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Scream
#11
26 августа 2011 |
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interview with Piesiu - interview with famous pixel artist.
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 ;).