It's been a while since Flash Party 2023, but I had no time to write about the contribution with which I was able to win the ANSI competition until now. For starters, I had not drawn an ANSI since exactly November 10, 1996. 27 years ago! Back then, I used Acid Draw for MS-DOS, but I now find Moebius much better. But let's talk about the process of creating "Skate Kittens". I'd love to say that I'm an excellent illustrator, but the sad truth is that I'm pretty bad. Because of that, I've always used references for drawing ANSI. This might sound as simple as copying an existing drawing, but in reality the process is much more complicated than it looks. This is because of the limitations of the format: You draw using ASCII characters, so the resolution is terrible. It's very difficult to adapt small details. Only two colors per character, 80 characters per line. One of those two colors must be picked from a fixed 16 color palette. The other color must be picked from 8 available colors. (16 if using iCE Color™) While you can apply some dithering and get more shades of colors, the available palette is very limited. This means that you need to adapt many details from the original reference in order to represent them as ANSI. Colors need to be changed. Find a way to trick the eye into reconstructing details that are not there anymore. Here's a small tutorial by Lord Soth / iCE where many of these techniques are explained. Back in the 90's I used to work with references from comic books, because it's a style that is better suited to adapt to ANSI. Now I'm using Midjourney to generate multiple images and then make a composition in Photoshop, fixing those typical AI errors in the process. Once I have a reference that I think might work, I load it into Moebius so that I can layer it behind the ANSI using transparency. From this point onward, I make two draw passes. In the first one I focus on basic flat colors and shapes. The result looks somewhat like EGA pixel art, if zoomed out. The second pass focuses on color shading and finer details. For this case in particular, it took me 16 days to get to the end result. And thanks to Moebius' autosave feature, I was able to keep each step of the process and see how it evolved, day by day. Here's a video where you can watch said process from the start.

With Flash Party 2023 over, it was time to post my contribution to their Commodore 64 music competition, which finished second thanks to the public vote. It is worth clarifying that I was on the verge of not doing it due to lack of time. The last few weeks before the Flash Party were super busy and I was pretty sure I wouldn't make it. However, and also to my own surprise, a final sprint of only 4 days would be enough to learn how to use SID Wizard v1.92 and understand the minimum necessary of how the Commodore 64 SID chip works to finish this new song. Maybe only I notice its rough edges due to the rush, but I have to say that I am happy with the result. Especially since I had never made "real" chiptunes. I say this because I do not strictly consider Amiga or PC tracked music "chiptunes", since they used sampled sounds. And in this case you have to program a sound chip with very limited synthesis capabilities. And also, in a sense, it was a relief to do so. Because I had been looping this song in my head for MONTHS and it was time to take it out. Maybe now is the time to expel the OTHER chiptune that is still looping inside my skull. This song was recorded from my own Commodore 64-C PAL-B with its excellent SID 8580 sound chip, so I'm going to take the opportunity to show it off because it's absolutely gorgeous. Until the next song!

On November 28, the 2023 edition of the Flash Party was held, which is probably the most important demo party in Latin America. Like every year, computer art competitions were organized and divided into categories. And on this occasion it was also 25 years since that first edition in a warehouse in the Villa Crespo neighborhood. To add to the excitement, we returned to the in-person format at the old and beloved General San Martín Cultural Center where the massive deliveries of 2000 and 2001 were held. With all of this at stake, I couldn't resist the temptation to return to visit Argentina and meet up with many acquaintances from my days on the scene. And that's not all: considering the excellent quality of the works presented in the 2022 competitions, it became too tempting to participate again. The last time I did it was probably in the 1999 edition! Therefore I presented a new ANSI called "Skate Kittens" and a chiptune for Commodore 64 called "Kawaii". I had never composed music for Commodore 64 and I had only 4 days to do it. I finished just hours before the final deadline! The format of this edition consisted of a section of stands for the public and a stage with a big screen where the works of each participant were projected. In the intervals between competitions, the organizers commented and explained what was being seen to the audience to make things easier for newcomers. Unlike the first editions, this time you couldn't take up space with your computer, which was logical considering that the format was reduced from three days to only eight hours. At all times, the public could use their cell phones to live vote for each work presented with a score from 0 to 5. At the time of the vote count, the points awarded for each contribution are added and leaderboards are calculated based on that. But there was more than just art competitions. There was also an area with different types of games that people could try. Several of them were experimental oddities that ran on custom hardware designed by their creators. Particularly striking was the Ventilastation™, which was basically a custom console that could run simple games using an upright fan with a strip of LEDs on its blades as a screen. And it did not only run games: there was even an intro that participated in one of the competitions. Why? Because they can, of course. After all the competitions were over, Francisco "Foco" Cerda joined from Chile with an incredible live show. Using the giant screen to present videos synchronized with his music, he took the opportunity to present some songs from the soundtrack of ProtoCorgi, an excellent shoot them up developed in Chile. When the show ended, the organizers went on stage to read the results of each competition, which were defined by public voting. My ANSI ended up being voted the winner of its category and my chiptune came in second in theirs! You can see the results of all the other competitions here. And as a bonus track, I met up again with Panoramix and Rave-N, my former pals from Mindprobe! We took the opportunity to catch up after so many years without seeing each other, and there was even talk of the possibility of doing something together again... probably... eventually... We will see.

Flash Party 2023 is over and I was able to be there in person this time. I have a lot of things to share about it, but it's gonna take me a few days to do it. The reason for that is because I need to rebuild this site with a more "permanent" structure that can escalate better. What you are seeing right now was VERY rushed and it's a pain to update because everything is actually static. Patience pls.

When I set out to create this site, I had to review a lot of ancient content in order to reconstruct my own history. A large part of that was about 60 songs I made with different trackers in the period 1990-1997. And it turns out that 1997 was my most productive year: I composed 19 songs. To my surprise, I didn't dislike what I heard that much. Of course, there were things I definitely would have done differently today. Others I wouldn't have done at all. But something interesting about doing this type of revisionism is that sometimes you rediscover techniques and styles that you had forgotten. Sometimes I also remember what I had in my head when composing those songs, and I compare it with what ended up coming out with the resources I had at that time. In several cases I found good ideas that were poorly executed, and I felt sorry for that being lost. Therefore, I decided to make a selection of what I liked most from that year with the intention of producing it again taking advantage of the equipment and knowledge I have today. I wondered if I should re-record the original tracks, but it seemed like a better idea to keep the original material as it was. Exactly the same tracks with the same samples that those XM files used. The idea is not to remake those songs completely but to try to give it the sound that I would have wanted to achieve at that time. More specifically, it would mean extracting the tracks from the original tracks using OpenMPT, importing and cleaning them in Studio One, removing what doesn't work, mixing everything again and finally mastering. That selection ended up including 8 songs. I will reveal the list as I progress with the project, but I can tell you that the first one is "Re-evolution" and it is already finished. I am going to cover the production of each of them including audio previews in different posts here.

Well, I've been dragging for far too long to build some kind of website, and the links page was just not cutting it anymore so I had to do something. So here's some kind of placeholder site, which I will probably replace further down the road with something -hopefully- prettier. I've posted a selection of original music, DJ sets and ANSI art to start with. There are also some Mindprobe live show photos and lots of flyers. I'll probably have more news when the time for Flash Party 2023 arrives. I'm planning to participate in at least one competition after many, many years. You can contact me using the mail envelope down there at the left.