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








Diver: Piesiu, hello! Please tell us about yourself: what is your name, where are you from and
etc.

Piesiu: Hello! My name is Piotr Radecki, I live in Poland, I am 33 years old. I have
wonderful wife and good son :)

Diver: How did your stage career begin? What year? On what platform?
What did you do at the beginning and what has it led to now?

Piesiu: I first came into contact with the scene in the early 90s. I started drawing on C64
and on Amiga 500/1200 and later on PC. Other platforms I followed on
emulators - ZX Spectrum, Atari XL/XE. In the second half of the 90s I lost interest in
demoscene. Then time passed and nostalgia for the glorious youth came flooding back.
So I bought various old computers that I had before or about
which I dreamed of. In 1999 I started drawing again. First on Atari XL/XE, and then
and on other classic home machines.

Diver: Why did you start drawing on the Spectrum?

Piesiu: I try to draw on all popular retro platforms, respectively
on ZX too. Spectrum is actually the very first computer that I saw (in the 80s
We had two ZX Spectrum+ at school) and it is one of my favorite computers.

Diver: What is your opinion aboutmodern graphics scene on the Spectrum? She
similar to Atari XL/XE and C64 scenes?

Piesiu: In my opinion, the Spectrum graph scene is stronger than on Atari. There's a lot on the ZX
good active artists. On Atari to draw something more complex than
standard 4 colors or interlace - you need to master Graph2Font, which is quite
difficult. For example, in G2F it is impossible to simply convert an image. And on
On the Spectrum, unfortunately, copies and conversions are much more common. Regarding
c64, then their graphics scene is as strong as all other 8-bit graphics scenes together
taken.

Diver: What do you know about the Spectrum scene in Poland?

Piesiu: It’s difficult to call what is now on the Spectrum in Poland a stage.
I think there is only one active group - Hooy-Program. And I have contacts
with only two spektrumists in Poland. Unfortunately, in the late 80s and 90s when
in Poland there was something similar to the demoscene on the Spectrum (i.e. when such
demos like Lyra 2 and some others), I was interested in completely different platforms.

Diver: And your friends and bandmates on Atari want to do something on
Spectrum or maybe you are planning some joint projects with others
Spectrum groups?

Piesiu: My friends from the group Agenda (Atari/C64) don't like Specky's palette,
I didn’t even mention ZX to the MysticBytes group (this is a group on the Atari ST/Falcon). Aabout joint work - there were 2 joint projects with H-Prg, where they
used my graphics.

Diver: How long are you going to draw on the Spectrum? :)

Piesiu: I will draw as much as I can :)

Diver: How do you draw? Describe the process from the very beginning, what tools you
do you use?

Piesiu: On the Spectrum I paint completely from start to finish in Retro-X. None
other graph editors did not suit me.

Diver: Do you have any artistic education?

Piesiu: Haha, of course not :).

Diver: You have already drawn enough works on the Spectrum. How do you feel -
more of an Atarish artist or still a Spectrum one?

Piesiu: In total, I drew 27 full-screen works on Atari, and over the past 2 years
- 9 works on the Spectrum. It turns out that I'm more of an artist ;) But if
Seriously, then, of course, I'm multi-platform. I like most
8/16/32-bit retro platforms.

Diver: How do you manage to be so active on stage? You have a complete family -
wife, son, and at the same time you manage to draw so regularly and a lot. to me
I’m also 33 years old and I have a wife, but something doesn’t work out for me the same way :)
what's your secret?

Piesiu: I myself am always surprised how this happens ;). Draw something during the day
difficult. That's why I usually draw at night, when the whole family is already asleep.:).

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

Piesiu: I believe that the Spectrum demoscene is the second largest 8-bit
scene after the Commodore. Most of it is concentrated in Russia, it is in
Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia and the Czech Republic... And a lot of people are doing amazing
things on this computer. My respect to those geniuses who perform such miracles on
Z80, ULA, beeper and AY.

Diver: What is your attitude towards copy/nocopy graphics? Do you draw only nocopy?
What do you think about the participation of copies at the party?

Piesiu: I never copy a picture completely. Sometimes I sketch some
elements. For example, the pipe in the picture "Oldschool", the bird in "Rusalka" (by the way,
I heard a comment somewhere that there was something wrong with a bird's wing, but I
I just copied it, so maybe the original photo shows a bird with a broken wing?
:P), or the local church that I drew in "Autumn Virtuoso". If we talk
in general, I divide everyone who draws into 3 levels:

- first - artists - those who draw with their hands, using only their imagination,
own ideas, only occasionally copying individual elements of other works/photographs.

- second - copiers - those who copy other people's ideas, copy pictures
entirely, but manually placing each pixel, while acknowledging that they are copying.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

- Third- scammers - those who use the corresponding programs and for
They spend a few minutes converting the image, attributing its authorship to themselves. The artist
spends 10-20-30 hours to create a work of this level of complexity, a fraudster
does it in 10 minutes :/.

Diver: And the last question: do you want to say anything to those who draw on the ZX
Spectrum?

Piesiu: You are doing a great job! Please copy less, include your own
imagination! That's all ;)