Interview with Demoscener – noby (Epoch, Prismbeings)
2023/08/03
Welcome to the Interview with Demosceners! This time, we welcome noby from Epoch and Prismbeings (and many other projects).
As an all-arounder and a newer generation of demoscener (meaning “not growing up with Amiga/C64”), noby’s title varies from musician, coder, designer to director. And probably after reading this interview, we might want to add “thinker” (and “collector”) to this long list. 🙂
In this interview conducted via chat, noby explained about how their solo work has started, pros and cons of solo/collaborative works, and why we should re-evaluate the definition of “direction” in demoscene.
We also talked about the inspiration, emotion, current AI trend and more! Grab a comfy chair and your favorite drink, and enjoy reading!
Note: If you don’t know what demoscene is, you may want to start from here!
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First of all, could you please introduce yourself briefly? Your name, the groups you belong to, and your roles?
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| photo provided by noby |
In demoscene for the most part I use the handle ‘noby’. I’ve been part of various groups over the years, but the two primary ones I’ve made most of my worthwhile contributions in are Epoch and Prismbeings, the latter of which is my own solo-group mainly for size-limited productions. In addition, I’m part of groups such as Macau Exports and Empathy, as well as some secret ones that I intend to keep that way! I’m not however a member of Ekspert—as some have speculated over years—nor have I contributed to any of their productions in any material way.
As far as roles go, I don’t strictly think in those terms. I guess most appropriately I’m a ‘coder’ and a ‘musician’, but I don’t really think of myself as a coder though, because it’s not something I really like that much. I don’t enjoy programming for the sake of it, or at least rarely do. It’s more just sort of “means to an end” to me, a tool I can use to create something visual.
I think working on demos these days (or maybe since the beginning?) requires a high degree of interdisciplinarity in practice, which makes such role categorizations unhelpful. Really, I mostly just do whatever is needed to get a demo done!
Prismbeings is your solo work, so basically you need to take care of everything! How did this project start?
I didn’t initially set out to do everything by myself, in particular because for a long time I didn’t feel capable of handling the entire process alone. Eventually though I found myself able to work on productions entirely independently with full creative control.
Zetsubo by Prismbeings (2018) 4K intro
You’ve experienced both collaborative and solo projects, what’s the advantage and disadvantage of each?
I might become a bit controlling when trying to collaborate with others. Also, when I feel strongly motivated to contribute to a project, I will have the urge to contribute the creative decisions as well. Depending on who I’m working with and how controlling they on the other hand are, this can be a problem and lead to bad working relationship and a compromised, lacklustre end result. Obviously working alone with full creative control, you can bypass all of these problems.
But I also never had any issues working on Epoch demos with Simo and Dysposin and the others either, so it really depends on how compatible the personalities are within a team. With Simo especially I think we complemented each other well both in creative and technical sense, which made working together fun.
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| Epoch group photo (photo provided by noby) |
So, it gets tough when multiple people try to get the wheel… but working solo can also be hard sometimes?
I don’t think there’s anything particularly hard about doing everything by yourself, other than the fact that you obviously need to wear all the hats yourself, and carry the responsibility of finishing it all alone. But the liberating feeling of being fully in control is to me at least far more thrilling than the feeling of responsibility. It’s still fun to work in collaboration too though, but to me that requires quite a different mode of thought.
Hmm. I guess you got to be a bit of control freak to turn an idea into reality…
All of this is of course tied to the concept of what “direction” actually is. What we’re essentially talking about here is the responsibility of project management and the final look and feel of the result. There needs to be a clear understanding who is responsible managing the project and exercising the final creative control. This can include multiple people of course, but all those details need to be commonly understood by everyone involved.
Speaking of direction, I read your essay. You further explored about the definition of “direction” in demoscene. When did you realize the importance of direction? Was there any specific moment?
Not any specific moment really, no. The Demoscene has of course been somewhat aware of the concept of directorship as long as I’ve been involved with it (or actually a bit longer than that even), so I’ve been exposed to the common Demoscene understanding of the concept since the beginning. That’s not to say that the way Demoscene treats “direction” is necessarily good though, which lead me to write an entire talk and a corresponding article about the topic.
