Interview: Unclewilly

[Itchigo]

1. What first got you hooked on VP?

I was an arcade kid from the late 80's early 90's. Spent ever last dime i made playing arcade and pinball games back then. Sometime in the early 2000's i got wind of mame and decided i wanted to build a mame cabinet.
Rather than hunting down and downloading all the roms i searched out a rom burning site. I ordered the ultimate arcade disk set and was pleasantly surprised to find visual pinball and pinmame included.
From the time i loaded up pacdudes taf and played a few games i was hooked.
I was a straight leecher at vpf for quite a number of years until about the time fp was released. Thats when i started building tables. After making a few originals i decided to recreate bad cats.
A year later i had bad cats completed and thought there has to be a better way. Thats when i migrated back to vp and started doing recreations with pinmame and there has been no looking back. Building tables has become my single most enjoyable hobby.


2. What programs do you use?

For the most part i just use photoshop.
Im lucky enough to have grizz to help me out with redraws so i dont need to focus so much on art. I usually just use photoshop for lighting and toy animations.
I sometimes use fp for toys in combination with photoshop. Like the alien locks on big bang bar. I got permission from glxb to use his models. Then i took screen captures of the models in the different positions of the animation in fp then put them in photoshop and made the animation frames and had grizz touch up the colors.


3. What was your favorite recreation to do?

So far id have to say monster bash was my favorite. It was the challenge of it that i enjoyed the most. There are just so many toys and lighting on the table that it was a huge challenge.


4. What was the easiest/hardest table to do?

The easiest table was probably alien poker. Just a standard drop target one ball game.
The hardest was probably big bang bar, soley for the captive ball area and the toys. It was a lot of work coding that one to behave correctly.


5. Name (in your opinion) the most underrated table that never took off (yours or anyone else's).

Id have to say pinbot. It just never got a lot of appreciation. Probably due to the fact that it was released about the same time that jp released jackbot.
In my opinion that was my best recreation for where i was at in the vp learning process. I think the lighting in pinbot is the best i have done.


6. What makes a "good table" in your eyes?

If you mean a real table, i think its all about the rules. I like a nce deep ruleset.
If you mean a vp table, i think trying to get it to look as real as possible and play as close to the original as possible. Thats why i focus a lot of my time on lighting and physics.


7. What is the biggest mistake that new builders make?

Thats a hard question. I dont think anything is really a mistake, as the more stuff i mess up the more i learn better ways to do things.
I guess more my advice would be, rather than jumping in head first and trying to build a table from scratch, pick an author whos tables you like the look and feel of and spend some time in the editor pulling their tables apart to see how they make objects and control them in the script.


8. What other authors do you admire and why?

Jp of course as he is the master and originator of a lot of the standards i use.
I also admire phil(oooplayer1ooo) for his artistic ability and how he pushes the limits on what vp can do.


9. What advice would you give to new builders?

Mod mod mod, then try to build. Utilize the community. Most of the authors are more than willing to help anyone, they just need to ask.


10. Have you ever talked to Randy Davis?

No, but would like to sometime.


11. What would be the single most important thing to update/fix in VP?

I think the single most important update vp needs would be directx 9 support. Since we all know that isnt going to happen id say, adding dual monitor support or cuntinued optomization to make things play faster.

[Pintrepid]

Thanks, Unclewilly, for your comments. It was an interesting read.

I'd like it very much to see a WIP thread here at the Rogue, especially if it were one of your tables! That would really be cool!

It's always cool to look at the art and how it was made. Some of the better WIPs I've seen was Diner", by tamoore, and art by bodydump; "Nova" & "Fireball", by Starman; "Jabberjaw", by Eala Dubh; and "Time Mchine", by epthegeek. These are just a few ... there were several others that I just can't think of off the top of my head.

It would really be cool to see Pinball Art here at the Rogue. Maybe I should post some stuff on "Itchigo's Quicksilver™" :D once we get this Rogue forum working right under the hood.


-PeterMac

[Itchigo]

UncleWilly's a great guy, thanks for letting me interview you!

[unclewilly]

Im going to start working on pinball magic as soon as i install my desktop in my cocktail cabinet today.  Im going to work on it like a step by step.  With my current work and child situation i really only get to work on vp in hour long stints so i will be posting an hours worth of work on the table with full giexplanitions and pics.
Im working on a small write up now of editor basics so while going through the wip i dont have to explain stuff like control points and how to zoom in and out...etc.

I dont usually mess with photoshop until i get a lot of stuff built on the main level of the playfield but i intend to fully explainmy steps in photoshop as well for lighting
And toys etc

[Pintrepid]

Im going to start working on pinball magic as soon as i install my desktop in my cocktail cabinet today.  Im going to work on it like a step by step.  With my current work and child situation i really only get to work on vp in hour long stints so i will be posting an hours worth of work on the table with full giexplanitions and pics.
Im working on a small write up now of editor basics so while going through the wip i dont have to explain stuff like control points and how to zoom in and out...etc.

I dont usually mess with photoshop until i get a lot of stuff built on the main level of the playfield but i intend to fully explainmy steps in photoshop as well for lighting
And toys etc

Very cool, Unclewilly! Looking forward to it! :cool:

-PeterMac

[Itchigo]

Thanks UW. I am also working on a writeup of the editor, but I'm sure yours will be better as you know more than I do. The graphics wil help me too, as I'm "Graphiclly Challenged".:rolleyes:
(Actually I haven't taught myself ps yet).

[unclewilly]

Itchy.  Just read your part one table building thread.
Very nice job on the editor basics.
When i start my step by step im also going to include a link for the vp9 manual.  Is that ok?
That way i can refer to it.

[faralos]

Thanks UW. I am also working on a writeup of the editor, but I'm sure yours will be better as you know more than I do. The graphics wil help me too, as I'm "Graphiclly Challenged".:rolleyes:
(Actually I haven't taught myself ps yet).

for art inspiration look at what this guy did to a flash pin
http://flashredo.weebly.com/
 it is nothing short of amazing!!
I also am looking forward to a PS tutorial
as I still fall back to using Gimp2 due to not understanding PS at all

[Itchigo]

That's really cool!! He needs to do the cabinet too!

[Itchigo]

Itchy.  Just read your part one table building thread.
Very nice job on the editor basics.
When i start my step by step im also going to include a link for the vp9 manual.  Is that ok?
That way i can refer to it.

Actually since the VP 9.12 manual was written by Wizard's Hat we can host it here. Dan told me when I started Yola that I could host his tutorials. He also said he had many to go through that had never been put up before.

[Pintrepid]

for art inspiration look at what this guy did to a flash pin
http://flashredo.weebly.com/
 it is nothing short of amazing!!

Wow, I missed this link the first time around. That's a really cool redo this guy did of Flash!

It's too bad that it's not a VP table. Would be nice to have both a WS as well as a FS B2S version. It would be fabulous to play Flash in the new artwork! He should make a video!  8)

[Pinball Buzz]

Nice interview - I can remember UW starting his bad cats table build ! Time flies when ya play pinball:-)