Interview with Adam of DCS
by Matarazzo (February 2000)
Please give us a short but informative introduction of yourself! :)
My name is Antti Rita. I am 20 years OLD unemployed computer nerd. I live in
Jyväskylä, which is a small city located in central Finland. I like to draw
and do 3D-modelling with computers, I also like to design demos and organize
things. In demoscene I'm better known as Adam of DualCrew-Shining.
Now, tell us how you picked your handle "Adam".
Well, it's a long story. I started to use handle "Adam" in the beginning of
1997. Before that my handle was "Blank". That time many of my "real life"
friends were in the scene too and they called me Blank instead of my real name
Antti. I got fed up, when I started to hear "Blank" from people who had
nothing to do with the scene. So I decided to change my handle to something
which begins with A and is harder to pronounce in Finnish than "Blank" was.
Nowadays everybody calls me Antti, 'cause "Adam" doesn't fit in to Finnish
mouths so easily ;) And other reason was that at the same time my scene hobby
got maybe a bit more serious, so I wanted a new fresh identity to start over
with.
How long have you been an active scener,and how long have you been using your
computer to make gfx?
I began watching demos sometime between 92-93, but I really got in to scene
after visiting Assembly '94. After that party I was totally sold. I only
wanted to be in the scene, it was the coolest thing there existed at the time
;) I have been making computer gfx from the late 1994 when I decided to be a
graphician.
Was it a natural choice for you to become a graphician in the scene, or did
you try music, code or ascii also?
I have always liked to draw, when I was kid I made lots of comics and drew
other stuff. Before I knew nothing about scene, I had tried little DPaint but
done much more composing with NoiseTracker. But when I decided to enter the
scene I knew that it must be graphics. But I was awfully bad at the
beginning, it took me some years to figure out how antialias works and how to
do shading and stuff. I have never tried ASCII and for code, at the beginning
I really tried to start coding, but I couldn't understand a thing about it ;)
Now it's perfectly clear that I could never be a coder, I'm glad that there
are guys to do that part for me ;)
How long are you planning to stay in the scene?
I'm not planning anything. I just live day by day. Only time will tell, but
I don't see any reasons for totally quitting. I stay as long as it feels
good.
What was your first computer and what equipment have you got today?
I got my first own computer as a christmas present in 1991. It was Amiga 500
with fast memory expansion. Back then I was a real gamefreak and my parents
decided to buy me an own computer, because I was spending all my time with my
friends places playing with either C-64 or Amiga. In 1994 I bought myself
Amiga 1200. Nowadays it has 030/50 turbocard in it with 16MB of fast memory,
1,4BG HD, Commodore 1083S video monitor, Wizard 3-button mouse and 33600
modem. I also have Pentium 200 MMX, which I bought in November 97. It has
32MB of memory and it's already maybe a bit outdated.
What do you like the most, New School or Old School?
For me old school is demos between 91-94. Some people might consider old
school as before 90, but I have seen very little from that era, only some
classics like TRSI megademo and some other stuff. So oldschool for me is
91-94, the time when I spend my honeymoon with the scene. Demos from that
time still give me good vibrations. I love them very much :) "The new school"
if one can say so, although is the one that I wan't to do demos with. I'm
very interested in new programs, techniques and equipment. I want my demos to
look fresh, modern and invent new things. But otherhalf of me loves oldschool
and retro. It's also fun to do some old school stuff every now and then.
Like we did with Zymosis guys, Zymosis Megademo which is OCS early-90's styled
64k intro with that perioids look. I did the graphics for it with fake handle
;) The A500 scene is not doing were well at the moment, but I hope there will
rise a new generation of A500 sceners. There have already been some signs
about it. Groups releasing OCS stuff and OCS compos at some parties. I'm
also into C-64 demos very much. I have even started to do some C-64 graphics
lately :) The power lies in the past, the old school should be studied and
respected more. One can learn many things from the past demomakers.
What do you think about todays demoscene?
It has gone very professional like. Demomaking is harder than ever. Coders
gotta have complete 3D engine, graphicinas must learn complex programs like
3DS or Lightwave to do big 3D scenes which is much bigger job than one can
imagine. In the past it was enough to have a nice logo and a font for
scroller and glenz vector in the middle of the screen. Nowadays some group
might spend half a year completing huge 3D story based demo. The standards
are so high that groups can't release stuff very often, it simply takes so
much time to do anything that qualifies. At the same time part of the fun has
disappeared. And for newcomers it's harder and harder to enter the scene.
