Down the Foxhole - ActiveDen

Community Superstar Winner – ChristineWilde

Posted: 07 Mar 2012 08:21 AM PST

Community Superstar Christine Wilde

I’m pleased as punch to announce this month's Community Superstar winner. She’s been around a long time and it’s time we recognize her awesome contribution to the Marketplaces. A massive congratulation goes out to ChristineWilde!

Who is ChristineWilde

You may know Christine better by her previous nom de plume – WildeMedia. But just recently she’s re-branded under her own name ChristineWilde.

Christine has been with the Marketplaces since August 2009 and has worked up quite a portfolio of items in the 3DOcean, GraphicRiver, and ThemeForest Marketplaces.

Christine hails from the UK from the southern area of Hampshire, which also happens to be the part-time home of one of my favorite authors P. G. Wodehouse (of Jeeves and Wooster fame). Which means I may just have to give Christine a nick name and call out “What oh Chippy?” when we meet. I’m sure she’d enjoy that.

Hampshire was also home to England’s first commercial vineyard which was run by the most wonderfully named – Major-General Sir Guy Salisbury-Jones. I don’t think it gets any better than that. I’ll have to ask Chippy if he was from the South Hampton or the Hambledon Salisbury-Joneses. I say!

If you want to know all there is to know about Christine, check out the interview we did with her back in May.

And here’s a mugshot of the Superstar!

Christine Wilde

And if you're also wondering what the quality of work that ChristineWilde puts together – here are some of my favorites:

Lego X-Wing

This is a model of a Lego X-Wing ship from Star Wars. I created each brick separately then duplicated them and followed some Lego instructions to create the final model. This model would be perfect for adding detail to a child’s bedroom or playroom.

Design-A-Mug

This 3D model was created entirely in Cinema 4D and can be easily customised for your project. If you need a different file type then please let me know via my enquiry form on my profile page. The logo on the cup is created by a material and can be easily changed for your personal uses.

Identity Showcase

You can showcase your CD, Album art, Headed Paper, Business Cards and presentation folders.

Rapture WordPress and Tumblog Theme

Rapture WordPress and Tumblog theme is a creative and highly customisable theme that allows you to update your blog just like Tumblr. Rapture uses the WooThemes Tumblog Plugin so you can create specific posts such as images, videos, audio, text, links and quotes at the click of a button.

Female T-Shirt Templates

This file is perfect for anyone wanting to display their designs on a female t-shirt. All the t-shirts are in vector format so you can resize them to any size without loss of quality.

Along with the ultra-cool gold superstar community badge (that only lasts for 12 months!), the prize this month is a 6 month Tuts+ premium subscription, a $30 Rockable ebook voucher and a $20 marketplace credit. Congratulations ChristineWilde!

Making the Switch: ActiveDen to CodeCanyon

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 10:47 PM PST

A little over a year ago I needed to do something very simple with jQuery for a project. The only problem was, I was working exclusively with Flash and had never used jQuery before. So I hired someone to do it for me.

Looking back now, I probably could have accomplished this task with a little effort. But jQuery just felt like a foreign world I wasn’t quite ready to explore. Probably because my love and devotion to Flash was just too great.

Flash forward to 2012, and the technology landscape has changed quite a bit. If you’re a Flasher like myself, chances are you’ve made some changes by now. Maybe you decided to focus on games or mobile, and are still working with Flash. Or maybe you’ve taken a completely different career path and are now working with jQuery and HTML5.

But what if you don’t fall into these categories and haven’t yet made a change? I’m not qualified to talk about the world of Flash games or Mobile Apps. Instead, I went the jQuery route. Here’s my story:

I first started selling on ActiveDen in 2009, and over time, it became a large part of my business. I discovered that the money earned from selling stock was nice, but the contacts you could make along the way were invaluable. Life was good, and my love for Flash was as strong as ever. But then 2011 rolled in, and the iPad rocked the industry. The five stages of grief followed:

Denial: This can’t be, Flash is way too awesome!
Anger: Steve Jobs!!!!!
Bargaining: What about Flash w/ HTML Fallback? Can we try that instead?
Depression: Shrug… Maybe I should find a new career…
Acceptance: Ok, looks like the industry is changing, time to make a decision.

And with that last stage, a new adventure began. I started studying jQuery, and the sudden explosion of food for the brain was rejuvenating. Yeah JavaScript was a lot different from Actionscript 3, but it was eerily similar to Actionscript 2, and as a result was a unique feeling of new and familiar combined. Before I knew it, I created my first CodeCanyon file and have been uploading to CodeCanyon ever since.

Almost one year and eight items later, I’m ranked 38th for sales on CodeCanyon. Not too shabby for a guy who was outsourcing jQuery work just months before. There’s a boom in our industry for Flash-like components built in jQuery and HTML5. And this past year, working almost exclusively with these two technologies was my best year yet.

So if you’re an ActiveDen author who hasn’t yet tried CodeCanyon, give it a shot! Looking back now, I realize that a technology doesn’t need to define my career. If a Flash project comes along, great! But as long as I can stay creative and pay the bills at the same time, I’ll always be a happy Jack