I remember back then, in 1990, when 320X200X256 pictures amazed everybody. Armed with my Deluxe Paint drawing program, I was ready to take over the world of the Non-existent VGA scene. These days, for me, were the good old days.

The art scene was composed of 99% of ansi artist, and a mere 1% of revolutionists like me. People thought VGA art was cool, but completely useless. Ansi art was something useful back then. Not only because BBSes were spreading like the plague, but also because ansis were easy to view in the old DOS platform.

The ansi medium was used mainly to advertise and improve bulletin board system. Now tell me what purpose had VGA art? Pictures would take a lot more space on your hard drive and you couldn't see them on remote systems.. (Except on those crappy BBSes that used EGA terminals). A "Chef d'oeuvre" would take 10-25 hours to finish because the tools that most people had didn't possess complex functions and filters. The only thing you could do is draw everything, pixel by pixel. When a picture was finished, you couldn't simply release it like we do today... People took time to code them into nice VGA loaders, with music modules and a little text scroller in the bottom of the screen. Now that was fun to look at!

Unfortunately, these loaders disappeared with the apparition of programs like Photoshop, and the coming of the Internet into our lives. Computers became faster, hard disks bigger. There was no more limitation to the common users.

Some of Malcolm X's own work in the earlier days.

Almost everybody has access to the Internet now. There is practically no more use to bulletin board systems as a mean of displaying art, because people can now see any art form on the net. There is also no more use to VGA loaders because everybody can see them on freeware viewers.

I think today's hirez scene has evolved into something that nobody could have expected back in 1990. Everything is better, even if I lost my place as some kind of "unique" and "legendary" artist *hehe*.

To everyone who thinks that things aren't like they used to be, I can only say one thing. Wake up and smell the coffee boys! It's not the same for you guys, but for the new recruits of the art scene, everything is as exciting as it was when we were new to it. Stop thinking of yourselves so highly, and maybe the fun of it all will get back to you.

To finish this small article, I can tell everybody that I'll keep on drawing 'til I get my ACiD alumni :). So everyone who tries to recruit me in their group, JACK OFF :)

Greets to every real hirez "oldschooler" out there..

Malcolm X GMA/LTD/MIRAGE/ACiD/TWILIGHT/ACiD mxart@hotmail.com