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The scene, art,
and why we're here..
by Dark Jedi (Jan
24, 1998)
I was reading the rebirth text, by bedlam and evil_e, and
couldnt help but thinking they had the right idea (get the scene
going again) but for wrong reasons. Webpages cant, and WONT
ever take over the place of bbses for the places we draw for.. it
just cant happen.. the whole idea behind bbsing was that it needed
to look good, there HAD to be an ansi on every menu, otherwise,
your board was lame. Its not the same with homepages, a small header,
a pic at the bottom for email or something, some pics or screenshots
of whatever the page is about, and *BAM* your done, you dont need
anymore pictures. Thats it, its over.. you page looks good, doesnt
take long to load, and has potential. While, with a bbs, you need
20 odd ansis to just cover over the default menus. BBSs had a NEED
for ansis, webpages dont. Also, with webpages, you cant draw just
anything.. a webpage usually has a specific theme.. there are many
gaming pages, there are loads of porn pages, warez pages all over
the place, but you cant draw a comic rip for that, it just wouldnt
make sense.. half the fun of ansi was that, you'd be given a board
name, and you'd get creative, draw dragons, knights, large breasted
women.. :) Fonts were always fun, and useful, and while they still
can be used for webpages, its just not needed as much.. a webpage
with the name "joe's cool homepage" isnt going to want a pic of
a skull, or something like that, it wouldnt make sense to the page,
and would make it LOOK BAD, which is one thing that we arent supposed
to do..
I mean, even a scene artpage like acheron doesnt need many
vga's done for it, other than the layout of the page, the only
real other pictures are the banners to go to homepages, which in
turn dont have many pictures on them.. the web doesnt need art..
The scene needs an attitude change.. when someone joins
the ansi channel for the first time, they usually are looking for
an ansi, which usually gets them banned, kicked, or just
flamed for about 20 minutes, before he decides to either
leave (and never come back) or gets kicked.. this isnt a good thing.
Newbies wont want to stay if the people in the channel are jerks,
i almost didnt. If it werent for the few people who actually dont
flame/kick/ban people on there, i wouldnt be around.. not that many
people would really mind tho.. :) But still, people are complaining
that no one new is comnig.. its not because they arent around, its
because most of the time, the ansi doodlers scare them away. Now,
this can be changed.. a newbie is "lame" for a reason, he doesnt
know better.. so rather than flaming him, tell him how he should
be, not a ban saying "lamer" or whatever.. it really would add to
the amount of people coming and staying..
Another thing i would like to see (and many others, as well)
would be to actually talk in #ansi about ansi.. not about pr0n,
juarez or any other doodlers activities, make your own #scene channel
for that, or something.. :) Talk about ansi dammit!@ :)
To all the people who think ansi is dead, SHUT UP!@$ Look
at cdrom.com.. there are more packs in 1997 then any other year,
which MUST mean that there has been a larger amount of art being
drawn, does it not? There may be some/a lot of vga in there, but
that doesnt mean ansi is dead.. ansi is art, an artform cant die,
and i dont want to hear another word about it.. :)
One last thing about the scene.. i've been reading some
of the older bitchslaps and other scene emags, and i've been thinking,
have people really been complaining about the scene since 95? If
so, i must say, its pretty lame.. i mean, it wasnt bad then, it
STILL isnt bad now (no, its not bad, there are always 50+ people
in the channel, most of them are pretty cool (as long as your not
a newbie :) and you can easily waste a few hours of net time without
even realizing it.. :)
Art
Poeple have been complaining for the last little while that
since bbsing is on the downfall, so is ansi. I can only wonder
"why?" I dont look at an old lordjazz pic because i wanted to know
info about the board it advertised for, i looked at it because it
was a damned nice group of colored blocks. I dont care about the
board that it's talking about (unless its mine.. :) i just want
to see the ansi, see how someone else manages to blow my mind away
with a new style of 16 different colors in odd combinations in an
even more strange picture. Thats what its about.. the ansi might
have been a request for a board, but thats not what most people
are interested in.. do *you* look at an ansi pack to look at the
boards in it, get some new numbers to call long distance and crap?
hell no, i didnt think so.
So then the question is, what to draw for? Why do you have
to draw for something? Why not just draw? I'd still look at ansis,
even if there was no board information at the bottom, because thats
not what i'm out to look at.. i like art, thats why i draw, a name
for a baord makes it easier, it gives the artist a name to work
with, so the font is easy to think of, but then the pic is still
usually a creation of the artists mind, a way to show his talent
and just have a bit of fun, and thats what art should be about,
FUN. It doesnt seem to be, it seems that once someone gets really
good, they dont want to draw for anything less than 20 bucks.. its
more of a business to them, they might hang in irc to get some more
cash.. thats not what it should be about, it should be more about
having fun, enjoying it. I only like the scene (not art mind you)
the scene because of the people around, the people i've met, the
ansi "legends" i "grew up" looking at. Not because i might scam
some kid into giving me a quick 20 for some crap for his board..
So still, we dont have much to draw for, we have boards, which
are not doing good, but arent gone totally.. i myself am hoping
to get a board up telnet, so all the people can have some bbsing
fun again.. (that means, draw for dark side!@ :). So for those people
who MUST have something to draw for, how bout some more compos,
how bout blender. I loved blender, still occasionally look at some
of the packs released, they seemed to be a lot of fun.. if no one
minds, i'd love to start that up again. That, or some other compo.
Compos show our competative side, which means we'd try to draw a
nice piece of art to "win" but still have fun. We can still draw
for emags, and just for the fun of it, there are many things we
can draw for, its almost neverending.. so dont complaing about not
having anything to draw for, its aggrivating, and also not needed..
:)
Why we're here..
Why are we here? Here as in irc, why do we hang there, spend
hours of our lives? Why is it a daily thing for me now, which
it never was before? Its because it all ties back into FUN. Irc
is fun, the people around are some of the nicest i've met, and its
a nightly thing for me to go on and chat with people i couldnt before.
Its a means of communication, but its also holding the scene together..
if, for some reason, the net died (i know, its not gonna happen,
but imagine! :) we'd all be left in our local scenes, unless we
wanted to blow a lot of money on long distance calls, which, unless
we're the person who gets 20 bucks an ansi, dont have that kind
of money. A lot of things wouldnt be, such as international groups,
and the like. So, for those bitching about irc being crap too, shut
up, all of ya.. :) Its almost a necessity now, and its a lot of
fun.. :)
I hope this has interested, enlightened, even changed how you
look at the scene, art and how to change it for the better.
If not, oh well.. :) I would like to see things "flourish" like
it did before as well, even if i wasnt around to see it.. :)
- darkj3di/rca
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