[CSDb] - User Forums - Event id #553 : C64.SK's Pixel Competition

You are not logged in - nap

CSDb User Forums

Forums > CSDb Entries > Event id #553 : C64.SK's Pixel Competition

2014-03-14 22:10

jailbird

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1578

Event id #553 : C64.SK's Pixel Competition

Found these interviews done more than a decade ago while I was digging in some archive DVD's. Posting here to preserve them.

...

Interviews with the graphicians on the top-spot

Let us present Joe, Wec and Vip, three graphicians from the top-spots. It is interesting to read how they prepared their graphics, what do they think about their success or the pixelcompo.

Interview with Joe (James Svärd)

James's tehnique and motives changed a lot during time. I remember the first breathtaking pictures seen from this artist, many many years ago. He's a graphician who's style is either hated and loved, but there is no doubt about the excellence and high talent of Joe.

Q: What do you think, what is the reason of your high success on the competition?

A: I believe my work has become more original the past years. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why people regard it higher, because of the attempts in presenting different motives and techniques. I would rather be respected of the work which I perform today, than of that which I did ten years ago. Despite some jury members comment I consider the latest work of most importance. Unfortunately I get the impression that some of the members of the jury still lack the sensitivity in viewing art. I try not to think in terms of c64 art, but rather as in terms of just art expressing thought and emotion. The c64 is just the means of which I present some of my ideas.

I do agree that the image seems flat, although you should try flipping the picture vertically and horizontally once - the result is far more convincing...

Q: What was your motivation, how did you chose the motive?

A: Wrath Designs often share ideas and everyday life. Our interest in modern technology and art theory bring forth questions of different kinds. So was the case with this competition picture, which actually is a photograph taken by Carl-Johan (Clone). I chose to convert it, since he was doing some of mine. I didn't like the brick wall of the original footage, so I replaced it with the cloudy heaven. The shapes actually remind me of outlines of cars - boxy Volvos, hence the title of the picture. There is also the post-modern theory of information as being the density of the new age. Information density as the ruler in measuring people. Man is ahead towards an information society, where occupations like librarians (I'm working at the library in Malmoe/Sweden), architects and philosophers might help reconstruct the world?

Actually I'm doing a remix version of Clones competition picture right this week. Motivation these days comes very much from experience and perceptions of real life.

Q: Is it hard to pixel such an image, how much time you spend on painting?

A: I sat for about a week and a half with it. Since the first official deadline postponed, I realized I could enhance the work. I´m not as interested in winning competitions anymore as to share ideas, explore new possibilities, go one step further. There is no real hard work in this kind of image - they are actually very easy made ("Machine A & B", "Eiffel"). Mostly I use photographic pictures (my own or other Wrath members work) as reference today, I copy them just as slavishly I did back in the early nineties, although I add quite a lot of work for the context and ofcourse in the original footage. I experienced the greatest joy working with the anti-alias and dithering. I have done over 100 pieces of artwork (pictures, logos and fonts) during the last ten years in Wrath (www.wrathdesigns.net), so I guess I have overcome the difficulties in brick-layering. Normally I use one to three weeks for an image ("Paraphrase" at the Floppy 2001 party was an exception, it took me a month to get the proper result with the background and dithering).

Q: What kind of technique you use and why, what kind of tools?

A: There's not much you can do with "Fli editor" by Saga/Dolphins apart from lightening pixels, which is at last what a digital picture is made of. For the lines I swapped (Fli - bmp) to Drazpaint - although the line-routine isn't complete, since they're more like curves. There isn't much more to any other pixel program anyway. Normally Drazpaint or Cenimate are my personal favorite's dependant whether I use keyboard or not.

The different dithering techniques I apply for my work is actually my representation of techniques which we all are familiar with: Special algorithms which carries diffusion law of contrasting hues. First these were used in the seventies to represent a gradient between two colors in a print (Floyd-Steinberg etc). Onward these techniques have been digitally used as applications in art programs. I realized that they could be used successfully in c64 art, even though our pixels are shaped rectangular. For years I had to struggle against the stupidity of people who claimed that my works were rips. I don't use programs help with dithering, I simply imitate them. In "Traffic" I made use of sparse spreading pixels at some areas, but ordered methods at most. For the antialias of the high lightened lines, I chose lighter pixels at those points in the repeated chain sequence where they were left alone. This perhaps looks awkward, but is the most adequate way. I simply work on emotion and if this isn't enough I use mathematics.

