From: kkallio@vipunen.hut.fi (Kiia Kallio)
Subject: Re: The Party II graphics competition
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Date: 22 Jan 93 21:51:37 GMT

In <1jotoeINN90t@cc.tut.fi> l115130@lehtori.cc.tut.fi (Lehtonen Tero) writes:

>In article <Paul_Trauth.1dvd@agwbbs.new-orleans.LA.US> Paul_Trauth@agwbbs.new-orleans.LA.US (Paul Trauth) writes:

>>have DPaint 4. I never use HAM. In my opinion, it's only suited for

>DPaint4 running in HAM on 7Mhz Amiga is ridiculously slow and practically 
>useless, but DigiPaint3 is from totally different world.

I agree with DP4 - it is slow even in normal 32 colour lo-res... Try choosing
palette item ... it takes THREE seconds to draw the palette with those
ridiculously small color areas, which are made even smaller by the HAM bugs.
I have owned the whole DPaint series, except 4, to which I decided not to
upgrade after I saw the demo-version.

I have also used DigiPaint3, and it is fast and well-done. I still disagree
with you that HAM is useful for drawing pictures. Even if you know how HAM
works and adjust your palette to that there will be errors in the
picture.

Graphics are often used in demos as not only loaderpics, but inside demo-
screens. HAM slows down the machine so much, that it is very rarely used.
If the the pics that took part in the compo are going to be used in a demo-
screen in the future, HAM will not be suitable for that.

Also, many people may think that a picture is digitized if it is in HAM,
and so the artists will not use it.

>>CALCULATED pictures such as ray-traced stuff, not for something that you're
>>going to sit down with and lay down every pixel yourself. I like to have

>Now I disagree! HAM is challenging and difficult to use, but when you get used
>to it there is no other choice! I love to have about 1,500 different colours
>in one picture - boy, it looks great! 

I would like to see a picture with that amount of colours... It is about 3/8
of whole amiga palette. I have studied art, and dare to say that it would
be a bit too colourful.

And then back to the original subject... I would not say that it is
impossible to find out if a picture is copied or not:

1) There should be a rule in the compo that if a picture is copied and
   the organizers find it out after the competition, they will contact the
   owner of the copyright of the original picture, and any possible prize
   should be returned. If the organizers are a respected group, they can
   also tell everybody in their next production how lame the "artist" who
   tried to cheat is. This will prevent many persons of even trying.

2) If the organizers think that a picture might be copied, the artist
   should be able to prove that it is not. It should be easy; I, for
   instance, draw always scetches and save my work often so that I could
   always start again with a previous version if something goes wrong.
   A process of copying a picture differs rather much from drawing one
   from start to end. (Cheating is still possible, there is lots of
   trouble in it.)

3) I have recognized many of those pictures of The Party II as copies, and
   my friends have recognized some more of them. It should be fairly easy
   to construct a jury of "experts" from different areas... one role-player,
   one comic-addict, one fantasy art freak...

BTW, as it comes to my experience, jury is always better than public voting.
An audience of coders, swappers and musicians who generally know nothing
about art is not capable of judging which picture is best. And in addition
to that, things like nationality of the artist and amount of naked females
shown in the picture tend to distort the result of the voting.

There is still a problem: how to find a jury good enough, when all the best
artists, who of course know most of drawing with computers, want to take
part in the competition? Answer is simple (and it might not work): why not
to construct the jury from participants of the competition? (An initial jury
should of course drop the worst pictures off... it should be fairly easy
to select 10-20 best artists.) This jury will then give points for all
pictures. If there is 15 pictures, for instance, each participant puts those
pics in order so that he gives 13 points for the best, 12 for second...
and 0 for worst. No-one gives points to his own picture. Then these points
are added, and the winner is the picture which gets most points.

The reason why it might not work is that someone might want to give low
points for a good picture so that his own picture has better chances of
winning. This would not be so easy if everyone tells publicly what points
he has given for the others. It is still possible, but everybody will
know if somebody does it.

I would like to hear your opinions from this, since this is something we
have planned to use as rules for our ST-Party next summer.
(Dont flame me of asking this here... there is no such group as
alt.sys.atari.st.demos and the people in comp.sys.atari.st are only
quarreling which one, Atari Falcon, Amiga 1200 or PC is best...
Nothing prevents an Amiga artist from taking part in. The picture should
only be viewable on Atari STe.)

>	Tero Lehtonen, l115130@cc.tut.fi
>	"HAM - beating hell out of VGA"

Kiia Kallio
(Lancelot of Aggression)
kkallio@vipunen.hut.fi

PS. Lamest thing of all... take a look of picture #47 "Sunset" and compare
    it with the background of "Bird"-animation in animation package
    "Fantavision"... Yes... it is the same picture, only palette differs a
    bit...