Scream #11 26 августа 2011

Интервью

interview with Piesiu/Agenda^MysticBytes
by diver/4d








Diver: Piesiu hi! Please introduce yourself: what is you real name, where are
you from, etc.

Piesiu: Hi! My name is Piotr Radecki, I live in Poland, I'm 33 years old, I have
a beautiful wife and wonderful son :).

Diver: How did your scene life was started? Which year? Which platform? What did
you do? How it was developed until modern years?

Piesiu: I had first contact with the scene in the early 90's. I draw some
pictures on C64 and Amiga 500/1200, later also on the PC. I have watched for
other platforms such as ZX Spectrum or Atari XL/XE running the software on
emulators. At late 90's I've lost the interest for the demoscene. When the time
passed - comes the nostalgia about my youth. So I've bought a lot of old
computers, which i've had before or dreamed to have. In 1999 I've started to
draw again, at the Atari XL/XE for first, then at another classic home
computers.

Diver: Why did you started doing Spectrum graphics?

Piesiu: I try to draw on all popular retro computers, so also on the ZX.
Spectrum is my first home computer (in the 80's we had two ZX Spectrum + in the
school) and this is one of my favorite computers.

Diver: What is your opinion of modern ZX Spectrum graphics scene? Is it similar
to 8-bit Atari or C64?

Piesiu: In my opinion, a graphic scene of Spectrum is much stronger than the
Atari. There is many good active artists at ZX scene. If you draw at Atari - you
need to master a very complicated tool - Graph2Font to obtain a good graphical
effect (i.e. something more than the standard 4 colors, or graphics with
interlace). In G2F it's impossible to easy convert graphics - from pictures,
etc. Unfortunately you can meet copied graphics at the Spectrum much more. C64
GFX scene well is probably stronger than all the other eight-bit demoscene
together :).

Diver: What do you know about spectrum scene in Poland?

Piesiu: It's hard to talk about any ZX polish scene, at the moment seems that
there is only one active group - Hooy-Program. And I have contacted only with
two polish Spectrumers. Unfortunately in the late 80's and 90's when in Poland
was some substitute Speccy demoscene (and when The Lyra 2 and other demos was
created) I was interested others computers.

Diver: Do your Atari friends and groupies intend to do some works for ZX
Spectrum? Or maybe you plan to coop with any other Spectrum groups?

Piesiu: My friends from Agenda (Atari/C64 group) don't like Speccy palette ;),
in MysticBytes I never talked about ZX Spectrum (it's a ST/Falcon group). As
about coop with other groups, my graphics already was used in two prods from
H-Prg.

Diver: How long will you draw for spectrum? :)

Piesiu: As long, as I can :).

Diver: How did you draw? Please describe the process from the scratch and the
tools you used.

Piesiu: I draw each image from the scratch using Retro-X tool. I could never
convince the other ZX graphics tools.

Diver: Do you have any art education?

Piesiu: Ha, ha, of course no :).

Diver: You have a lot of spectrum works for now. What do you think - you're
Atari artist more or Spectrum artist? :)

Piesiu: I made 27 fullscreen GFXs for Atari and only 9 for ZX in two years, so
I'm more Atari grahician ;). But seriously I'm multi-retro grafician, I love
most of 8/16/32-bit retro platforms.

Diver: How did you managed to be so active on the scene? You have a full family
- the wife and the son and you regularely drawing so much. I am 33 years old too
and have a wife, but i can't draw so :) What is your secret?

Piesiu: I'm always wondering myself about that ;). It is difficult to draw
anything during the day. So usually i create these graphics at night, when the
whole family is already asleep :).

Diver: Question about demoscene. Do you know the ZX Spectrum demoscene? What do
you think about it?

Piesiu: The Speccy demoscene is the second after the C64 scene of the 8 bit
platforms, most of that scene are accumulated in Russia, less in Belaruss,
Ukraine, Slovakia, Czech Republic... . Many, many people are doing absolutely
amazing stuff for this wonderful little computer. My tribute to the geniuses who
squeeze such miracles from Z80, ULA, beeper and AY.

Diver: What is your opinion about copy/nocopy graphics? Are you nocopy only
artist? What do you think about participation of copy works at the parties?

Piesiu: I never copy the entire image. Sometimes I redraw individual elements
such like a pipe in the "Oldschool" picture, bird in "Rusalka" (somewhere I read
a comment that the bird's wing is badly placed, but this bird was only redrawn,
and maybe the bird at the original photo has a broken wing :P), or my local
church in "Autumn Virtuoso". In simplify I have a three levels of demoscene
graphics:

- first - artists - people who draw by hand from their own imagination,
according to their own ideas, sometimes redraws single elements from the
original pictures/photos.

- second - duplicators - people who copy others' ideas, redraw the entire
picture, but do it manually putting each pixel, and must admit that the image
has been copied, I don't see this as a problem.

- third - scammers - who are using appropriate software, in minutes convert a
image, attributing the authorship of this picture. Artist who drew similar
graphics spent 10-20-30 hours on manually pixeling, "scammer" did it in 10
minutes :/.

Diver: And the last question: do you want to say something to ZX Spectrum
graphucs artists?

Piesiu: You do a great job! And please, less copy, more imagination, that's all
;).