Sometimes those techniques are far more than just efforts in improvement, but rather as to imitate nature: It fascinates me making those tiles, patterns and variations apart from the standard ordered pixels. Perhaps I was most appealed to the effect - The effort of doing pictures which doesn't look like everyone else. After Courtesy Of Soviet and Stupidity III I really dropped the idea of doing just what everyone else did. Today my art tend towards deconstructivist (architectural) theory - Liebeskind, Habid, Eisenmann... Or simply towards architecture in general, since I'll most probably study as architect this autumn (for five years onwards) - my real life experience goes into the scene and vice versa.

Q: What do you think of the pixelcompo, are you interested to compete again next year (if you'll be still active :)?

A: I liked the idea very much. I was stunned by the unusual methods and motives presented, which differed from ordinary party-pictures. I was disappointed in the few participating artists though, but I wasn't surprised.

I'll support the scene as long as I feel I can express my ideas through these means, although I have come to work more with real-life art. There are still very much I would like to present to the scene. Signed James Svärd also known as Joe/Wrath Designs.

Interview with Wec (Shaun Pearson)

Shaun is a scener I could easily mark as an "old-school pixeller", he was an active graphician for years.
Unfortunately, as I see, he was always quite down-rated, never reaching very high places on party competitions, similar to Deekay or Lazur (PC Scene), his handle was moslty visible on magazine charts rather than top compo spots.

Q: What do you think, what is the reason of your success on the competition?

A: The judges liked my picture. The picture had that finished look to it. It`s not easy making a picture look good on c64, so by using SHIF, helped me to create an image that did not have that typical c64 look ot it.

Q: What was your motivation, how did you chose the motive?

A: The image was based on a magazine cover. I did not copy the whole image, just the characters i liked the look of, the characters that i knew would work well using the c64`s colours. The characters are from the Konami game Parodius. I love Parodius, maybe a demo crew could code Parodius on c64 ;)

Q: Is it hard to pixel such an image, how much time you spend on painting?

A: It was (hard to pixel). When using SHIF, the idea to me is to smooth off every pixel to the max. So one pixel out of place, and it looks bad! Other thing when using SHIF is to reduce flicker as much as possible. The image does flicker, but not too bad :)

Q: What kind of tehnique you use and why, what kind of tools?

A: I used SHIF by Crest. I wanted to create an image that would allow me to generate lots of new non c64 colours without much flicker. The problem when generating new `in between` colours is that a picture can sometimes look dead (something alot of IFLI`s suffer from) so i wanted to avoid this too.

Q: What do you think of the pixelcompo, are you interested to compete again next year (if you'll be still active :)?

A: As i have said to the guy`s in Warriors of Wasteland, i have no intentions of ever drawing a picture on c64 again. It`s not all bad news though, as i have a number of un_released pictures sitting on my disks. These pictures will someday be released as a demo called `ZEROs & ONEs` .The pictures are: Andromeda/SHIF - Monalisa/Bitmap(MC) - SHOOT OUT/IFLI - RTN of the Livingdead/SHE2 - Sleeping(drawn way back in 1993)/Bitmap(MC) - Niomi/Bitmap(MC) - ...and a picture called TNT/Built using a mixture of Bitmap(HR) + sprites + interlaced sprites :D ...There`s afew logo`s out there too, waiting to be used by various groups, and an image that may/may not be used in a future release of Warriors of Wasteland Internal magazine.

Interview with Vip (Vincent Merken)

Most of you probably know Vincent's graphical works from Insomnia or Internal's outfit, and he's also a respected musician. His pixelling style was always very interesting to me, as just as in his musics, he always dared to use strange and non-usual tehniques. Recently I've had the luck to work together with Vip on a cooperation-picture, and experienced his kind attitude.

Q: What do you think, what is the reason of your success on the competition?

A: Oh, I think that the unconventional choice of colors, advanced shading, background and overall darkness of the picture made it come out on top. Also, it's not as dumb as it initially looks. :)

Seriously though, it was pretty tight between spots 3, 4 and 5 - just the one point difference. Also, regarding the general flavor of the jury's comments on my picture, I'm happy to have reached third place at all.

