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Eyeth
Account closed
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 98 |
Wired Demo?
Hello.
I'm thinking of making a new demo with a 20th Anniversary theme for the Commodore 64. (1982-2002)
I wonder if it's 'taboo' in the C64 demo scene to use wired graphics? (Graphics done on moderm PC platforms and converted to a suitable C64 format.) I really don't have the time to draw graphics by hand and can only cobble up some code to display some graphics, maybe do a special demo effect or two.
Oh, any recommendations for a musician? :)
Thanks,
-Todd Elliott |
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Cupid
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 83 |
This is one of the holy wars going on in the C-64 scene. Wiring or not.
My personal point is that it is not a c-64 release when it's wired, for a demo it is ok, but not for a graphics compo.
However during the last few years the sin of the past has become a common way of filling the demo with the necessary graphics.
So my point of view is that it'd be OK for you to wire them, just don't add a tag and call it a c-64 graphic.
However, a better way would be to find a real c-64 graphician who is not too busy with other things, and, yes, GOOD LUCK in finding him or her :)
Facing the facts: Why a tribute demo when it doesn't involve the needed skill to produce it?
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T.M.R
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 749 |
One thing to remember is that even wiring takes time and skill, a badly wired picture can look a *lot* worse than a badly drawn one, the latter at least takes time if there is a lack of skill.
Demos are largely about competition, taking on wirers with more expertise is still quite daunting.
As for musicians, ask on #c-64 since there are normally a few about - if your demo is to be NTSC only, let them know 'cos it makes a difference. =-) |
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Stryyker
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 468 |
Um, terrible wired gfx are superior to my rubbish I once tried drawing :) I don't mind as long as the same author created both (no scans/conversions). |
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T.M.R
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 749 |
Quote: Um, terrible wired gfx are superior to my rubbish I once tried drawing :) I don't mind as long as the same author created both (no scans/conversions).
If there is a lot of clean-up done, good wired graphics can *almost* pass as drawn images; have a look at my stuff, everything from "Lethargy" onwards contains at least some wired graphics and i've had positive graphics reviews for all of them, even fooling MAD/Padua with "Contraflow". This is why you'll never see my name on a graphics compo entry apart from the second Driven compo and that was more my trying to impress the judges by getting an FLI down to 4K.
Without that clean-up and a reasonable piece of software to wire with, the results can be appalling; try loading a photo into Godot or ConGo and letting them loose, neither does a particularly good job of it and even my own convertor produces a better output in greyscales and it took me an hour to write in Blitz BASIC... =-) |
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Seven
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 202 |
being able to identify a wired graphic is just a matter of time the graphician in question was willing to invest and what conversion process he used...
check the graphics that made 1st, 2nd, 5th and 8th place at The Party 1999, then compare to - for example - the 2nd place from Mekka Symposium 1998, which very obviously was wired aswell.
and just to sum this up, my personal p.o.v. towards wiring:
In a world where stop-motion capturing, 3d scanners and alike are used by professionals, why shouldn't a C64 scener be allowed to use more elaborate tools to create his graphics?
wire as much as you like to make you demo look good (and in this case - even wire Vallejo pics, if you need to), just don't wire someone else's art and compete with it in a graphic competition. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11360 |
yeah thats the point what all the rambling is about i guess - stealing someone elses art, convert it and claim to be a c64 graphic artist - thats just neither fair nor true nor anything. in turn - if you happen to be a photoshop genious with the ability to create mindblasting pictures there and then _however_ port them over to the c64, so be it... i can say for myself atleast, that without a certain skill for creating graphics even a kickass converter wont help you much - unless you steal the original artwork from someone else. |
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Twoflower
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 434 |
Talking wiring, eh?
Well, to tell the truth, i'm 100% positive to wiring. All this bullshit about wired gfx not being "real C-64 gfx" make me sick. I would definitly call most of my pics made during the last years real, and I tell you what - as good as 90% of them are wired or repainted for the C-64.
Want to know why?
Because it's a matter of using todays tools to achieve a better result, that's all! If I paint something in acrylic colors, gouache or ink, scan it and then start pixeling on it on the PC - where I can get a better overview than in ANY C-64 program, it'd be exactly the same thing as if I started painting it on a real C-64. Save for me having an easier time and saving a lot of unnecessary pain.
