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2023-12-22 18:03

Sander

Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 496

Graphics on C64 demoscene: Guide of Ethics – a Proposal

Dear fellow sceners,

This is an attempt to get more understanding among, and for, C64 demoscene pixel artists. It’s not written to limit anyone, but a prayer for more transparency.

Read the document here: ->Graphics on C64 demoscene: Guide of Ethics – a Proposal<-

We tried to give define and value different processes. Which is a result of discussion, where we saw mutual grounds and felt the need to write these down.
We will update the document periodically, when enough input has been gathered and sorted out.

We’d really love to hear your thoughts on the subjects in the document.
Please post them in this thread.

(Personally I will not always fully comply to these guidelines myself, but I will continue to be transparant about it. However, I do agree with the values communicated in this document.)

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2023-12-24 03:15

PAL

Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 292

Back in the day, on the Commodore 64 scene, where nobody gave a darn about copyrights or legal hoops, we had this rad thing going on. It's like this secret club where crackers, coders, music composers, and pixel artists just do their thing, outside the rules of the real world. Even UNESCO noticed lately, thinking pixels, sid music and real-time code deserve a spot in the history books, or maybe a time capsule.

Let's dial it back a bit. Started with cracking software and tiny intros, then boom, the demo scene happened. Ideas were born, visuals were visualized, and audio was thrown in for good measure. It's all about nabbing ideas and going wild on the screen and in the speakers, today JBL boom box ;-) . Think pixels, audio, visuals—all whipped up by some code sorcery from totally insane folks. To snag an idea is all magical, the scene is the place where you can do just that and create something, like Censor Design's Tribute to Vangelis, a genius move done out of pure love. No ego boost, just a tribute to a legend - that most of us in the scene hold love to.

Our heroes in this scene are like rockstars. They got, and stil get appreciation. Inspired by everything—mainstream, old stuff, current events, or just their wild thoughts. The demo scene isn't about being total original; it's about grabbing ideas and making them into your own unique creation. It's the real deal, and there's no other place like the real scene in the whole world. That's why UNESCO in some spots called it a world heritage thing—it's the spirit of just creating.

Forget about life's bills, responsibilities, who needs that? The demo scene is about hanging with a bunch of crazy talented best-in-life friends. Zillion hours on ideas, pixels, code and music? As long as you create something awesome running live on old hardware and hear the cheers of a few hundred nerdy people who totally get your digital and non-work-related super insane madness.

Imagine sitting at Revision, signing books you're featured in, feeling like a demoscene celeb. For a moment, you were a rockstar! You felt like one, and at that very time, you were one—a rockstar for a day. I felt this and it was so joyful. Sure, I've worked on big projects, from airports to web browsers used by 85 million users per day (Opera web browser, designed with Trond), but nothing beats that day when me and Tom Zaphod hit the spacebar at the X party in 2010. Well, almost nothing. My daughter is pretty cool too. But when I and Tom sat there pressing the space bar between parts, that we all had created, all of us in offence and I did all them gfx and was so proud, people cheering after 20 years of hibernation, that was one of the best and single most epic times of my life.

In the demo scene, you can do whatever you want, just don't get caught. Never claim you made something if you just stole it —that's the golden rule. Never enter a gfx compo with something like that. Don't pretend you did everything solo when you've tweaked it with Photoshop, assets, or images, or whatever doing a collage, in a demo that's all okay. But don't do it in a gfx compo, never ever create fake workstages where pixels never change through the time of pixeling it whole new. Sure, having your own pipeline is cool, but claiming you did every pixel alone? That's a bit like claiming you've cracked time travel—sounds cool, but we're not buying it. When I did the never-ending story part together with coder Lars, the idea was to create the longest-ever scrolling streaming image with effects on the C64, a blend of painting and images, I am an advertising dude, a pro at it, but man, my bleeding finger was proof of what went down. It's still a marvel in the scene world—a whole disk side of streaming koalas with effects - very underrated effort it is by the scene. Could've had more effects, but it is what it is—time and all.

In the wild world of Commodore 64, where pixels, SID music, and insanity code party hard, it's all about collaborative chaos. It's a place where you can be gloriously insane, break all the rules, and create free art with a bunch of talented lunatics and all kinds of really strange people. It's a demoscene utopia where the only inquisition is asking, "Did you have fun?" And the answer is a loud, pixelated "Hell yeah!"

