MattD, Jupiter, MajorTom, JackDaRippa, DVDWIzard, Ryan G (can't recall his username), Dr Zaius, shorn, RicEaston.... PSLOwner, JasontheGiant, Stalker, nausicaa, DMXiNc, Corvin, Pepe_Navarro, big_al_1983.... and many more I am sure I've forgotten...
Couple things before I get off the stage... back around 2007 the wife and I (that would have been Witchy... Liz... we've been divorced since Sept 2008)... anyway, we were converting our DVD collection to thinPAKs to conserve space so I was grabbing covers and finding covers left and right and some I was converting the spines for myself and most were already made that size... but one in particular stands out as it was a darn decent cover and we wanted it on our case, so I contacted the artist (now mind you I had only been around for maybe 5 years or so at that point). She was flabbergasted and honored that (as she called it) a legend would request something of her... I was speechless, asked her to kiss my feet and decreed she make me a thinPak cover... LOL
It was sorta humbling, but I told her "I'm just me... I may have made so-so covers and I have always been in my own opinion a decent not great artist that has been made legend by the word of mouth of the masses not by any of my deeds. It's not legend, it's not Sir, it's Russ or Dagon ...or Thong Master if you're Tim and Chris (
)." I still have that PM saved... it was a sign of the impact I made on at least one person in this community and probably others.
Things I will never discuss:
1. my divorce and marriage (I will acknowledge they happened but that is it). I almost permanently retired from cover making at the time....
2. my first cover... eek.... movie: Scorpion King, file date: 05/22/02 .... :yikes:
3. that video with Dojo and the Vongster at the cabana.... just 3 words: too much pink
It's amazing that a decade later I am still doing this and enjoying it.
