haven't been on for years but always had an interest in chopping but it has died a lot since I was on, there was a new chop every day maybe 2 but seems to have went very quiet here, me personally Im not good at it and I do bodywork so over the last few years id rather try and make the car rather than virtually but just don't understand how the community has went so quiet, digimods was Brilliant and was a shock when it closed but felt this platform was perfect for new choppers and experienced choppers to get some work and be paid for it is there just not that much demand? Is 3d rendering where its at now?

Good question, i think largely its because we need to promote this site more, there are thousands of old school choppers that use places like Instagram, mostly because they just arnt aware of Autemo, ( plus with discords around thats another thing )
that being said i thing is natural for people to progress into 3D when chopping doesnt give the same challenge anymore, and the whole notion of bringing your designs to life in 3D is quite enticing for alot of artists.

after i was quite comfortable chopping i learnt brushing, and im at the stage where i can quite comfortably brush an entire car, and give it a sense of realism, my next challenge will also be getting into 3D but only as a way for it to compliment my 2D stuff, ( i dont have the patience for 3D lol ),

As the owner of Autemo I take largely responsible for lack of activity.

It was fun when I got into photoshopping cars around 2006? where it was booming and there was new activity every time you hit refresh back in the old digimods days. Slowly over time people have different priorities and commitments.

I did have intentions of renovating the website after buying it off Mark/ MK211 but I simply don't have the website skills or budget to get it rebuilt, while I'm still going out of pocket every month to keep this site running. All I could do was continue running World Team Battles which slowly died over the few years as we could never get the format right (People not happy with results, etc)

With a bit of free time during this COVID-19 lockout I do hope to get some activity back up on the site as I've taken it for granted and haven't logged in for a good 3-4 months...

In short, forums/ digital platforms have changed and I haven't done anything to help it adapt to 2020.

So I do thank guys like X-Raited and Nordic man for keeping the admin/ competition activity going as well as the regular guys who are commenting on all the chops and giving helpful advice. I'll see what I can do to help bump up some activity in the coming weeks.

It went quite rapidly after a while. Quite many people are still active but spread out on many different sites. I myself began to appreciate the community aspect myself only after I was away for a while.

Nice to see the activity is picking up lately.

Sure, it could help if like for example one member would/could invite a friend, whatever it was new or old member to join again and check the stuff here.

The last few days where i jumped back on has made me want to make an autemo instagram account as ive actually seen us being mentioned and tagged a few times over the years. But @autemo is taken. So any ideas are welcome... lol

I truely agree that this has been a gret place to hang out and just an awesome community with so many talented people, i just need a helping hand on social media to get more refferals and redirect back to the site and reconnect people. I truely belive there is still alot of love for forums and still has a place on the internet.

It's more simple, many of the great tuners grown up, and the new generations find gameplaying, drinking and hopefully sporting more interesting.
On the other hand, 3D is more sellable sadly...

I think with the lockdown going on this is the perfect time for new/old members to come back and stay more active, I have to admit on old digimods site I looked at a chop and would scroll through pages if I had to so I could see naj reply because he always had the best advice and eye for things I think if this site got abit more busy and if we all sort of promised ourselves to comment on every chop we see it would be a lot better, I've noticed from being back how much nordic man you've commented on everything and is definitely helping this community I want to try that myself too in future, to redesign the website would there not be any members that would be in that line of work to help out?

money wise I think if it got busy enough a yearly subscription would be ideal with access to like an imageshack account full of donors or really advanced tutorials that subscribed members can access, a lot of tutorials on here have the images deleted over time.

Hi Dave. Sheer boredom under these lockdown restrictions led me to reminisce when life was simpler and I wasn't covered in baby food and trying to clean permanent marker off a wall!

I was completely taken a back at finding this thread with my name mentioned after 15-17 years away. I do remember you Dave, always tried so hard and strived to improve yourself. Your kind and generous comments mean a lot and I felt compelled to reset my login to respond!

Not sure how the chopping community is these days but nice to see some of the old gang still keeping it alive 😉

Hi Naj! So cool to see you, man you were posting more and more rarely even when I was starting in Digimods in 2005. Some of your stuff were so far ahead of times, like those Pikes Peak cars etc.

no problem naj your an inspiration still even though no new chops lol, im still not completing chops lol I tried to run before I could walk trying to brush a full car before learning how to properly copy and paste parts onto a car, hope your keeping well and understand that life can take you away from chopping ha, maybe a new chop could be on the cards if your. bored