The thing to note is that direction—in the sense that I think it’s useful as a concept—is as a process far less concrete than the Demoscene often makes it out to be. Whereas the Demoscene still tends to liken it to fancy camera movements and tight editing, aspects like that to me are not intrinsically “direction”. Instead, a well-directed demo is one that is cohesive, carries a purpose and communicates that purpose well. Secondary characteristics like good camera work and editing along with countless other less obvious aspects are just possible consequences good direction. The key instead is to rather focus on a layer deeper than just the superficial stylistic outcomes.
For those directions, where do you get the inspiration? Watching movies maybe?
I don’t really take inspiration for the directing process from anywhere specific. I understand directing visual media as rather analogous to speaking and understanding a language, so I can’t really give a direct answer. Let me try to elaborate. One doesn’t consciously take inspiration from anywhere to speak a language, but instead they just apply all of the patterns and conventions they’ve observed, combining and adapting them as needed to arrive at the desired result. The only difference is that in the case of directing you have the freedom to construct your own language on the spot, using it to communicate your intent to the prospective audience.
Of course, there are certain conventions and techniques—sometimes even references to specific sources—that I borrow and allude to in my work, but most of the time I simply work through intuition and feeling. Learning how to direct is first and foremost about observing existing work, and reflecting on how specific choices make you feel. The result of my style of directing is simply the reflection and sum total of my relationship with existing media from throughout my life.
Well then, let me approach this from different way. Maybe you can take some photos? I’d like to see what surrounds you!
In the meantime, do you have any recommendations to grasp what the direction is?
If I had to recommend something specific—and I know these are maybe a bit obvious and a cliché at this point—I think being familiar with the Kuleshov effect and understanding the concepts of Eisenstein’s montage theory are essential foundations for the more concrete side of editing. They still have limited applicability in the context of making demos, but have nevertheless been helpful to me in practice on multiple occasions.
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| Glimpse of noby’s inspiration 1 (photo provided by noby) |
Thank you! Now let me go back to where it all started. When and how did you discover demoscene?
I guess you could say that I got acquainted with the Demoscene slowly over time. I started making tracker music in 2004 when someone on a Finnish web forum recommended them for making music (not to me specifically, but in general). For context I would’ve been about 11 years old at the time. It just immediately clicked with me, and I started both making my own modules, as well as listening to ones others had made.
Start making tracker music at age 11, you were already a big fan of music then?
I’d say I was always interested in music, but I definitely didn’t have any sort of a taste at that point. It’s hard to talk about any specific motivation for things like this. The program that was specifically recommended was MadTracker II, which was not just a regular “oldskool” tracker, but also had modern features like slightly more sophisticated sample playback engine than classic trackers, built-in DSP effects, and VST plugin support, stuff like that. I of course didn’t understand about any of those immediately at that age. Probably most importantly though it was available for free, or there was at least a free version that was otherwise fully featured but with high quality exporting disabled. I don’t think there was many other options available in those years that were as fully featured (although still quite limited) available at free of cost.
I feel I should note that this wasn’t the only tool I played around with at that age. I remember just having fun downloading all sorts of programs to your computer just to try them out. I did the same with for an example 3D modelling tool, image editors and stuff like that, but music ended up being the one I stuck with the hardest, by far.
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| Glimpse of noby’s inspiration 2: Favorite music albums “Not sure if you knew, but I collect records, have quite a few of them actually including a lot of japanese pop (and new agey synth stuff) from around the 1980s” (photo provided by noby) |
You just played around with those tools like new toys?
I definitely didn’t think like “ok, today I’m gonna start making music” and looked up a list with comparisons of all the best tools available for my PC. It was just something I tried on a whim, and it stuck, to this day.
So you started from tracker music, and how did it progress to demo ?
Eventually through that I got more acquainted with especially old DOS demos. “Crystal Dream II” (video) and obviously “Second Reality” (video) were ones I remember liking in those years. But the real watershed moment for me was seeing “Lifeforce” by ASD (video), sometime after Assembly 2007. At this point I also need to mention a good friend of mine, Branch, who both introduced me to that demo and many others around that time. Before Lifeforce I had only been interested in tracker music, and tangentially some of the ‘old’ demos using it, but it was then when I slowly started to get interested in the contemporary PC demos as well, and decided that I had to visit Assembly the next year.