Let us have fun !

2023-12-24 04:17

PAL

Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 292

The flow, to be in flow is a great thing for the scene

2023-12-24 09:02

Fungus

Registered: Sep 2002
Posts: 686

Should I document my entire toolset and build chain?

As a musician, I steal shamelessly, but I'm old school and that's accepted because that's progress. You build upon others work, or are inspired by it. I see no difference, you are meat based computer yourselves. I don't cite my influences on every note I play. I don't divulge my gear chain, if it's real amps and pedals or ai based profiled patches in a kemper or axefx or plugin. This whole argument doesn't make any sense to me.

2023-12-24 14:17

LMan

Registered: Jun 2010
Posts: 83

Even more wisdom from our PAL.

2023-12-24 14:44

Electric

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 39

Sorry for the silence. Managed to get hold of half an hour before Santa arrives.

So, my gathered comments below, fastly written but to the points I see relevant. Thanks for everyone commenting.

First of all: please read the document throughoutly. How I see the commenting many seem to react it with lots of emotion. It’s a difficult task to define something like ‘ethics’. Any feedback is appreciated.

@Hein: The issue with transparent references popped up few times with different views on it. We decided to suggest those to be presented as visuals OR as written description. Someone pointed out that for some art it’s a statement too not to show the references and in case of ‘art’ that’s of course OK too. This is anyhow, a proposal.

LDX#40: Yes, lots of talk it’s too long and might get better approval if shortened. However, it’s sorta repetiteve too with the intro and first table telling it all already and the latter part telling it again with a bit more details. I think this length is relatively short already – this could easily mushroom into a gigant no one reads, if going into very details of pixeling, what is art and all that. Anyway, I think we should try to shorten the text still.

@Nim: Very much agree with your list of ethics – I think the proposal done is about the same thing, just written bit differently.

@Fungus: Not sure if you read it throughoutly with thought but gatekeeping was something we did NOT want to propose. It’d help us out if you can point out the spots that you read as gatekeeping.

@Pal: I think the current draft is not about ‘rules’, only when it comes to actual competitions which already have even stricter rules. As the title says, it’s a proposal from graphic bunker and shall remain as that. If the scene decides to respect whatever over originality and creativity, that’s it. We’ve told how we feel and if it’s not worth of anything then all settled. The purpose is not to limit anyone nor kill the scene but the opposite. I think the gfx scene is already pretty dead in 2023 with several people talking about quitting due the AI and AI’s ‘organic proposal’ to convert.

@LMan: We’d definitely like to work with ‘the tone’ of the document. Already did, but since we’re mostly old farts it may often sound like Moses talking. If you can point these spots out, we’d appreciate. What we’re aware as well is that the doc most likely does NOT cover all the modern workflows and may confront with something we did not notice. Would like to hear more about this, here or in PM. What comes to workstages – there’s job to do at least with parties who have mostly done lazy job checking if the works are within rules. However, workstages DO mean a lot. They’re not only for paranoids to see if something was done by hand or not but a key to learn for many. They tell about the workflow and all in-between. I can personally say I enjoy seeing the workstages and timelapses – mostly due the ways of doing are often so different from my own. It is of course always possible to cheat even the stages and in future that’s prolly much easier. However, I can’t really believe many would do that as it’d set a new standard for the word ‘lamer’.

@Krill: Proposal for working ethic way. It’s not meant to be set of rules but a proposal for how to work with graphics, written by bunch of pixel pushers who’ve mostly done it relatively long time.

@Groepaz: You’re right: this doc wouldn’t be here without the past events, latest being the AI Ninja and Vangelis discussions. There’s certainly fear of that demoscene graphics will turn into ‘just decoration’ while it has not been that from the perspective of many graphic artists. I personally haven’t ever heard so many old sceners speaking about quitting as the fun (that many hear cry for) is sorta vanishing, at least for traditional pixelers. So, this doc can be also seen as a statement that you can take or leave. Quite many have left already but seems like more will go if things do not change at all. And yup: in the end lamer is a lamer. He / she can’t help it.