Afterall it's huge project to code for example some 3D engine. I just hope
that trends will go more for simple things, innovative effects and design than
for this huge 3D crap :) Anyway I respect very much Nerve Axis's or Mellow
Chips work. They are very talented and hardworking guys and deserve their
placements on charts, but part of the fun has disappered with these 3D demos.
It seems that people are not even enjoying watching them.
Are you a regular partyvisitor?
Yes, absolutely. We have very good so called "party scene" in Finland. So
far I have visited 28 parties, which only 4 of them abroad.
Which is the best party you have been to?
Abduction '97 was great because of the weather, relaxed atmosphere, good
friends, excellent cannabis and I also won the gfxcompo there, which was nice.
Also the Porno I in Hämeenlinna was very nice and there is some legendary
party stories about it. And I won gfxcompo there too, but it was more like
joke competitions only there. Other good parties to mention, all three The
Parties I have visited, they had very good sceneish atmosphere there. Remedy
'98 in Stockholm, Sweden was also very nice and sunny party. Assembly '94
ofcourse, because it was my first party ever and Amiga scene really dominated
there. All 3 Demolitiom parties in Finland have also been very nice and
Skenery '96 which I participated organizing has already gained legendary
status atleast in Finland. There is too many good parties to mention all, but
those were probably the most memorable ones.
Which is the worst party you've been to ?
The worst... hmm, I have to think. For some reason I didn't like Abduction
'96 very much, maybe because I didn't know too much people back then. I
haven't liked Motorola Inside parties very much, though the finnish Amiga
folks praise them all the time. But I don't find sitting in the dark hall
configurating PPC tower machines and singing Amiga hymns very enjoyable. I
prefer drinking and having good time outside with good friends.
Nowdays you are in DCS. What other groups have you been in before DCS?
Well not too many. I was in a small friendship based group called Zymosis
before joining DCS. Infact i'm still a member of Zymosis but it's not that
serious with them. I'm also a member of great finnish party group called
HiRMU which consist many famous people behind fake handles. And oh, I was in
Kinky too for a short perioid.
I understand you got a great deal to do with DCS's demodesign. Tell us about
that.
Yep, well my opinion is that the graphicians are the ones who should design
and direct demos. And to make good demo you can't share the designing part
with many people with different opinions and point of views. I'm kind of
perfectionist when I work on something I want to take full responsibility on
things and tell how everything should look etc. And I have atleast tried to
direct all the DCS productions I've been involved. Though it's sometimes very
hard for me to cooperate with coders. They are quite often like from
different planet when it comes to designing. I'm still learning all the time.
Every day I understand more and more about coders mind ;) It's very important
to know as much as possible about the technical side also when doing demo
design.
What is your relationship with the new rising group Loveboat? I have noticed
you have participated in their productions.
Well, they are all my very good friends and Muffler and Speedo are also a
double members of DCS, so I have helped them out every now and then. The TP8
demo Raybong was really a fast emergency patch, done in 2 days as their
organizer Desmoines wanted to release a prod there to announce the born of the
new group. They were really in need of graphics and I spended my Christmas
eve and day doing stuff for them :) And at the same time I was a bit stressed
with our own TP demo. I'm probably cooperating with Loveboat in the future
too as they don't have any active graphician in their memberlist at the
moment.
Can you tell me about your TP8 demo Phenomenon? You seems to have done great
deal of work for it. Are you disappointed as it ended up only 4th?
Naah... Past is past. Now we are heading for completely new challenges.
Phenomenon was a big flop, we probably tried a bit too much. At the time
Shape was in the army and couldn't code very much, so it was a bit too hasty
patch. I got so many ideas which were left out the demo afterall because we
run totally out of time. But we learned many things from that too, like don't
show the same 3D scene for over 3 minutes ;)
What do you like the most, hi-res or lowres painting? Please motivate.
It depends, I haven't made anything in over 640*256 resolution. Lores is my
favourite, 'cause there the pixels are equilateral squares, but I noticed that
you get used to 640*256 resolution quickly too. But lores is nicer, as there
is fewer pixels to place and you can spot errors in lores much more easily
too. To develop a good technique lo-res is very usefull.