I was still just making music at this point, in terms of the traditional Demoscene role categorizations, but instead of just sample based modules I was also starting to get into VST synthesizers and effects. We had also been playing around with various demo projects together with Branch. She had always had a knack for all sorts of oldskool platforms, and I was ready and willing to make any sort of music for such a demo. Partially through this I also got into experimenting a bit with making chiptunes for various platforms.
Sounds like you had a lot of fun! Did you two make something?
Unfortunately, in those early years our projects didn’t really go anywhere. And it wasn’t until several years later that we actually managed to finish and release something together, but right around that point both of us had also started to drift into doing collaborations with other people as well. As frustrating as it was at times to not get anything finished together, I still look back fondly on all the stuff I learned and was introduced to through Branch.
As for myself why I didn’t just go off on my own, I had tried learning programming on a couple occasions in my teenage years, and even though I understood many of the principles, I could never get past even the first hurdles really.
I honestly didn’t have that much motivation because learning programming felt like such a monumental task, and I really couldn’t even figure out where to begin. That changed in 2011 though, when I entered university and went into Computer Science (or “Software Engineering”, whatever might be the most appropriate descriptor). I still had no real prior programming experience before that, but school gave me appropriate rigor and support to get myself off the ground, and eventually bit by bit start learning graphics programming a couple years later around 2013.
As I started to get the hang of it more and more on my own though, I immediately started to gravitate towards wanting to make my own productions as well; I finally felt like I could actually make a demo of my own.
Out of curiosity, you are not Amiga or NES generation, are you?
Nope! Amiga I only learned of when I got acquainted with the Demoscene, and even Nintendo was scarcely present in my childhood (pretty much everyone just had PlayStation, and then later Xboxes, PC and whatnot).
Ha! I’ve been doing this interview for a while, and I’m usually hearing the name of retro computers but I just realized that they don’t pop up yet. 🙂
Anyway, back to your story, I guess we can say that you’ve been making things since you’re 11 years old. What keep you doing this? What’s so fun about it?
That’s a more tough question. I guess it’s just some sort of an innate drive to keep creating things. In the context of the Demoscene there’s definitely an aspect of seeking your peers’ approval. Or maybe approval isn’t the right term, but just all of us trying to collectively improve upon each other’s’ work and try to impress one another.
Other than that, I don’t have any explicit special reason to create things; it’s just fun to see your own actions have an effect on other people in the real world, often—at least hopefully—in a positive way. I think art, in which I include any sort of products of culture and creative work we make, is the most important distinctive aspect of what it means to be human. I couldn’t imagine not being able to participate in and contribute to it.
That’s really beautiful.
For the last couple years though I’ve mostly been taking a break from actively putting out releases, or at least finishing and publishing projects. I kinda burnt out a bit there a couple times trying to do too much all the time, and at the same time I turned a new chapter in my life which led me to re-evaluate some of my priorities when it came to the way I was creating things. This was also of course around the same time, or just before the pandemic happened. It all had a compounding effect on me shifting my focus and priorities for a while; in particular I wanted to focus on some more long-term projects I felt I didn’t have time for, and also to pick up some new skills and also just enjoy certain things I hadn’t put enough emphasis on. But I feel like I’m reaching the end of this road for now as well, and feel the urge to start publishing things again 🙂
Ah, that’s great to hear! I’m sure those time away from releasing will give you new perspective, looking forward to it!
When you make a demo all by yourself, how do you navigate the project? Do you start from music? Title? Effects?
The honest truth is that in many cases the inception for my productions has simply been that I wanted to force myself to make something for a party that I was planning to visit, whatever it may be. Beyond that though I rarely start the actual process with anything specific. There does need to be some spark of inspiration, but that spark can be just about anything; a piece of code I have lying around, some neat effect, a piece of music, a track of my own that I feel is worthwhile, some image someone else has made, or any combination of the above.
What about storyboard? Do you write them up beforehand?
Storyboards are not something I’ve ever used actually. I just never have time for them, and I rather just want to prototype the final look as early as possible and immediately work within it. I feel they are more just a necessity when working with certain kinds of productions that involve huge amounts of people with complex dependencies on one another, strict schedule, and lots of invested monetary capital. The teams involved in making demos are small enough that such complexity shouldn’t ever arise to necessitate them, and obviously even less so when working just alone. Also, with storyboard, it’s very easy to be over zealous early on, and then end up disappointed later when you realize you’re unable to realize the dreams you initially envisioned. This is not a bad thing in and of itself necessarily though, but it’s just not for me.
