Group leaders/artists trying to make money through the scene
by Aneurysm/Piko (As appeared in Tyrone #03)


ACID PRODUCTIONS

One day in 1992, when ansi had just started to be produced for bbses,
someone emerged with a group called acid. This would be the first ever group to
emerge and produce art in an orderly fashion, releasing monthly. This was a
decent thing to do, as it paved the way for other groups such as ice, blade, ciaetc. But recently, acid has been using its power to manipulate other artists
to change the archive format from zip(a scene tradition) to rar, and for what
reason.

But this is not the purpose of my article. The acid cap is a decent cap,
but think about it. Your walking down the street in your acid cap, and you see
a crack addict, and the cap says 'acid productions'. A crack addict would think
that your from some wild drug mass production company, and proceeds to attack you for your hat. (artists rendition)

crack addict: whoa man, you must be on acid man, i love that stuff
acidcap guy : no man, i'm just a doodleboy
crack addict: i'll kill you man.. your a dead man.
acidcap guy : no!!!!!

Ok ok, now this might not exactly happen, but what exactly is the point
of spending 16$us (22$canadian) for a hat that says acid on it. To meet other
artists? Next thing you know they'll be acid t-shirts, posters, porno mags,
mousepads, music cds, and "Buy stock in acid productions!". Another example of trying to manipulate artists to spend money would be to register aciddraw. What do you get by registering aciddraw. Jump to dos? If you have windows95, you can multitask to a msdos window. Aciddraw is a useful utility, but for 20 dollars, i think we could go without registering.

Probably they'll make you pay to upload your pack to the acid archive,
and for 2 dollars you get a bright shiny coin that says acid on it (10 dollars
shipping of course).

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CIA PRODUCTIONS

Rather than in the case of acid, cia has taken a more direct approach
of selling stickers. For the low price of 20$, you get a hundred stickers if
your not a member, but if you are, you get it for the lower price of 15$.
Think about it, 15$ for a bunch of adhesive stickers with amusing pictures on
them. Still, there are about 30 members, and about 300 or more people in the
scene. So most people would have to pay 20 dollars. Plus shipping, its a hell
of a lot of money for a bunch of things that you probably won't know what to do
with in the end anyway.

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SCENE CDROMS (theres another one)

This one is REALLY stupid. Rather than getting any merchandise, you
get 2 cdroms filled with artpacks from 1996. The Acid archive has all of these
packs and more, and its all for free (for now). Why dish out 25$ us (33$ can)
for a cdrom filled with old artpacks, demos, and other things that if you were
uptodate with the scene from that year, had a record of all the stuff that you
would have seen anyway. Plus it didn't have all of the artpacks anyway. For 25
dollars, you could get a box of 100 3« diskettes to backup all the packs from
that year that you acually wanted, not a bunch of groups that you've probably
never heard of, or that you wanted to read about.

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ARTISTS SELLING ART

Some artists are really lazy, and need motivation to draw. Sometimes
its necessary to trade goods and services for other things. But lets think aboutthis for a minute. Most artists sell logos for about 2-10 dollars. Many artists will draw you something for free, or trade services. For instance, logo for
logo, access on the board for logo, etc. Some(many) boards don't last forever,
and the people who run them, if they are persistant, will gather up many logos
and possibly pics for their board.

Artists who sell a logo that they worked like 10 minutes on for 5$ is
a pretty good rate. If they were consitant and sold about 10 logos a day, thats
about 30 dollars an hour. More than most professionals make. Sometimes if your FAVORITE artist in the whole world who quit drawing and you begged him for art, but he said the only way he would draw is for money. Now you shipped him out themoney, and it wasn't what you wanted (piece was ugly..) and you wanted your money back, i really doubt the artist would send you your money back after putting effort into a piece.

What i'm trying to say is that many artists would draw you art for free,
rather than pumping in lots of money into one piece that you may not like after
it was finished. But if your desperate to buy some art, a decent way would be
a compo. For 10 dollars you could get lots of work for your board, lots of
variety, it would be worth it for the ten dollars rather than buying one logo
for ten dollars.

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FINAL WORD

Drawing shouldn't cost money, it should be something that is done
mainly because you think its fun and allows you to meet other people who have
some of the same interests as you. if your that desperate to spend your money
on "acid" caps, and cia stickers, or if you really want to spend your money on
an ansi or an ascii that you may or may not like anyway. Or if you want to spendyour money on something that has the packs that you probably have on your hard- drive if you kept up to date throughout the year, its probably better that you didn't have money at all. Or you spent it on something worthwhile. These are MY views, and may or may not represent the views of the other views of the tyrone staff. aneurysm/piko out.