I've seen some nice cliparts from you. Are cliparts a good way to get famous?
I don't know if it's good way to get famous. But it takes 10 times less time
to draw a nice clipart than to do a fullscreen picture. I like doing
cliparts. For the beginning I found hi-res (640*256) painting difficult, but
now I have even started to like it. So you can expect some more cliparts from
me in the near future. I rarely have enough patience to finish any full
screen pictures, so cliparts suit me very well.
How long time do you spend on doing a picture or a clipart?
It varies very much. I consider myself as a slow worker. I put too much time
planning and testing things than doing the hard pixelling work. Maybe I'm a
bit lazy. I can draw some clipart in 2 days if I work all the time. But it's
very rare that I spend more than 15 minutes painting at one time. Fullscreen
picture always takes more than 2 weeks. When working with photoshop it's
completely different thing. It's many times faster than pixelling but you
can't achive the same level of detail. Or atleast I haven't yet ;)
If you had to say one weakness you have as a graphician, what would that be?
There's too many weaknesses ;) I am very bad painting human figures they are
always the most difficult ones for me. Making palettes and colors is very
hard. It takes really much time to make a good palette and I'm never
satisfied. I could adjust the colors forever. And I'm fucking too lazy :)
Are your pictures available on the net? If yes, say the adress.
Not at the moment. I haven't made any webpage yet, but I'm seriously
considering doing one containing some kind of portfolio with some other stuff
too than pixelled pictures.
What program are you using when making your 2d pictures?
For pixelling DPaint 5, sometimes PPaint 7.1 too. I have tried to use
Brilliance, but never learned how to use it ;) Little ImageFX and ADPro for
image manipulating and quantization. Photoshop and Fractal Design Painter for
24bit painting and making textures etc.
...and for your 3D?
Lightwave is the only program I have had guts to learn. Little LW 5.0 on
Amiga, but nowadays mostly LW 5.6 on PC, because of the speed. I should also
get my hands on some other 3D packages, like 3DS but I'm so lazy when it comes
to learning a complex programs.
Are you using a digitizingtable? (Wacom etc.)
No. I would like to try out one, but at the moment I don't have money to buy
that kind of equipmemt. I am really interested in 24 bit working with table
with pressure.
What`s your opinion about copying/redrawing pictures,is it okay or not?
Copying is perfectly ok. You can't make up the whole image from your head.
Everybody needs references. All the classical painters painted from living
model. Boris Vallejo, Frazetta all use models. When it comes to copying
ready artworks it's a different thing. One should include also the name of
the original author in those cases. For the start it's neccessary to look and
copy techniques from some talented artists. Ofcourse I value 100% own
pictures more, but in the scene they often lack much quality when compared to
copies.
Do you think there are too many womenpictures around?
No. Woman is a very hard figure to paint and it's always nice to look at :)
There is probably never enough good woman pictures. But it's very rare to see
any decent ones nowadays. But I prefer more artistic kind of images than
photorealistic pictures.
Are you working on any picture/clipart right now?
Yes ofcourse, I'm always working on several projects, but it's very rare I
manage to complete any. ;) Well one thing I can say for sure, because I have
promised to do it and I have strict deadline. I am designing graphics and GUI
for a brand new diskmag coming out soon. Watch out for it! Hopefully I get
some fullscreen pics released too at some major parties in the near future.
And some DCS productions coming out too for sure.
What are you doing in 10 years ?
I hope I'm working as a professional computer artist for some new media or
games company and they pay me a good salary ;) And I have a beautifull wife 2
kids and a dog... no! huh ;) I can't imagine my future longer than 2 years
at maximum. Now I'm heading to study some net multimedia next autumn, if they
let me in that is.
Any last words?
Greets to all my visually gifted friends in the scene! Come to Remedy '99
meet you there! Special kisses to (only graphicians included this time)
Leunam, Vent, Tempest, Optic, Cheetah, Thor, Unreal, Bonzaj, Judas, Nomad, 'B,
Markus, Madd, Caro, Pam, Wrec, Boost, Kidlove, Bay T, Rzb, Damaq, Mike, Mezon,
Doc, Fluffy, THG, Chavez and you Matarazzo and all who I can't recall just
right now. Peace!
okej ADAM thanks for taking your time. Keep rocking!
Thank you! I will.}