I feel the strongest productions, both mine and others’, usually start off with a piece of music as a source of inspiration though, or at least start working the content around the music as early as possible. Demoscene visuals tend to be comparatively different from what we’re used to seeing in other media (although this gap seems to be closing as time goes on) so it can be difficult communicate your intent just through them, especially since demos rarely feature any human characters, let alone ones that actually express emotions. Music instead provides by far the strongest emotional groundwork since most of us are exposed to music in all sorts of contexts on a daily basis, and because of that we know intuitively how to emotionally respond to it. And I’m not talking about just the audience, but also you the creator; if you understand what your soundtrack communicates, it’s likely that the audience will as well, and tying other aspects of your production to it as early as possible helps to ensure this connection. But when I say emotion, I just don’t mean what are often referred to as “story demos” or something like that, but in the broadest sense possible. Ultimately what we seek when making demos is to elicit some sort of a response from the audience, that’s the sort of emotion I’m talking about.
Waillee by Prismbeings (2017) 4K intro
Come to think of it, I remember some of the demos by how I felt watching them… (pause) Okay, let me ask you next question before I fully go into the look back mode 🙂
Do you do anything particular while making demo/music? Like always in the certain place, time or clothes? Listening to music, or drinking beers?
Not really, I don’t think so at least. I feel like the context for every production I’ve made has been different, which has contributed to the end result also feeling different, and I think that’s for the better. Perhaps the only universality is that I tend to finish my productions at the last minute, often with a long crunch just before it. At least that’s how it used to be up until a few years ago. I don’t think I could do it anymore, I’m starting to get old!
Indeed, deadlines are powerful motivation! And…regardless of what project you’re working on, do you set your own rule or goal or standard?
It just needs to be good enough, but again that’s hard to define in any specific terms. It’s another case where I just operate on intuition and feeling, and whether the result feels good enough to me is a sum of almost innumerable different parts. Although I perhaps shouldn’t care too much, I don’t like letting the audience down, because that’s just another manifestation of giving the audience the wrong emotional response. That doesn’t mean I want to please everyone though. I know some people are not going to enjoy every production I make, and I’ll gladly annoy those in the audience who wouldn’t be receptive to the production anyway.
Extra by Epoch (2017) PC demo
Haters gonna hate, but lovers gonna love!
What program do you use to make demo? Do you create your own tool?
Working on Epoch demos we used to use GNU Rocket, but that’s about it. Other than that I tend to make my own, although by tool I just mean a minimum viable set of features and controls allows me to finish productions as quickly as possible. I don’t like using other people’s tools, because you’ll have to learn and adapt into someone else’s idea of UX, patterns and idiosyncrasies. I’m more interested in the fundamentals behind the application than memorizing key bindings, menu hierarchies and organizational principles. Like I touched upon earlier I have played around with all sorts of fancy software suites (3D modelling, VFX, etc.), but I tend to end up getting frustrated and losing interest in them sooner or later. But regarding my own “tools”—if you can call them that—I don’t make any fancy GUIs or editors because for the effort required it’s hardly fun at all. I am slightly curious at giving something like that a try eventually though, but so far it’s been sitting fairly low in my list of priorities.
For programming I use the Visual Studio IDE for C++, and Sublime Text for other sorts of text (like shader code) editing. Also just in case a reader is already thinking this, yes I have given thought to integrating some simple ImGui widgets to my tools, and I probably should try that as well. I have done some experiments with the library already and it is fairly nice to use, but nothing that has actually ended up in practical use.
The thing is that I make demos because it’s such an enjoyable, specific set of skills you don’t get to utilize much in the same way elsewhere (as in in your day job or something like that). I want to make visuals, not maintain and develop an entire application. If I have to do the latter one, I’ll rather have someone pay me for it!
Speaking of tools, what do you think about the current AI trend? Not sure if I should call “trend” but certainly we see more and more of graphics and texts made by/with AI.
Sorry to go all Richard Stallman on you, but I really can’t justify calling any of the currently available tools and services “artificial intelligence”. When it comes to visual “AI art” or whatever it’s branded as at the moment, a much more honest description is to call them image synthesizers.
