While Lancelot is definitely a great artist this picture is a bit disappointing. First it was seemingly not created on ATARI ST hence the odd dithering, secondly I don't like the colours used. They lack intensity and look a bit poor. Other pictures deserved more attention than this yet this is my opinion, you don't have to agree. :)

mmm... I am not happy to say that but yes you are right Sebastien... it is obviously a 16 colors conversion, not a hand-drawn Atari ST picture, as wrote in the Sillyventure rules....
(with all the respect I have for Lancelot)

The rules state: "Every graphical work HAS to be HAND-drawn must be displayable on standard ST or STe configuartion (please specify Your exact config - in *.TXT attachment)"

So there's no statement that it must be hand drawn on ST/STe, only that it has to be displayable on ST/STe.

Traditionally "hand-drawn" in gfx compos has meant that photos, scanned images, 3d-renderings etc. are forbidden. Drawing in different color depth and converting to target has always been OK. I've been doing that since the 1980's.

BTW the colors in the PNG image above are off, it looks like it's converted using ST palette, it should use STe palette. I'll try to get that fixed.

@Lancelot : read me well too please. :) I never said you were not the author, yet the dithering looks a bit odd for instance in the blue part. Now that you say that the colours are wrong I cannot wait to see the picture displayed properly.

I'm disappointed like hell when I read something like that from you Lancelot.

You were one of my heros back in the days and I think we are pretty much the same age. But....

It's the first time I hear that conversions are allowed in graphic competitions. Hand drawn on ST means you have to create your art on that conditions doesn't matter if you create it on an ST or PC with emulator or using a Software like ST - Paint or other pixel liked software packages these days. Means you haven't photoshop back in the days. You need to pixel your art which means hand drawn in that case.

Howsoever, if it's true das conversions are allowed I will stop contributing gfx for a Silly Venture Competition.

Have a nice day, Jade.

@s_t_s the comment about rules was more for pandafox.

I've uploaded a second screenshot that has the correct colors.

@Lancelot : sorry but I don't see many colour changes between the two snapshots. Nice picture anyway.

@Mdskay : I think that you misunderstood Lancelot here. What he surely means is that he hand made this gfx maybe on paper or using PC software and that he converted it to STe. I cannot think of Lancelot using pictures done by other people, the guys is very skilled, no doubts. Still I prefer your picture to his. :)

@s_t_s

I think you got me also wrong. I never said he took or takes pictures from others.

I just said what it means to me when it comes to hand drawn art on ST hardware.

Howsoever. The rule for the competition it not really good pointed out and it looks like conversions are allowed. Which is a kick in the ass for you, pandafox, Piesiu and me, who did there works in a traditional way for the Compo.

@mdskay If you take the stance that content must be created the same way as in the "old days", Atari scene stops from progressing. For instance these days most of the people compile their code with cross compilers & debug with built-in debuggers of emulators. Should just devpac (or whatever is your favorite ST assembler) be allowed in demo compos? Should only samples captured with period-correct samplers attached to an actual ST allowed in the module music compos? How could you even enforce these rules?

This kind of purism is longing for a past that never really existed. Back in the "old days", if somebody got access to a high-end system like Mac II, SGI or Quantel Paintbox, lucky them. (Like The Silents with the first ever video demo Global Trash II in 1991.) Photoshop was released on Mac already in 1990, I used it at school for scanning & retouching some of the photos for the Overdose end screen (1992), and later for some Falcon graphics. I mostly used an Amiga for creating graphics for the Atari ST because it had slightly better HW and a lot better SW. I worked in 32/4096 colors and converted down to 16/512, dithering those colors that Atari couldn't display. At least at the Megaleif (in 1992) everybody knew this, and nobody had any issues with it: I did my winning compo entry entirely during the party, and a lot of people came to watch the process from behind my back.

In the 90's the most prominent problem with gfx compos was that people were scanning Hajime Sorayama or Boris Vallejo images, doing some retouching and claiming the images as their own. And some were winning the compos with these. This was the original reason why "hand drawn only" rules started to appear in gfx compos. Assembly for instance started to require several work-in-progress images that prove that the image is drawn from scratch by the artist. I admit that I've been quite inactive during the last 15 or so years, but I've never encountered the interpretation that "hand drawn" means "each pixel must be individually placed with a mouse". If this is the intent of the rules, much better wording is needed.

Even today, using photos or fantasy art as "source art" - essentially reducing the artist to a human scanner - is an issue I'd rather like to see getting addressed in the compo rules. Images like this don't require any originality or creativity, just some technical skill. Technical skill is definitely a requirement in demoscene art, but I don't think it's the main point. If the copyright owner of the source material is a nasty one, these also invite DMCA takedowns and other issues for sites like Demozoo.

To me demoscene art is about two things: being creative and exploring the limits of the target platform. The means and tools used for this are not relevant, only the end result matters. On vintage platforms, most of the progress comes from the newly available tools because the HW is fixed and thoroughly explored. If you limit the tools and techniques to those "originally available", Atari scene becomes just a museum.

Peace,
Lancelot

BTW @mdskay - correct me if I'm wrong, but I get a feeling that you think that doing the image this way is a shortcut that gives unfair advantage. Rest assured, it's not really any faster or easier this way, quite the opposite. The recorded total editing time for the image was 22 h 47 min.

@Lancelot : thank you for these explanations. It is always hard to know what is acceptable, what is not, what should be done and what shouldn't. I am quite familiar with some known names and I know that gfxmen can be sorted out into different categories : those who paint from scratch, those who perfectly create copies from existing photos or paintings, those who use extra tools, those who take existing pixel gfx and rework them... I try not to get into hot discussions. I keep painting from scratch, sometimes copying my own paper work and that's it.

@lancelot
One thing is clear. You grown up totally different in the scene as me. And I don't won't to discuss this further. You have clearly more experience in creating art for competitions than me, that for sure. Maybe you were forced, to use other tools to create better gfx to be competitive with the elites. I didn't need that. I'm a pixel artist and set everything pixel by pixel and I didn't learned it in a different way in the past. And I'm sure there were different kind of artists in the past like you already described. Guys like you, guys like me. So let's say keep it like it is.

And no, on the second comment. It's not unfair, it's a totally different approach to do it. And if this way, creating gfx for a stone age computer is the way to do it these days? I need to life with that.

I could do it but I don't do it. I work everyday in my job with all new graphic tools of these days. But for a graphic Compo like this I stay old school, like I had done it back in the days.

Peace and have a nice day,
Jade

mdskay: I suppose "pixel by pixel" is not exactly true, as there is stuff like line or fill function to use, even in the oldschool way of doing things. But I see what you mean. It's a bit like comparing different crafts in one competition. This happens in the scene, also in other compos. One approach to get this transparent is showing comprehensive information for each entry before an it is shown: how it was exactly made, which tool was used, whatever a creator likes to emphasize for his artwork and tooling.

But this aside, I like this picture very much, especially due to the original motive and amazing perspective (even if I am a real sucker for "traditionally pixelled" stuff). Great graphics! And great to see Lancelot back (a graphics hero since I saw Overdose!)