The Gravitude Bar • The Merqury City Snowboard and Merqury Ultimates

I'm not really sure how it all started but i'm just gonna tell you what I know.

On April 14, 2005 one of are users Dan Karies posted a topic called
"The SSX4 Snowboard Design Contest"

It can be viewed here.
viewtopic.php?t=4351&start=0

The fan made contest was all about our users at mc.com to make a snowboard design with either the words Merqurycity.com or Gravitude Bar on the board.

At the time I was not really known by the SSX fans and I was just learning how to use Photoshop so my skills weren't as good. And many members didn't take the contest seriously (nor Gondee) since it was fan-made and I did as well so I ignored the topic for awhile.

Then on April 24, Lexi had made at least 4 boards that were amazing.
Our users were saying...

Quote:

LEXI, those are the best 2 so far. They are awesome.
lexi, as I said before, great job on all of yours.
Those are awesome Lexi
Wow..These are all brilliant..Especially yours LEXI..yours are amazing!!!
I don't think we need a poll to choose lexi as the winner
Lexi's gonna win, cause she know how to mix the colours and the shapes
Ok, so we might as well go straight to "Pick Lexi's Best Board Topic"
i think LEXI pwns everyone
Lexi owns at this

So reading these comments I finally stepped in the contest. Not knowing much about Photoshop I just threw stuff together. And to a surprise they liked it. But it was it was my last board I made that made everyone at merq turn heads. The board to some will be called the Grass Board.

Then NA set up the poll and not by much I won the contest
viewtopic.php?t=4637&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Then we had a poll on which board to pick sadly the one I really liked didn't win.
viewtopic.php?t=4731

Then gondee said that he will send the board that wins to his contact and see what happens and all we had to do was wait.

So I changed the text for the board to have .com in it so we can have more fans to this site.

Then finally we had life when gondee posted this

Heather from EA wrote

Quote:

Hey Chris - looks like this can happen. Below request from the art
director:

Heather, is there a chance I can get that file without it being cropped
into the board shape? That gives it a better chance of working in our
board shape. Also, we will need a base graphic for this board. I don't
know if they've done that yet and I'm assuming the attached was the top
sheet.

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris [mailto:gondee5@yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, June 24, 2005 11:02 AM
Subject: A special request

Hi Heather,

I'm just writing to ask if something MIGHT be possible
- I totally understand if it's not, but I told my users I would at
least
*try* and see what could be done.

Two years ago after the SSX 3 Weekenders went up to Vancouver to
playtest SSX 3, FirebrandX sent a board texture to EA for the
"FirebrandX" board and was amazed when you all included the board
texture in the game. It became a bit of a legend that little old
Merqurycity.com had gotten a board design into SSX 3.

This time around, (without any prodding from me I assure you) my users
held a contest over the last two months where several of them
(including me, probably 15 people in total) designed a make-believe board they would like to see in SSX On Tour. The community then chose a winning artist and is in the process of choosing the winning board (though one board will clearly win.)

I am following up on my promise to my users to let you guys know about
the topic and the winning board, and then I'll let you take it from
there, so do what you will. Rest assured I'm positive that no one
will have a problem with at least getting their board seen by the
higher-ups, but I can arrange further contact information is you'd
like.

Here is the topic where they chose the winning artist, a user of ours
named Royank:

viewtopic.php?t=4637

You can see my "Gondee" board in there too, heheh.

And as you can see, Royank won that poll, so here is the topic where we
picked which design of his would be the one officially "submitted to
EA", heheh:

viewtopic.php?t=4731

I have also attached the winning board design. It's called
winningboard_royank8.jpg.

So I'm following up on my part of the deal. I haven't promised my users
anything, but I know they would be absolutely ecstatic if anything might happen.

Thanks for everything.
Chris.

So I replied and after a couple of weeks this image came from EA.

First I was kinda iffy about it cuz it looked kinda Photoshopped. Then this pic was posted on Gamespot and I was awed by it.

So SSX On Tour was released and to my surprise it was there but I didn't know it was the best board in the game, making your CAC have max stats. And EA also made skis out of it.

I still make snowboard designs just for fun.

I'd like to thank EA, Dan Karies, NA, gondee, and the people of merqurycity.com for voting and making my dream come true.


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