Hawk

Introduction
It's BuizelBoy. Don't know why I ever changed to Hawk, that was lame.

I'm writing this in retrospect, 5 years after everyone else seemed to post their profiles. It is amazing how much things have changed since. All the amazing people I encountered online have somehow been lost as I grew out of Pokemon and turned my attention towards my real life. I never thought I'd lose contact with my closest friends online, it's a shame.

Pokedox is no longer a thing. Completely gone. However this wiki remains, and I hope it does forever, so that one day we can read through everyones profiles and remember the old times we shared together.

The Pokemon Crater Years
Can't remember a lot of this to be honest. A friend from school introduced me and I played the game more than browsing the forums. Only in the game's final two months did I venture onto the forums, and boy was it mental. On my first day I was infracted for "spam". "What is spam?" I thought. I then posted a thread asking what spam was, and got infracted again; well I guess that's life.

I remember there were some spriters I liked, but I can't remember their names. bfmvrocks was good, and somebody called Chaos something too. I remember I requested about 10 userbars from the Chaos guy, it was ridiculous, I just liked the look of them.

A week before Crater closed, I started spriting. I was awful, and in retrospect it was hilarious the dump I was putting out, convincing myself I was good. Shoddy recolors with no outline shading. I think I spoke to Arjun, can't remember his username though, about spriting and he taught me a bit.

The Sprite Lab Era
When Crater closed I moved over to The Sprite Laboratory, where I would continue to churn out utter shite that I'd call sprites. I remember producing such a bad Zapdos chao in my shop, that the customer actually replied, "It's not very good". At the time, I wasn't happy. But they were right. It was utterly awful. I liked these forums though, and they were small enough for me to "be someone", as it were. I ass-licked the shit out of the mods and admins until I was finally made a mod myself, and from then on I wanted to control everything, I'd never had any power in my life and somehow I managed to stop myself being a total dick and ruining the forums. Can't remember any individual incidents other than using the N word on the chat box, which was met with disgust from TMoF in particular. In hindsight, that wasn't a very good thing to say. Sprite Lab closed, reopened, closed, rebranded, reopened, closed, etc. Some guy called Eternal Shadow ruined everything at one point, but I didn't really know what was happening. Just shows how out of the loop I was considering I was a staff member. I was useless.

Pokedox
This place was sick. Joined when Allie, who I'd met at Sprite Lab, told me that there were arcade games. Spent the first week only on them, then began spriting a bit more. I honed my skills and eventually became a decent enough spriter. Allie became a very close friend, and a girlfriend briefly, but I couldn't hack the distance. Thankfully we remained friends, sadly we haven't heard from eachother in a couple of years. She was awesome and the best friend I had online. TMoF and Pokefreak, two of my other closest friends, joined too and Pokedox was everything that Crater and Sprite Lab were, but with more arcade games. All my friends were there, it was awesome.

A guy called Eternal Shadow did something which angered everyone and everything went downhill from then, can't really remember but I might have left the forums for a bit.

Tropica was opened, my own forum with a hideous color scheme which achieved moderate success. We managed about 3000 posts which I was pleased with. I spent a bit of time at PokeTown but I wasn't really a fan.

Dox died down, and while all my friends went off to Pokemon Vortex, I for some reason went to PokeBattlers.

PokeBattlers
Although I wasn't with the same friends, this was probably my favourite time online in terms of what I did. God knows how I found the place, but I became the first admin besides the owner Kaboom, and he was also developing a game on the side. I helped him out with some of the spriting aspects, it was fun.

Activity started roaring, and soon enough the little forum I was admin on became bustling, kind of a big deal type of thing. It became so big that the forums needed to be moved, and they merged with PokeZam where I kept my status as a staff member - those were some big forums, Pokedox size. It was awesome. Here I lost interest in Pokemon for a year, and after that I found myself at Bulbagarden. During my hiatus I spent time on Football Manager forums, including one I co-owned called The Twelfth Man. Football was the only passion I had over Pokemon.

Bulbagarden
This place was shit. Not the shit, but just shit.

Argued with pretty much everyone because I thought I was the dog's bollocks at spriting. I was better than most but there were a couple folk who put me in my place and shut me up.

One nice thing about Bulbagarden was that I managed to inspire a few people to learn how to scratch sprite, and taught them. That felt good.

Otherwise, just shit. No sense of community at all. Do not recommend.

Return to Spriting
In March 2013 I was bored and went online to check out old forums I used to use. They were all dead. Nobody sprites anymore.

So I started spriting again. Maybe it will become retro or something, I don't know. Then I got bored after a few days.

The Real World
Doing a journalism degree and drinking a lot of beer while suffering over my often-dreadful football team. Not much else to it.

A few last things
Apologies for just being a cock all the time. I look back and cringe at my inflated ego. I was just a child really.

Was great to meet all of you guys and I wish you all the best if you see this.

I have had quite a lot to drink so apologies in advance for when somebody finds something stupid or wrong in this.

A few more years later
This popped into my mind again today for some reason, probably about three years since I wrote the above. I have since sacked off my journalism degree and work in digital marketing, while drinking slightly less beer. My football team also remain dreadful.

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which team, dude?