In this month's edition of the Community Spotlight, we sat down with a guy that has been creating fantastic photographs of our modifications since Grand Theft Auto IV - Carrythxd!
For those unaware of you who are, can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I've always been interested in taking screenshots from the games that I play, no matter what platform I was playing them on, and since both GTA IV and GTA V included an Editor (and GTA V included the Snapmatic feature before the Editor), they were the perfect games for me to take screenshots in. GTA IV for me was one of the first games that I took a lot of screenshots from that weren't taken from the cutscenes in the game, the reason for this was of course because GTA IV featured the Video Editor that allowed you to take screenshots without the HUD. Only a few games back then had a feature like that!
Is there a certain career you’d like to get into one day like a LEO?
When I was a kid, I really wanted to become a truck driver. A short distance truck driver to be more exact, so driving a delivery truck around a city/to nearby cities. Becoming a long distance truck driver just wasn't for me, I would've much rather been a short distance truck driver. Although, I never ended up becoming a truck driver.
When it comes to law enforcement, I've never even thought about becoming a LEO, I just simply don't think I would be able to handle it. However, I've always been really interested in police related things, that's why LCPDFR and LSPDFR are the perfect mods for me.
Can you give a rough estimation of when you first joined the community?
I'd say around mid-2011 was when I first gave the mod a try and made an account on the forums, but it wasn't until early 2012 when I actually started playing it a lot and started making screenshots and videos of it.
Do you have a favourite user modification?
Albo1125's Traffic Policer and FinKone's/DCP1293's Police Radio are my two favourite mods, that for me are "must haves" in the GTA V when playing with LSPDFR. Both of them have added so many new features to the LSPDFR mod that it's unbelievable and I just can't play the game without having them installed.
Out of your pictures, is there a favourite one?
It would have to be the one titled "LAPD investigating a murder scene". In my opinion, it was a really succesful screenshot, everything was perfect on it, the time of day, the NPCs and the placement of the vehicles. Well except for the LS coroner van instead of a LA coroner van but let's just ignore that.
Tell us about the process behind snapping a picture in the game, what do you look for?
It really depends on what type of screenshot I'm trying to take. Most of the screenshots that I upload that are from the LSPD:FR mod are clips that I've recorded with the Rockstar Editor while I've been playing the game. They're for example from a clip that I got while I was responding to a callout/chasing somebody down the roads of San Andreas. When I'm taking a screenshot from something like this, I can't really change the time of day or anything else in the clip as it has already happened and most likely was over in just a few seconds, so in those cases the enviroment and everything else has to remain like they are. Which causes it's own issues, especially when dealing with clips that have been recorded at night time or in areas that have a lot of shadows.
What I'm looking for in a screenshot is that the thing that I wanna show off the most is clearly visible and can be seen easily from the screenshot. So for example, if I'm showing off a car, I wanna make sure that the car is clearly visible in the screenshot and captures the viewers attention, even if there is something going on in the background. I also want to make sure that the camera angle, Depth of Field, and everything else is just like how I want them to be.
Every now and then though, I do end up setting up a police related scene (like the one above with the murder investigation), these take a long time to do since I use a regular Trainer for creating them instead of a mod that specializes in creating scenes so I very rarely create them.
Taking a screenshot from something like this is much easier because I can control everything that I want to control. If the weather is horrible, I can change it, if there's a vehicle with a scratch on the side, I can change it and so on.
In screens taken from these scenes, I want to make sure that whole scene is captured in the screenshot, so that no part of the scene is left outside of the screenshot. Along with that I also want to make sure that certain things (such as NPCs looking behind a police barrier at the scene) are located in a way that it makes it look like there's a lot of NPCs looking at the scene instead of just a couple. Other than that, it's of course the same things as above, camera angle, Depth of Field, and so on.
Anything you wish to say to the community?
I would just like to thank everybody for the amazing feedback that I've gotten on my screenshots and videos over the last few years. It's been awesome to see how much people have enjoyed the screenshots and videos that I've made!
Got anything you’re working on that you can maybe share with us?
I've been doing a lot more video related stuff with the Rockstar Editor lately rather than just using it for screenshots. I'm hoping to do a LSPD:FR video with that at some point in the future, not a full video just maybe a police chase or a callout or something like that, that is fully made in the Editor and made to look like a 'movie'. Although, I still have a lot of things to learn about the Editor so that video might be pretty far away. Other than that, I don't really have any projects at this time.
And that about wraps it up for this month's community spotlight, massive thank you to @Carrythxd for taking part, @TWISTEDSCOPES for the first picture and as always, YOU the community for your support and suggestions.
If you have an idea of who you'd like for the next spotlight, or any other features you'd like to see then I can be contacted on twitter here:
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