ܲ      ۲     it nearly fits                   ߲                 ۲ i      ۲   ߲ ^                            ߲   visions^#8                                       ۲      ۲    ߲          Apocalyptic Visions Pack #8 - Simply Ozgasmic Greetings Citizens... Blue Apache here for another fun filled romp through all the crap that is apocalyptic visions. We're back in '96, a trifle late, but with some nice stuff. But first, my running commentry on what's new.  Oz'96  Well, australia has had its first truely successful demoparty. AV made the long hike interstate (well, some of us did - others wimped out and whinged about the price ;) ), to get up to sydney and oz96 (known to some demented individuals as Ozgasm). It rocked. It'll start a tradition that'll go on. It was so swish it even had an ansi competition. Unsurprisingly enough (heh - are we modest or what? :) ), AV members won the ansi (although it proved that you should never let democoders vote on ansi art...). We also had a good showing in the vga and music compos (i'm not sure exactly, but i think we got 4 of the top 5 in ansi, 4th in vga, and 5th in music)... Was very cool to see all the art and demosceners from round oz get together.. more people should go to demoparties and mebe start to get a few ansiparties together (would there be enough range of compos for an ansiparty? - try and see...). We'll be there again at Coven'96 in south australia, so stay tuned for details on that.  Sick's gone into a coma  For those who weren't aware, there have been only 3 Australian art groups for the last 6 months or so. AV, Force and Sick. Sick came from a BBS mod's group, and due to a lack of time on behalf of the organisers, is going back to just that. Their art division may reincarnate at some stage, but for now - their art div is dead. The last couple of packs from Sick have been below standard - nearly everyone could agree on that. Then Sick Pack 5 came out, and it looked they were about to recover. Unfortunately, its summer here, and anyone with a life has better things to do than organise artpacks, so Flax has decided to call the art division quits for now. For those of you using SickChat or SickNews - don't panic. The PPE division has survived the fall, and still produces some of the best PPEs round. Maybe later in the year the art div'll resurrect itself, and they can get back on track there too.  Member Changes  Been a reasonable number of member changes since last pack. We've picked up Mr Schizophrenia (VGA), Mick Rippon (Music), Nutbutter (VGA), Kryten (VGA) and Deathstroke (ANSi). Skitzo comes out of nowhere, with VGA quality that'd make most people blush; Mick's music doesn't just kick, but he does it fast enough he can even make instability happy; nutbutter listens to primus - make your own judgement ;) ; Kryten's 3DS stuff'll make you want to fall to your knees (but until harlequin learns to control his compulsive deleting habits, you'll have to wait until next pack to see it); finally Deathstroke comes over to us after the death of Sick, and yes, his ansi really is sick. These guys all truely kick, so welcome to av to all of them... On the support side, we've got Wolverine (not to be confused with the guy in TDD) and Inferno join the club. Wolver's doing our couriering round the net - ask him for a copy of packs via dcc and he can probably oblige. Inf's the local sysop on our WHQ, and official spelling coordinator, so he's in too... As always, there are a few guys who've dropped out of things. Hellspawn, who's been with us since pack 1, going through first ansi and then VGA has decided to call it quits. Headfuck is our other loss, when we failed to hear diddly from him in 2 months or so... You'll also see we've rearranged the member list a bit. We've split it into four groups. The actual artists, support guys (couriers, sysops, etc), affiliated objects (ie. girlfriends etc), and affiliated groups (other groups we regularly do work for/get work from, etc etc)... it's leaving everything broad as hell, which is the way we like it..  What is Art?  I was having a brief chat with inferno on madness network, and he started me thinking about this stuff we call art... You see this sorta crap everywhere. Its in every form from 'real ansi shouldn't be copied from comics' and 'ansi isn't an artform', through to 'photoshop is the cheats way to do vga' and 'demos aren't art'. Whatever Inf says, I'm fairly loose on my definition of art. I'd call demo's artistic, so that means that anything which calls itself an art group should be prepared to release them, as well as ansi and the rest of it. AV is an art group. We'll take members who do anything from ansi & VGA, to music & code. So far we've only been releasing ansi & vga packs, with the occasional bit of music, but we're working on changing. The major project we've got happening at the moment is a musicdisk, along the style of Expoze by Heretics, and hopefully the same quality. Anyone interesting in joining or doing a guest appearance is welcome. If its good art, we're happy to try and help spread it. Along the same lines, if we can get together a few coders, we'd do a demo. Too many groups are getting too fixed about what is art, and aren't prepared to break the rules. Lately there've been specialised groups forming in ansi, vga and music, as well as the traditional demo coders. This is all great and that, but who the hell said you had to limit yourself? Break the rules! Ice has kickarse vga, music and code - why the hell shouldn't they get out and release a demo? If it looks good and you have fun doing it, you might as well. Australia's a great country for the art & demoscene at the moment, cos they're virtually the same thing. Both are so small, they haven't really seperated yet. You have art groups doing art for demos, and you've got demogroups doing code for art packs. We get less h4RDc0RE n!GG4Zz bullshit, and more entertainment... Anyway, you get the drift of my ramble. Don't get stuck down. Be prepared to expand and spread out your style. We fear change, but things'd be bloody boring without it... Blue Apache (AV Organiser) PS. Yes i was serious about the music disk and demo. Anyone interested in helping out with either, get in touch. IRC: BluApache (i'm normally in #av E-Mail: bluapach@suburbia.apana.org.au #force or #coders)    Greets fly out to: iNSTABiLiTY, Force, Oz'96 organisers, xtatic, Heretics, Priests of Power, FTS, Sick, Ice, Blade and last (but not least) Legend.        av^#8                                   SAUCE00AV Info for Pack 8 Apocalyptic Visions Apocalyptic Visions 19960122*P