To claim that tools, other than the ones on the C-64, make the art less real is as silly as to claim that using acrylic colors does make paintings less art than paintings made in oil. Or that Koalapaint pics are more real C-64 pics than IFLI-pics, since you can tweak and alter the colors in the latter om a way which originally was not intended. It's simply a question of evolution. New days, new tools.
I pixel on the PC - in PSP or DP - with Deekays and my own tweaked C-64 palette, more or less rigidly following the restrictions I have on the C-64. Does that make me a bad pixelartist? No. I animate on the Amiga - in DP IV - then convert it and make it fit for the C-64. Does that make me a bad animator? No. I compose my own motives, even if it's inspired by other art, make a sketch on paper and scan it to ease up the work with the outlines. Does that make me a bad artist? No. New days, new tools.
And yes, I prefer 1 good, wired original work instead of 50 of those polish Vallejopics painted 100% from scratch in Gunpaint or whatever.
So wire on, fellows, wire on. To make everything from scratch on the C-64 is a plain waste of time, no care taken for if it's a pleasurable waste or not. Wire on, but use your own art as the motive. You're on the right track, the track where you use technology for the good of art.
/Twoflower |
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iopop
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 317 |
Twoflower, you got a good point there. But I think you are an exception. Not everyone has a converter slave that spends +20 hours just to convert the gfx for one demo. Just had to add that. |
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jailbird
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1578 |
And so we reached a point where we don't even need a c64 for creating c64 releases.
Paint in photoshop, code under the emu, compose with goat-tracker and voila.
A shame.
Wire and pixel on pc/amiga as long you don't have a graphician or a proper c64 to work with.
And at least wire in reasonable quality or try to improve them a bit. And don't tag them if they're just plain converted from a jpg, however "hard" was to use those smacky PS filters...
Anyway, wired graphics ARE NOT REAL c-64 graphics.
Want to know why?
Easy, but i'll explain to some of you, seems it's hard to understand:
because they're NOT MADE ON THE C64.
bahh, off. |
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Seven
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 202 |
they do display on a C64 though ;)
half of Episode 2 isn't a movie because it was created on computers =) |
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T.M.R
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 749 |
That means that if i were to sit down and draw some graphics in a copy of Paintmagic running on CCS64 *that* wouldn't be a C64 graphic too...?! |
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cadaver
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1160 |
For me:
using real C64 and real C64 tools -> more suffering -> more time taken -> less productivity -> stuff never gets finished
I did it long enough and got nothing done. But each has own preferences... |
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jailbird
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1578 |
TMR, do you have a working c64 by your side? Yes you do. So what's the point of pixelling under an emulator?
I am doing c64 graphics on PC when I am in a bitching hurry to finish something or I don't have a commie around. Sure, if wiring graphics helps you to produce more stuff, do so, convert, but wire it to look good. Yet calling that c64-art is still kinda stupid, 'cause it's PC or Amiga "art" subordinated to c64's graphics-standards and converted to it, whilst you didn't even touched the computer which originally supposed to be the producing "tool" of that so-called "art". For me it is about the principles, as long I am not "scening" for money and the fame. Playing around Photoshop, GFX2 or Brilliance is damn easy. To finish a full-screen c64 picture is a matter of few hours, even original stuff is very easy to do.
Have you ever wondered why the best graphicians never intend(ed) to keep releasing graphics that were pixelled on PC or Amiga, even if the pixelling would be much much easier? |
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CreaMD
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 3051 |
For me, wiring is automated software conversion of images which originally weren't made for C64 and didn't use C64 color palette. I consider pics pixelled/drawn using C64 palette (even when they are pixelled using photoshop) a regular C64 pics. Looking at wired pics is almost like listening to CD full of emulated SID music from Sidplay. In both cases someone is making a fool of you... |
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Twoflower
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 434 |
I agree with CreaMD here. There's quite a difference between wiring and wiring. To wire, in the sense of converting a PC-colored picture and using it as it is after the conversion, is both ugly and pointless from an artistic view - and should thus be avoided. To pixel something on the Amiga/PC, and then wiring it with the intention of using it on a C-64 is a completely different issue. A picture drawn with PC tools (as Paintshop Pro or Elitepaint) using correct C-64 palettes is - by all means - a C-64 picture, isn't it? It's just a matter of speed, visibility and using the tools you prefer. Another reason might be that you use a monitor on the PC, a device many people lack on the C-64.
