History

Created, maintained, and contributed to by professional videogame artists, Polycount was founded by Andrew ‘r13′ Risch on April 1st, 1998 along with his good friend Ted ‘bearkub’ Shockey. It was originally known as the Q2PMP, as its first purpose was to store and showcase Quake 2 plug-in player models. In 2007, long time member Adam Bromell (circa 1999) joined the Polycount Team as its Principal Editor to help grow and develop Polycount as a complete resource for videogame artists.

The heart of Polycount is the forum. Notoriously honest in critique, our community of professional and hobbyist artists have been posting, collaborating, and helping each other like no other 3D art website since Polycount began back in 1997. If you’re looking to improve your skillset, learn new tricks or techniques, or just have an opinion on all things videogame art, be sure to check out the forum.

In May of 2010 the site was updated to augment the forum with regular updates curated by our editors. This ‘Polycount Update’ brought exclusive Interviews, Articles and Tutorials as well as reports from the rest of the 3D community. We do our best to report news that we know you will find useful, entertaining, or engaging.

This relaunch was kicked off with a new contest exclusively for Valve’s Team Fortress 2 called the ‘Polycount Pack’. It was a 5 week contest that yielded some amazing entries and highlighted the talent of the Polycount community. The winners had their artwork released in a massive Team-Fortress 2 update, the Man-conomy Update, where the winners earned an average of $45,000 from the first week of their items being on sale. Read all about the contest right here.

With over 50,000 contributing professionals or hobbyist game artists and some 3 million views a month Polycount truly is the videogame art resource & community. Our mission is to provide 3D videogame artists the best resource for 3D news, discussion, and community. Every decision, update, and move we make internally is with our community’s best interests in mind.

The polycount crew

Drew ‘r13′ Risch Co-founder, Editor
Ted Shockey Co-founder
Adam Bromell Website Architect, Principal Editor

Eric Chadwick Editor, Wiki Editor
Mark Dygert Editor
Sean VanGorder Editor
Seth ‘cheeseplus‘ Thomas Server Administrator

Forum Moderators:

Hawken King
Jesse Moody
Joe ‘Earthquake’ Wilson
Pior Oberson
Jesse ‘skankerzero’ Sosa
Justin Meisse
Rich ‘Rooster’ Edwards
Robert ‘r_fletch_r’ Fletcher

Using the Polycount ‘Greentooth’ Logo

The ‘Greentooth’ Logo (here) is Polycount’s unofficially official logo. That is, it is not ours but it is yours. It was created by our community and adopted by our community as the sole representation of the entire Polycount Community.

As we see it, the Grentooth logo falls in to the ‘Creative Commons’ and is free for you to use in your artwork, projects, independent or “AAA” videogames. All that we ask is that you do not make money off of it directly – that is, selling items specifically branded with the Greentooth logo. (E.g. A micro-transaction item branded with the Greentooth logo isn’t allowed, but you’re more than welcome to use it elsewhere in your videogame as you see fit.)

If you would like to see specific examples of how Greentooth has appeared in many of todays most famous videogames, check out this popular Reddit post about Greentooth.

If you have any further questions regarding the logo or its use please contact us.