• What is 'chiQ'?
• chiQ is my online/gaming handle.

• What is skinning?
• Skinning is the art of creating the images that get wrapped around 3d player character models in 3d games. These images are what gives the 'mesh' a solid, realistic look. A good analogy is if you think of the skin as the paper that goes around the bamboo frame (mesh) of a chinese lantern. You paint what you want on the paper and the game wraps it around the frame for you based on the mapping the model has with it.

• What tools do you use to skin?
• There are many good tools around for use when skinning, but I personally use WinZip to build and open PAK files, Photoshop to paint the skin images, notepad to write skin files, and Q3Ase to create shaders.

• How long have you been skinning?
• Since July 2000.

• How did you get started?
• A chronic, acute state of curiosity, and a certain game artist by the name of Paul Steed. I decided to try opening a PAK file and ended up going through several utils/apps before I hit WinZip. Once I'd opened the PAK I opened it's contents and reverse engineered the process of creation. Once I'd seen my first full skin evolve I was hooked.

• What is a PAK?
• A PAK is a *.pk3 file, a compressed archive containing all the images and other files Quake ]|[ Arena needs to apply the images to the model, give a model sounds, animate models, the models themselves, etc. PAKs are the archives that contain the media Q3A calls on to make your gaming experience more attractive and alive. A PAK is a renamed *.zip file.

• Have you written any tutorials?
• Yes. You can find my tutorial on how to make a simple specular shader for a UT2003 character here. Tell me if you like it and want more, and I'll write more.

More to come soon...