Ha! Image synthesizers, that makes more sense! But from what I’ve heard on media, it gives me an impression like demos can be created by just pushing a button. Like “hey, make a cool demo with cool music” and the work is done. Are we able to make demos just by using these tools? If that’s the case, ultimately I (who have absolutely zero programming/music/graphics skill) might be able to submit something to compos.
We’re not going to see any sort of a tool that simply produces an entire demo based on a prompt or anything like that. To me the idea that “AI would produce a demo” is not even a hypothetical one, just pure fantasy so far divorced from the current state of the technology.
Ah, that’s how things are… It’s great to know though, because I was kind of worried that it might mess up the compos.
Okay, time to shoot this classic question. Your favorite demo, memorable demo, demo that changed your life… anything. Tell us a demo(s) which is special to you.
These are all very distinct categories to me, but I’ll try to approach each of them from different angles.
Demos that change my life definitely include ones like “Lifeforce” and “Crystal Dream II” that I already mentioned; those were instrumental in sparking my original interest in the scene. Although I wouldn’t count either one as any kind of a favorite anymore these days. I do still appreciate them in their own right of course.
Memorable demos I guess include ones like “Rove” by Farbrausch (video) and “Agenda Circling Forth” by Fairlight (video), which were the very final productions ever presented at the last edition of Breakpoint party in 2010. I was still quite new to the scene with barely any productions under my belt, but I remember observing how tumultuous and uncertain those times were. For the PC demo compo to go out on such a bang felt reassuring and and hopeful in that moment. I was of course watching these only via the stream. Later that year I ended up attending my first “real” demoparty, Stream 2010 for a day with a couple friends. This was a completely different experience as I had only been to Assembly before that. In particular “MF Real” by Kewlers (video) felt absolutely unreal to see live, and in particular the memory of actually seeing it in the compo is extremely vivid.
Those are mostly kind of obvious examples though. As far as favorite demos go however, I have this handy page that covers those, but that list is a bit too unwieldy to start elaborating in full! Below is a trimmed subset of the full list, just a handful of ones I vibe with the most at the moment. In no particular order except by release year.
73 Million Seconds by Pulse (1998, MS-DOS/PC) (video)
My Bird-Cage by Jamm (1998, MS-DOS/PC 64k) (video)
Hello:FRIEND by Fairlight (2005, Commodore 64) (video)
Vokawardoai by Satori (2010, Win/PC) (video)
Black And White Lies by One Studio Off (2014, Win/PC) (video)
Transformer 3 by Limp Ninja (2019, Win/PC) (video)
I could also maybe mention the “ikum” 4k Intros by Calodox, made between 2005 and 2007. Although I haven’t directly tried to emulate their visual styles or unnerving atmospheres, their inventiveness and distinctive style has still had a profound impact on me. You can also find them all included in this “Collektikum” package.
Thanks for the wide and cool list 🙂
Has demoscene influenced your trajectory of your life?
Absolutely, there are few things that have had as big of an influence on my life. The majority of my closest longtime friends I’ve met through the Demoscene, and it’s one of the central things that pushed me towards many of my hobbies as well as my current profession.
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| Glimpse of noby’s inspiration 3 (photo provided by noby) |
Big question. What is demo and demoscene to you?
It’s hard to pinpoint why I’m so attached to the scene. After all, I’ve been interested and involved with the Demoscene since some of my formative years, hence I can’t reliably tell apart whether I fell in love because of its qualities, or whether the subculture itself invisibly shaped me into loving it. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle though, and it certainly has to be at least in part the former.
One of the aspects that attracted me to it—not necessarily with me being fully aware of it immediately—was the non-commercial aspect of it. Of course, demoparty events themselves are to large extent commercial, relying in paying by visitors and sponsors, but beyond that the participation itself, the act of creating, is not tied to any outside commercial pressure with fiscal stakeholders depending on your effort, being judged based on commercial potential or profits.
So much of the creative field—increasingly nowadays as the creator economy becomes more and more woven into the socio-economic fabric—has that looming, sinister aura starting at your neck, requiring you to evaluate the commercial viability of your ventures, encouraging you to think of ways how to monetize your creations, to make you think of marketing and social media presence. The Demoscene is not concerned with any of it. The demos we make are almost without exception, dare I say intrinsically, worthless from a commercial point of view. Working on a demo feels liberating, since it’s nigh impossible to allow such toxicity to seep into your mind even if you wanted to.
