"As a SalesForce DevOp by day, I am passionate about three things: tools, workflow and design. In my (admittedly limited) free time, I enjoy spending my six figure salary on craft ales from the 4 for £7.50 range at Tesco Extra, which I sip whilst applying my efficient tooling and optimised workflows to realise impactful design decisions."
-- Stiffler's Mom/The Nutmeg Mine
We were nearly at the finish line; the chequered flag was in sight. Our intro now executed without crashing, and in doing so successfully delivered a full pop song. The very final stage before release was now to polish relentlessly our intro's visual appearance, thereby bringing it to an optimum level of aesthetic excellence. This so-called "design stage" is a relatively new part of the Atari demo development cycle; prior to 2012, work tended to include any old visual shit just to get something released as quickly as possible. However, more modern releases have demonstrated that design now eclipses all other aspects of demomaking - it was therefore crucial that we did not fall at this final hurdle.
Enter our very own Stiffler's Mom, a veritable design connoisseur. Stiffler's Mom's understanding of the importance of visual design elevated this project to a level that we had never considered possible, whilst his conscientious use of tooling and optimised workflows ensured maximum efficiency in delivery.
Stiffler's Mom began the design process by cracking open a Bishop's Finger (rich, chestnut-coloured strong Kentish ale; 5.2% ABV; Shepherd Neme, Faversham). From his custom built director's-style folding chair, he issued forth the creative diktat like Kubrick that the background colour of the demo must be white. This simple design choice immediately introduced a classy and modern aesthetic to the work, setting it apart visually from the 97% of other Atari demos which use the traditional black. To achieve this look, Stiffler's Mom explained that we could simply set the first palette colour to white (RGB value $777 in hexadecimal, 1911 in decimal). This workflow saved an incredible (320x200 =) 64000 unique mouse clicks, which otherwise would have been required to hand-colour the screen.
Next up, Stiffler's Mom popped the top of a Yewtree's Delight (glittered sour ale with fruity cereal flavours; 8.4% ABV; Gladys' Brewery, Upper Cumberland) and turned to the next task: selecting suitable reference images for the pixel-art. We had all agreed in advance that the intro must show an image of Scatman John - anything else would have been disrespectful - but Stiffler's Mom went one further, by suggesting an original design based on two contrasting portraits. Image #1 (see figure 1), a relaxed press shot, showcased John's laid back, playful and insouciant side. Conversely, image #2 (see figure 2) was a candid close-up of the great man himself as if mid-scat. This action shot was selected because Scatman John's surprised expression was felt to reflect his likely shock at the ongoing lack of unity between all Peoples of the World, even decades after his death.
 |
| Figure 1: "at play" |
 |
| Figure 2: "at your service" |
Breaking into a Gretzky's Shame (American IPA with smoky, meaty, oily and sickly notes; 12.1% ABV; BrewDog, Glasgow), Stiffler's Mom then set to work on the conversion process itself. In previous decades, Atari pixel-art specialists had to replicate reference images entirely by hand using graph paper; nowadays, more modern workflows such as those used by Stiffler's Mom enable far more efficient practices. Using MS Paint in the first instance to convert the portraits to 16 colour images suitable for display on the Atari ST, Stiffler's Mom then used GrafX2 to position the sub-images appropriately on a virtual 320x200 screen, before efficiently saving out the result as a .PI1 ready for direct inclusion in the demo. At this point, we noted that image #2 had been rendered into an entirely different 16 colour palette to image #1; however, Stiffler's Mom assured us that the resultant "negative image effect" was in fact a deliberate design choice, implemented to communicate a subliminal message of "irrationality" to the audience. This message sought to bring the audience's unconscious attention to the absurdist juxtaposition between the upbeat, hopeful lyrical themes of Scatman's World and the real-life lack of unity between all Peoples of the World.
 |
| Figure 3: "the final layout" |
By now, Stiffler's Mom had imbibed three strong craft ales within just six-and-a-half minutes, and was rapidly becoming physically aggressive. Therefore, we had to work fast. Ending on an Hubbard's Ampallang (thick, custardy stout with a turkey and banana finish; 35.0% ABV; Prunehog, Peterborough), Stiffler's Mom attempted to focus on creating the 16-frame fading logo animation which would bring our work to completion. To do so, he selected the default TOS font on "outline" mode in Neochrome Master, making use of this "heritage" tool in a playful pastiche of the modern, "new-school" nature of the flashing logo effect itself. On completing the final frame, he promptly vomited into a nearby bucket and became comatose.
During the subsequent wait for the ambulance, Marrowfat and I watched the final demo again and again on repeat, mesmerised by our own work. We could not believe that it was finally complete - almost an entire man-hour of work, and several thousands of pounds, had gone into our finished production. Our collective breaths quickened at the prospect of showing our work in a demo competition. But which competition to choose? As will become evident, we could never in our wildest dreams have predicted some of the things that would happen next....
No comments:
Post a Comment