Nephilim (aka Manticore)

Interview 10/2005
Jennifer better known as Nephilim has agreed to answer some of our questions, which are not only motivated by the fact that that she is one of the very few modding girls in the OFP community, but also because she is very talented and working on several innovative and impressive projects.
Moreover Moreover I think everyone will agree that she is an artist with a capital "A".

Question (ofpr.info): Can you tell us a bit about yourself, where you're from and how you started to Mod for OFP?

Artistical OFP:"Taking a bath"

Answer (Nephilim): Well, I was born on the 19th of March 1986 in a town called Brieg or Brzeg as it's called in Polish, then after the Wall was torn down, I came to Germany (in 1990)
I'm currently learning 3d animation and such stuff at the German film school, going into either film industry or game developement.
About modding, I first saw OFP on a friends' pc. I like the idea of a huge battlespace with basically no limits then I've seen the community making stuff and I though "hey I can do that too"!

Q: What are your hobbies besides OFP? ?

A: I play guitar (for 12 years now) in a crossover band, I also do a lot of outside activities like jogging, cross biking or swimming (I lead a swimming course for small children and beginners). Then I draw a lot, which I really enjoy. I like making plastic kit models but I barely have the time for it... oh and I also program a 3d tool with some friend called Halon.

Original UAP Model

Q: Are you focusing on a complete mod in order to release it or are you more fascinated by addon-making experiments?

A: Both, I focus on my USCM (from Alien movies) mod but I test new techniques on seperate addons before I apply them on the USCM material.

Q: When we are looking at your Mercenaries Pack, it comes from one of your older projects named UAP (Unified Anatomy Pack) which was using nude models. Why have you created nude models at start since clothes have to be to soldiers' model?

A: Well, I initially started this as an educational project and it wasn't meant to be for ofp at first until a mate said "that looks nice, put it in OFP".
But the first reactions weren't as expected, some complained about nudity but as I said it was initially meant for educational purposes only and it's common that anatomy models are made nude first, to define the body on which later the clothes are modeled on.
Basically my intention of the UAP was that each mod can use its individual models using UAP base models.

Artistical OFP:"Buy me!"

Q: Don't you think that modding for VBS is something contrary to the free OFP community spirit? Will you make an OFP version of all that you are creating for VBS?

A: Yes and No, on one side modding for VBS1 is free as for OFP. And yes I will also make ofp versions of my projects.

Q: Can you tell us if you have any other addon projects (or just the Mercenaries) and give us their development status?

A: There's the USCM Mod, my f-117 currently in the works, an unbelievabely difficult airframe which is pretty demanding.
I've been doing some old Babylon 5 space ships in the past, then there are the new bugs (arachnid, and hopper) for the SST mod.
And the newer version of the independance day alien attack vessel which will be released about his weekend. Most of the stuff is catching dust on my hd!

Side project(Stalker inspired)

Q: How do you see the Modding scene when Armed Assault will be released?

A: Modders will probably switch to Armed Assault, it's a natural thing you know.
ArmA will bring many new features and possibilities and it would be bad if people would stick to OFP. Mods will convert their work to ArmA, it will also bring new modders who didn't even know OFP, as there are even uptodate people who never heard about OFP and who might start doing stuff for it!

Q: As it seems you are mostly liking Sci-Fi stuff, what pushed you to create the Mercenaries pack and the F-117? Is it a change of your center of interests?

A: No, the mercenaries project was rather influenced by the idea BAS had with the personalized SF soldiers and I already had my head done for the UAP in fact, so I started evolving it. The F-117 started actually as Vektorboson gave up his one.

Mercenaries Pack soldier

Q: What do you think of the fact are a lot of addons are released without any mission included?

A: I think most of the community members will agree that we have an oveflow of (good) addons but very few good missions. Also, as I see it, sometimes addons are just downloaded when they are released and hot for some certain time but you just play around with them doing nothing serious, which is bad I think.

Q: Is there something you have to say to or about the OFP community?

The OFP community showed many of their abilities in the past years and the ground breaking work makes people push boundaries and move ahead.
It's the community work that inspires and its the community that works with so much devotion on projects.
Keep up the marvelous work!

ofpr.info: Thank you very much Nephilim for your time on this interview and on OFP modding, your kindness and your great patience!
Nephilim: Be my guest! So wheres the money you promised?

ofpr.info: Hmm shut up about it or I'll tell everyone that you are currently single!

Nephilim: YIKES!

Nephilim ingame...	...and in reality!

Thanks to Nemesis6 for checking grammar & spelling.