My first name is Quick and my last name is Dirty. In this scene we should worry less about how good graphics is produced (eg. handpixeled on the C-64) and more about the sad quality of the releases and most of all the lack of them. Face it - wiring makes work faster and increases the amount of releases on this machine, just as Cadaver pointed it out. But on the other hand, everyone have their own preferences of what is acceptable, and I do for sure know what my preferences are. Wire!
And no, Iopop, every graphician haven't got an excellent conversion-slave like you, spending more time on perfecting the showers for the graphics than on the demo itself. :-)
/Twoflower |
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T.M.R
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 749 |
Maybe we need to differentiate between pictures that are wired from other sources (which is what i've always taken "wired" to mean) and those that are "cross developed" on other platforms...?
Of course, then we get into that grey area of pictures that are wired and *then* cleaned up under cross development. =-) |
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Seven
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 202 |
stupid question: why is it called "wiring" anyway and what's the -> exact <- definition of that term in your eyes? |
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T.M.R
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 749 |
Quote: stupid question: why is it called "wiring" anyway and what's the -> exact <- definition of that term in your eyes?
Well, personally i picked the term from the Byterapers' "Wired Art" and i've always assumed the term "wiring" came about because the image data was shovelled down a wire between a C64 and another machine (in the same way that many software houses in the late 1980s and early 1990s used to do it).
My own system originally used an Amiga 1200 to process the images down and split them into two bitplanes (for 4 colour greyscale) which were dropped to an MSDOS disk with CrossDOS and loaded into a C64 with a TIB 3.5" drive. The final bitplane merging was done with my own "utility".
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Tempest
Account closed
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 4 |
Why the hell are you talking about PSP and Photoshop?
Those softwares aren't really made for pixelling
pictures with low amount of colors.
Curse those morons who convert a picture with zillions
of colors to ifli.
I do my BLASPHEMOUS multicol c64-graphics on GFX2 (PC).
And I pixel everything in a way that I wont have to
fix thousands of tilebugs. Usually there's 1-4 tilebugs.
If I have to choose between joystick or mouse, there's no
way I'm using the one which was never meant for drawing
loose lines and curves etc.
After that I convert the image to koala or mpic and
do final touches on drazpaint, on emulator! :)
That's because I've lost my x1541-cable years ago.
I haven't found a better way to draw images for C64.
I'm having hard time understanding why things should be made
in a harder way. C64 is just a computer, handling bits and bytes. I dont have to romanticize that piece of junk:)
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TDJ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1879 |
Quote: Why the hell are you talking about PSP and Photoshop?
Those softwares aren't really made for pixelling
pictures with low amount of colors.
Curse those morons who convert a picture with zillions
of colors to ifli.
I do my BLASPHEMOUS multicol c64-graphics on GFX2 (PC).
And I pixel everything in a way that I wont have to
fix thousands of tilebugs. Usually there's 1-4 tilebugs.
If I have to choose between joystick or mouse, there's no
way I'm using the one which was never meant for drawing
loose lines and curves etc.
After that I convert the image to koala or mpic and
do final touches on drazpaint, on emulator! :)
That's because I've lost my x1541-cable years ago.
I haven't found a better way to draw images for C64.
I'm having hard time understanding why things should be made
in a harder way. C64 is just a computer, handling bits and bytes. I dont have to romanticize that piece of junk:)
Junk? JUNK?
I say we burn this heathen! :)
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T.M.R
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 749 |
Okay, i'll bring burgers, you bring drink and we'll call it a BBQ...? =-) |
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Stryyker
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 468 |
Mustard. |
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hollowman
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 474 |
Quote: Junk? JUNK?
I say we burn this heathen! :)
the c64 is a piece of junk and it is awful work doing stuff for it. if you used it for more than one weekend a year you would remember that too :) |
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T.M.R
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 749 |
Quote: the c64 is a piece of junk and it is awful work doing stuff for it. if you used it for more than one weekend a year you would remember that too :)
Oh, does that mean no BBQ then...? [looks at large pile of beefburgers, sausages and chicken pieces and sobs! =-] |
