Discussion
{ datagubbe }
charcircuit: >It's a place of refuge from the constant churn of increased efficiencyIncreased efficiency also seems to be part of its appeal. The limitation is you can't increase efficiency by just upgrading computer specs, but instead have to find innovating ways to use the existing resources as efficient as possible to make something great. These kinds of optimization or compression problems seems like something AI would be very helpful for, so I think it is premature to try and ban its usage.
Findecanor: This reminded me that demo scene graphics competitions these days tend to include work-in-progress images, as evidence of originality.The Revision demo party is soon. From the competition rules for "Oldskool Graphics" [0]:> Include exactly 10 (ten) working stages of your entry. All entries without plausible working stages will be disqualified.Yikes...The rules for "Modern Graphics" [1] and "Paintover" similarly also require work stages, but fewer.[0]: https://2026.revision-party.net/competitions/oldskool/#oldsk...[1]: https://2026.revision-party.net/competitions/graphics/#moder...
krige: It's hard to get in the era of ubiquitous 32 bit color depth, but back in the day, part of the show was making merely your hardware output picture very close to the reference in as many colors as possible and good resolution too. This was where Amiga's special video modes could really shine.Thus, some demos, like the one where Lazur's image came from [0] were just slideshows of very colorful images that were more than likely traced from something.[0] https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=3715 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmhffwhGiK0
jamiek88: These people literally gods to me growing up. My parents were poorer than others so we never had any computer better than an acorn electron but the demos my friends with amigas and Atari ST’s showed my blew my mind.
parasti: Focusing on "copying" seems like missing the forest for the trees. There's the copyright angle, but copyright laws are unnatural obstacles designed to give the original author some control over what happens after publishing. They're not fundamental, we made the laws.What is fundamental is this: every artist starts out by copying the works of others. It's how you learn.And in that framing, once you publish your derived work, there is only one question that arises - if you don't credit the original author but sign your own name, you're fundamentally misleading your audience. Your audience implicitly assumes you made the thing. Maybe you made 95% of it, but if you don't give due credit, it looks bad once your audience discovers that.On more than one occasion my perception of an artist has shifted once I discovered the "brilliant work" they created was actually a remake of somebody else's brilliant work. It's a feeling of being misled. It's never a feeling of "wow, this guy is a total hack and has no ability of their own".
mda: In the Lazur's 256 colour rendition, it is curious that they got the details in the front very well but messed up the third guys face completely.
weinzierl: To me all the faces look messed but I believe it is mostly because the image seems to be distorted, it is stretched in the vertical direction. I suspect it was created on hardware with non-square pixels and is just displayed wrongly.
aditmag: It would be so awesome to make a cartoon today using original techniques with hand-drawn scenes, multiplane cameras, and most importantly jazz music :)
onion2k: I grew up in the era of the Amiga and got into computing in some part due to demoes like Technological Death and Unreal. Not sure if 10 years is too new to be considered 'retro', but "Intrinsic Gravity" by Still is my favourite demo ever. It's lots of different scenes that transition beautifully from one to another: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZxPhDC-r3w
skrebbel: Let's not forget that most of these pictures were made by teenagers, doing the best they could (and hoping others didn't know about Boris Vallejo). The demoscene was very young back then. Copying is generally considered pretty lame in the demoscene these days.
pixelpoet: As it happens I'm just on a train to Airbnb with large group of demoscene and fractal art friends, full week ahead of the Revision[0] demoparty! Hells yeahMy top pick for pixel art would be anything by Made of demogroup Bomb, don't have a good link to hand sorry and need to change trains etc. Also check this amazing pixel art book: https://www.themastersofpixelart.com/[0] https://2026.revision-party.net/
pavlov: I have two pages in this book (Saffron/TBL).I made the images in Deluxe Paint when I was 16-18 years old. It was a lovely surprise to be contacted two decades later by the author who wanted to print them in this beautiful book among many far more talented artists.
_the_inflator: Exactly. 12-16 was predominantly on the producer side.The hidden deciding factor nevertheless was time. And that affected the whole production cycle: coding, graphics, music, crunching, copying, spreading (postal services!).We had way more snow back then and we enjoyed working on something for hours till the wee hours.18 was a deciding factor because after that military service killed quite a few scener careers.Have a look at all the pr0n stuff pixel graphics that were cherished by the young studs as well as all the scroll texts as well as early disk magazines or pictures of programmers in computer magazines, with lots of profanity and simply stating age competition: 14 years old scolding 13 years old…
bob1029: I like the case of video editing. This is a situation where oftentimes zero percent of the source material is your own creation. Most would still consider this an artform. Shaping the overall meaning of a pile of raw assets is usually way more valuable than any one asset in isolation.Successfully integrating many disparate parts has always been the big ticket item. Dealing with the rough edges and making different ideas play together nicely is where all the value lives in most businesses.
exo762: If look good if you look at the image in original resolution. Click on it.
Razengan: Oh man I wish I could have cool friends
Sesse__: > Copying is generally considered pretty lame in the demoscene these days.You will still see plenty of e.g. SID covers of existing pop music, without anyone really batting an eyelid.
