I have Emperor Doom with me today and I'll be asking him some questions on his eye catching comic book themed releases. From his newest TF2 Blue skin pack, to his amazing sprays. So let us get this started, shall we?

So Doom, what got you into comic books or rather, comic book themed releases?

Great to be here, Jim.

To be completely candid with you here, they're usually comic themed because I like comics. To get to the real heart of the matter though,I don't consider myself a skinner, per say. I'm a graphic artist (paychecks and everything, kids!) that makes skins because he thinks the default skins, of whatever game catches his fancy, are boring/ugly. Or maybe I just thought to myself (as opposed to telepathy) "That dude looks like Captain AmericI want to play as Captain America.". Either way, inevitably it dawns on me: "Shit. No one's going to bother making a Captain America skin; let alone a good one..."

Thus I skin.

And it's comic themed.

I am a huge fan of those comic book themed skins, I must say that! Though, would you ever consider doing more serious skins for a game like CS:S? By serious, I mean with out a cartoony /comic book essence?

Probably not. Serious skins tend to have a different set of standards. All things considered, I don't think I'm very good at skinning. I couldn't make a skin from scratch to save my life. Basically all my skins are me, taking an existing skin (or pieces), and using what I know on it: graphic art stuff. Vector lines and my personal color palette will make a damn cool Punisher, but an ass-ugly Ugandan Freedom Fighter, if you catch my drift, Jake.

That and it's my shtick.

Oh I catch it! You have many releases in a wide variety of categories. Though, sprays seems to be what you submit in most. In this case I ask you, what is your favorite spray release you have made and why?

That's a tough question there, Jacky. Gonna really needs my thinking cap for this'un.

I'd say it'd have to be "Spectacular Spider-Man".

You might look at it now and think "what's the big deal?". You gotta realize that when it was released, I was still the only one doing the "outside the box" sprays, Jim (I started it; I should be able to name it, dammit!). So basically, every spray out there was either a rectangle or a complete cut out.

Then this baby comes out of left field, with an intricate cutout, a border wider than 2 pixels, and little translucent shards of glass, and.... No one really cared. I'm still proud of it though.

Being one of the first members on the site to start the whole border on your spray trend, what is your personal favorite border style you have created?

"One of?"

Seriously, I have no ideI think the border should be secondary to the main image, so I try not to spend too much time thinking about them.. A lot of the sprays you see now have some fantastic looking borders, but they ruin the whole composition of the spray by drawing the eye away from the main action.

I like to keep it simple, so if I had to choose, I'd probably say something like the one used in "Deadpool - Headshot". It's sleek, simple, and keeps your eyes where the artist wants them: a gaping head wound.

With the majority of your work being in CS:S and some in Tf2, do you plan to explore any other game titles to modify?

If it's easy to mod, then yeah. Why not? Source engine games are just easy as hell to mod is all.

Let me put it this way, James. I've made god knows how many CS:S skins (don't really feel like checking right now). I don't even like CS:S. When I was skinning for CS:S, I didn't like CS:S. I did, however, enjoy being able to run around as Deadpool while hacking people with a ninja sword, and throwing Kirby (favorite game character ever) at people. I have done a number of skins for non-source games though. I did some Warhammer 40,000 skin packs for UT2004, and a pink Master Chief pack and Modern Spawn for UT3. Honestly, I probably would have moved on to UT3 modding instead of TF2 if the Unreal Engine wasn't such a horrid bitch to work with now.

Since your always working with art related submissions, is there anything you do that inspires you? Tutorials of some sort perhaps?

Nothing comes to mind, Jafari. I've never really used tutorials for kind of art stuff. And my inspiration usually comes from boredom and a lack of readily available options.

Going back to tutorials, do you ever plan on doing any for members to read about? Specifically spray related tutorials? Or is that hush hush?

Never.

It's not a "hush-hush" type of thing, so much as a "How the hell do you explain this crap?" thing. I'm self taught, so I basically MacGyver my way through everything I do.

A stick of gum, a few vector layers, some shoestring... BAM! 10/10 Spray!. Now how the hell do I make this into a list of steps?

Now, you do submit a lot of stuff on a regular basis, do you ever feel the the feedback you get is to harsh or plain stupid? What do you feel about the rating system?

Oh, don't even get me started, Jared.

Call me an asshole or 'whathaveyou', but I usually don't submit anything unless I'm sure it's something I'd give a perfect 10 from a purely technical standpoint. If I think it's lacking something, I'll sit on it for a month until I get some random inspiration that will prop it up that notch.

With that mindset, I tend to dislike a lot of assessments. In my defense though, I think we can all agree that there are an ass-load of stupid people on the internet.

As for the system itself, I dunno... Depends on what my bScore is today.

Do you visit any other sites other then FPSBanana to show off your art skills? Also, what is your thoughts about FPSB?

I used to keep up a semi-weekly webcomic based on Vampire: the Masquerade's sewer-dwelling Nosferatu, "Mister Trioxin's Warren", and I have a DeviantArt account, but I don't update either on any regular basis anymore.

That being said, do you ever plan to take your obvious talent further? To a career or even a personal portfolio? It would be impressive!

I can tell you from experience that "freelance graphic artist" doesn't pay the bills. You can have $500 one month, and none the next three; depending on any hundreds of factors. I was mulling over the idea of doing a children's book though.

Speaking of what will be done in the future, is there any new styles you will be touching upon in your submissions? Something exclusive?

"Exclusive styles". You're a funny guy, Jackson.

Continuing the last question, do you plan to work in any major/small mods for a certain game?

I guess you could say that.

The "World's Greatest Skinpack: BLU" which I recently released was hopefully the first of at least 3. I still want to do a Red team (though I'm still not decided how to do them), and a supplemental pack that changes some world models, decals, and other junk. So you could say that it's a mini-mod; in that it should still work on your average TF2 server.

Do you have any personal tips for those who want to get into skinning and spray making? Hell, even cool GUI releases?

Nah. I'm sure they'll figure it out for themselves, and be the better for having done it.

As a final question, is there anything you would like to say to those who want to follow in your footsteps in making epic releases?

If you can't do something better than everyone else, do it so poorly it's funny.

Thanks for having me, Jubilee. This is a great game show you got here.