Q: What was your motivation, how did you chose the motive?

A: The sketch (originally drawn about half a year ago - btw, no Matrix inspiration here) is one of many, acting as precursors for future projects. It's true that it's trying to tell part of a story as that's what it was designed for. What the whole story is, well, I can't tell - it might even change here and there... you'll just have to wait and see.

During the creation of all these pictures, I began experimenting with weird colors, for example mixing light blue with middle grey, coupled to orange and light red. Interweaving/decoupling outlines was something else I was exploring and during the process, I began to wonder what kind of reactions people would have with regards to this style. The c64.sk pixel competition was kind of a godsend in that respect and I'm glad to have participated.

The comments are a great feature, for which my thanks - they give a rough idea about how different parts of the scene look at your picture, and that is something you don't get to know from a regular compo, where votes are just votes and no further explanation is given. This helps as long as you keep in mind that art will always be subjective :).

Q: Is it hard to pixel such an image, how much time you spend on painting?

A: I can't really tell if it's hard to pixel, but there is a respectable amount of manual labor involved. With my real life job getting in the way, I only have time to work on it on occasional evenings and weekends. The picture took about a month in realtime, but probably only 40-50 effective hours, of which 25 are spent on pixelling the picture and the remaining 15-25 go to looking at it, what the next step to take is, etc.

Q: What kind of technique you use and why, what kind of tools?

A: My technique is generally known as "pixelling" :). In more detail, I begin with a paper sketch, which are just some fast outlines (in comic book style - never really got into realism). These outlines are then drawn on the digital canvas (in whatever gfx mode is needed), and then, the pixelling begins. Highlights are picked, and rough "color gradients" drawn around them (using line/fill commands when available).

Once these are set, the hard work begins where I manually "dither" these gradients for smooth color transitions. Since my brain doesn't work like Floyd's and Steinberg's, I can only do aligned dithering. Then, the nightmare begins: the background.

I still suck at these and they usually take a long time to think out. Eventually, after all this is done, I take a look at the outlines and smoothen them (manually) to reduce the famous "jagged edges" effect, of course all within the color restrictions given within the gfx mode.

Q: What do you think of the pixelcompo, are you interested to compete again next year (if you'll be still active :)?

A: As said, I was very happy to have competed in the compo and I'm certainly interested to try it again - if I'm still active, that is.

2014-03-17 11:36

Sounx
Account closed

Registered: Dec 2006
Posts: 30

Thanks for putting this here, JB. Very nice read, very interesting to read what everybody had to say concerning their own contributions...

Refresh

Subscribe to this thread:

You need to be logged in to post in the forum.

Search the forum:
Search for in
All times are CET.

Search CSDb

Advanced

Users Online

kbs/Pht/Lxt
Fred/Channel 4
The Syndrom/TIA/Pret..
Peacemaker/CENSOR/Hi..
Houbba
Guests online: 92

Top Demos

1 Next Level  (9.7)
2 13:37  (9.7)
3 Mojo  (9.7)
4 Coma Light 13  (9.6)
5 The Demo Coder  (9.6)
6 Edge of Disgrace  (9.6)
7 What Is The Matrix 2  (9.6)
8 Uncensored  (9.6)
9 Comaland 100%  (9.6)
10 Wonderland XIV  (9.6)

Top onefile Demos

1 Layers  (9.6)
2 Cubic Dream  (9.6)
3 Party Elk 2  (9.6)
4 X-Mas Demo 2024  (9.6)
5 Copper Booze  (9.6)
6 Dawnfall V1.1  (9.5)
7 Rainbow Connection  (9.5)
8 Onscreen 5k  (9.5)
9 Morph  (9.5)
10 Libertongo  (9.5)

Top Groups

1 Booze Design  (9.3)
2 Oxyron  (9.3)
3 Performers  (9.3)
4 Censor Design  (9.3)
5 Triad  (9.3)

Top Graphicians

1 Mirage  (9.8)
2 Archmage  (9.7)
3 Pal  (9.6)
4 Carrion  (9.6)
5 Sulevi  (9.6)

Page generated in: 0.083 sec.