That’s not to say demos and various byproducts (especially “demotools”) do not offer the potential for significant personal gain, but at least to me those are just an afterthought, something that develops later either organically, or by choice if the need be (these products do after all offer an incredible potential for filling out a CVs and similar documents).
But furthermore, on the flipside, since demos don’t really allow for any direct commercialization of your effort, this of course implies the requirement of a certain degree of privilege to be able to work on them. Enough financial—and ideally also mental and other sorts of—stability to be able to afford to spend your time—most often free time—working on them. This is not something we can expect from everyone.
I agree that this is one of the core values of demoscene… In this monetization age, some might call idealists, but I’d rather call you guys lucky ones or happy ones, because you are able to do what you enjoy, like you said 🙂
What type of demo do you want to make in the future?
I’ve noticed a pattern that the more someone talks about their unrealized future plans, the less likely those plans are to come to fruition ever in the future. Or maybe I’m just projecting and shouldn’t talk about others with too much certainty, but this definitely applies to me at least! The more time I spend simply thinking about a project, the more the idea itself starts to veer into the realm of fantasy, and the more I let that go on for the less I feel I can grasp actually working on that project; once something has become pure fantasy, how do you approach making it into something concrete again?
That is to say in too many words that while I have many many ideas for unfinished projects. I’m not going to tell what they are in any specific detail! This is perhaps also why most of my successful finished projects tend to occur on a whim, as if out of thin air, firmly guided by intuition.
So… no hint? Maybe outside of scene… say, full-length movie?
I’m always interested in a longer format when it comes to demos. It’s something I’ve pursued many times in my existing productions in trying to push some the lengths of some of them towards what audiences start to consider “boring”. I want to go further though; there’s definitely room to explore in trying to make demos that are 30 minutes long and beyond (and I’m not just talking about scroller filled oldskool megademos). I’m not the only one who’s tried this of course. Many mfx demos in particular have been inspirational to me in this way.
I am also interested in film making outside of the Demoscene. I have made various private unreleased short films (most of which are lost at this point) in the past, and have dabbled in making longer projects in too, but these are again such projects that seem very unlikely to ever work out, so the less I talk about them the better.
Okay, then I won’t dig further on this 🙂
Finally, your message for demosceners and demo fans out there please.
The Demoscene is not a box you put yourself into. Step beyond any boundaries as much as possible, just for the sake of it if nothing else; stagnation is the most insidious poison of them all. But be kind to one another in the process. There are few things we need more than empathy right now. Prefer to have good faith in not just toward your fellow Demoscener, but your friends and people you interact with elsewhere as well.
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Thank you very much for answering my question, noby!
noby’s work can be checked on Pouet and demozoo, and their essay which was touched in the interview “A Critical Look at the Demoscene On ‘Direction’ and Related Matters” can be read here.
noby also showed up in the demoscene podcast “ZINE: The Radio Show” to talk about the direction, so be sure to check this if you’re interested. (Other episodes are intersting as well!)
Thank you very much for reading this interview series!
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– In case you’re wondering what “demo” or “demoscene” is, better check out the well-made documentary called Moleman2. (and the director, M. Szilárd Matusik’s interview can be read in here.)
#1: q from nonoil/gorakubu is here.
#2: Gargaj from Conspiracy, Ümlaüt Design is here.
#3: Preacher from Brainstorm, Traction is here.
#4: Zavie from Ctrl-Alt-Test is here.
#5: Smash from Fairlight is here.
#6: Gloom from Excess, Dead Roman is here.
#7: kioku from System K is here.
#8: kb from Farbrausch is here.
#9: iq from RGBA is here.
#10: Navis from Andromeda Software Development is here.
#11: Pixtur from Still, LKCC is here.
#12: Cryptic from Approximate is here.
#13: 0x4015 aka Yosshin is here.
#14: Flopine from Cookie Collective is here.
– Why I’m interested in demoscene is explained in this article. And for some of my other posts related to “demo and “demoscene” culture is here.
Interview with Demoscener – Gloom (Excess, Dead Roman)
Interview with Demoscener – kb (Farbrausch)