@Burglar: The document does not limit anyone in the ways they do work. It’s just proposing for transparency. We’ll update it for sure basing on the feedback received – especially with feedback from people making graphics for C64 demoscene. I guess the part that’s talking to party orgs is merely due the recent debates and flood with AI and conversions – there has been a lot of faked workstages etc in some big demo party comps. The document proposes just to pay more attention to the rules (which of course can be anything from no rules to something more strict) and see how they are executed in the gfx submitted. We’ll see what happens in the future. There are examples in our sandbox history where wiring for example took over leading to some original artists to disappear from the scene.

@Mixer: The concept of originality for sure is a difficult task – everything we do is mash-up of things we experienced and filtered until our memory calls them ‘our own’. We’d want to keep the guidelines relatively short while some say it’s too long already. Many have stated here this all in one sentence. From our point of view we’d like to define it all just a bit more so that people with different experience on pixel graphics can understand it – and in case they agree, also base their judging of graphics on something bit more solid. Note also that the doc deals with graphics, their originality. I think this discussion should be done seperately on music and code. With AI getting everywhere you’ll prolly start to talk about this just a bit later. In whole art / graphics scene AI has been already for a long time and people lose their jobs due it in rl. This same discussion concerning AI has been going on in all the work relating image from fine arts to commercial illustration, from game development to pixel graphics.

@Carrion: Your outcome with the presentation at X was exactly the transparency I’d like to see more. I might not have personally commented it but privately told to many about it and said it’s a *must* watch.

@Jammer: I suppose (as noted to Mixer) this talk will eventually reach SID composing as well, if not already. However, what the doc is about is gfx.

@Pararaum: There might be a missunderstanding here but how I read the doc it does not really say ‘you can’t do that’. That was the intention at least. Please point out what might be silly and we’ll work on that.

In general I’d just propose to really read the document through with thought. Many comments see it as a set of ‘rules’ that it is not. It’s not either telling what to do or with what tools. As I read it I see no limitations, just a proposal to transparency.

Note too that indeed the whole thrill about C64 is in it’s rules: standard machine, memory, tied colour palette +++. I think this is one of the main things why the scene has blossomed until now. I have zero interest with PC demos for example due the fact that I don’t see any challenge there. People write here lot about ‘no rules’ which ain’t true either – there has always been lots of unwritten rules in the demoscene too.

How I see it atm is that most of the comments here come from non-gfxers and most coders do not seem to care much about what we stated throug the document. All comments are welcome of course but to make the guidelines better we’d prolly need more commenting from people doing pixels – especially from people with really diverse workflows.

2023-12-24 16:27

MuZZa

Registered: Nov 2020
Posts: 16

Quote: "scene" "ethics"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0

XD XD XD hahahahahahahah exactly!! uffff xD

https://youtu.be/mBw3qzf4s18?si=ieSH3FDaNRvXtoZ0

2023-12-24 16:47

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11386

Quote:

3) "pre-jury" sounds easy on paper, but impossible to properly pull off in a party setting with tight deadlines. Who will be that jury? 97% of people cannot distinguish "proper" pixel art from wirejobs.

I have to oppose the "impossible to properly pull off" - eg this is common business on the easter parties, for decades, in the music compos. In that case simply because there are way too many entries to be able to show all of them. A similar preselection could surely be implemented for GFX too. And regarding the easter parties, i know for sure that GFX entries are checked for conversions IF they look suspicious (i have disqualified one myself at some breakpoint...). It IS doable. But it is work someone needs to do (on the easter parties the preselect juries are ad hoc recruited from the visitors, similar to how it worked at X years ago).

2023-12-24 18:18

CopAss

Registered: Sep 2004
Posts: 21

I always experience it as a huge disappointment when a graphic designer I respect as a "god" turns out to be a fraud...
(conversion, copying someone else's work, A.I., "machine" dithering, etc.)
this does not require talent, only mastering the use of tools.
not his art, not his style, not his knowledge...

2023-12-24 21:52

LMan

Registered: Jun 2010
Posts: 83

@Electric pm sent

2023-12-24 23:18

Ervin

Registered: May 2008
Posts: 14

Purely on the theoretical and fun side, I wonder how similar guidelines could be utilized on coding? How intelligent should a tool be to deserve mentioning?