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interview with Madwizards
Posted by: Marss Jun,27.2013-13:41 

anked #1 with Kioea by Madwizards, the winning Amiga AGA demo from Revision 2012 has been ported over to the Falcon060 and released, out of the blue and to please our sensorial delight, during Outline 2013.
This masterpiece (is there a better word?) has joined many other Amiga AGA top ports like Silkcut, Ocean Machine and Starstruck by TBL ported by genius Mikro.
I (Marss)just can not confess the number of times Kioea was played again and again just for the pleasure of the eyes. As a sign of appreciation and thanks,
I decided to drop a note to one of the member and to propose him to answer some questions about the making of Kioea and the guys behind Madwizards.

“Hi Tomasz...
1- Can you introduce yourself?
Hello readers, My name is Tomasz, for the world of demoscene better known as Azzaro/Madwizards&Floppy. Age: 35. Born and raised in Poland and currently resident of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. My professional position is a professional, highly motivated Digital and Graphic Designer / Project Manager with a keen eye for detail coupled with excellent creative abilities. In short words - freelance designer keen to work on anything related to design :)

2- What is your history with computers?
I've started my adventure with computers in late 80's while was a friend of mine had his first C64. During that time you've had to have quite wealthy parents, especially in communist Poland, to be a proud owner of a home computer. I still remember the lovely times when we've been dreaming for the classes to be over to, literally, run to the friend's house and play some ancient video games. Things become easier in the 90's as home computers become more and more popular. Meantime I've seen an Amiga500 at the other friend's house (Qix/Nah-Kolor) and instantly I knew - I desperately needed one for myself. My fist personal computer was lovely Amiga CDTV with black keyboard and black external disk drive. Including main unit, probably none other computer system looked so bespoke and jawdropingly back in 1993. I still have a paper photo my father took while I was ceremonially cut the box with it at home. What a memories. Later on I've replaced it with Amiga1200 with 850Mb hard-drive. It was 1995, the same year Qix showed me some demos for AGA systems and introduced to the magic world of demoscene. And, instantly, I knew this is the path I would be walking on from then :) I didn't have a PC at home until late 2000, which is quite funny, since I was graduating from my Technical University back then. Amazingly I did not feel the need of buying a PC, even if studying Multimedia Technologies and 100% of materials/labs was created for PC. Must be Amiga Rulez nature :)

3- Did you join another group before Madwizards? What did you release back in those days? What was your role?
My friend and I formed in the summer of 1995 a local group named Venal for just one and only reason - we felt it sucked to be a member of the biggest demoscene formation then - Independents. Later on Venal transformed in Embora and we've even released two Amiga demos in 1998 and 1999. That was some kind of on-off membership for me but still considered as fun. The best fun and R&D sessions we've had, was during the Mortal Kombat 2 marathons while playing for hours at Drf's flat using a joystick with a stick replaced with car gear lever. Skills level: expert :)

4- How did you join Madwizards and why?
I was invited to join Mawi in 1996. That was a group created by a bunch of friends of mine (Seti, Heron, Jacko, Komar) back in 1995 and they needed a second swapper to get the things going. Later on, after releasing two 64k intros, Heron and Jacko lost their interest in being a demosceners and after an argue established their own group named... Mad Wizards. Apart from original Mawi we've had two groups with almost the same name. It was probably 1997 when guys disappeared socially and then I've asked the remaining team if I could be a new organizer. Reaction was positive, so we've assembled together all remainings and that was the moment the Madwizards start to climb the demoscene ladder.

5- What is your role with Madwizards?
My role was a swapper and organizer. During the time I've transformed into organizer and graphician. Recently I'm mostly a project manager trying to keep the team together, assembling a star demo team, helping with graphic and art direction and assure to deliver the best releases we could for the parties :)

6- As a graphic designer, what tools do you use and why? Do you have any website? All machines combined, what other graphic designer(s) do you like the work of?
Depending on a specific project I usually use a combination of three of Adobe products - InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator. These are backed by some side tools specific for detailed tasks - Deep Exploration for handling 3-D objects, Font Viewer for browsing my fonts collection with simply comparison between few different types, EditPlus for doing ASCII logos, CorelDraw for handling various design issues and many more. But, on daily basis, it's mostly Adobe.

As for the designers I admire the works of Visualice - his complexity as being an artist with the idea and a skilled craftman who could execute it with tools of trade and presenting with eye watering form. There are also works of Louie500 as a designer and brain behind the TBL releases. And last, but not least, would be Made - since he become less active on demoscene I still admire his works. He's also a very talented designer and illustrator, judging by his website.
Feel free to visit my website to take a look at some of my works: http://sgeezus.deviantart.com

7- What are your favourite Madwizards demos so far and why?
There are two of them. Fate Fits Karma (http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=9556) for being the most advanced project we did probably. It has the best synced effects and the music by Jazz & Slumgud which still sends the shrives down your spine. If you have the opportunity, try to read all the texts on screen - there is separate story behind it, some kind of hidden part for the audience. This demo was ranked 2nd at Breakpoint 2003.
The other one is Cruel Karma Forms (http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=3969) for the amount of time and effort we spend on it. It was crazy time when four of us - Kiero, Ubik, Budgie & I - gathered together and spent a few weekends working on it constantly at Ubik's summer house. Unfortunately there is no high quality videorip of this demo, but it's still worth watching. It was a winner as Symphony 2001.

8- Apart designing for Madwizards, do you offer your skills to other demo makers? For which productions?
I'm proud to help anyone who need a hand with their demo. During the years I was involved into a releases by Venus Art, Floppy, Anadune, Dimness, Plastic and probably few more, which I do not remember at the moment. If you need anything - just drop me few lines in the email. If time allows, I'll be more than happy to be a part of something new ;)

9- What is the normal process when you all start working on a new demo? What are the compromises? Are there any limits?
As we mostly release demos on Amiga, I could speak only about the limits of this system. Sure, there are a cap of speed and framerate which pushes you find more creative alternatives to express what you have in mind. Fortunately people stopped bitching about using a sampled mp3 track as the music or even are eager to accept part-animated effects as realtime, so life of the designer is quite easier and after all this years we could catch up with recent trends in design. Our usual development method is like a path - Rorque and I discuss the effects and exchange ideas of what's hot or not. 2-3 months before the party we are starting to collect a tune for the demo. Then I work on the effect ideas and breaking them into pieces, building a schedule. Each effect, which could be something complicated or just a simple s[...]







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Topic Posted by  Date 
interview with Madwizards Marss Jun,27.2013-13:41
  Re: interview with Madwizards CiH Jun,27.2013-21:33
    Re: interview with Madwizards ggn Jun,27.2013-22:47
      Re: interview with Madwizards CiH Jun,27.2013-22:56
  Re: interview with Madwizards Marss Jun,28.2013-01:14
    Re: interview with Madwizards CiH Jun,28.2013-08:44
      Re: interview with Madwizards CiH Jun,28.2013-08:46
        Re: interview with Madwizards ggn Jun,28.2013-13:12
          Re: interview with Madwizards- Marss Jun,28.2013-15:11
            Re: interview with Madwizards- CiH Jun,28.2013-23:45
            Re: interview with Madwizards- mikro Jun,29.2013-01:53
              Re: interview with Madwizards- grey/msb Jul,01.2013-11:34


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