Welcome to the pages of Vandalism News edition #75, could you please introduce yourself to the readers?

Hi everybody reading, Benjamin [jmin] here. I'm a nerd living in Vienna, Austria, and I've been a fan of the ol' breadbin for 36 years now. In my day job, I'm hired as a requirements engineer but in reality I'm covering all steps of software development except coding. Can't go into any details about the where and the what exactly, but I'm happy to report that I've successfully added a little easter egg in the form of a hidden C64 theme to our main product's GUI.

What does a normal day in the life of jmin look like?

Depends on the weekday but nothing out of the ordinary really. I'm working full time during the week in Vienna and even more time on the weekends in Upper Austria renovating an old house. That said, there's not much "nerd time" left but I still manage to squeeze in some hours in between. So far, lunch breaks turned out to be perfect for short PETSCII-doodle-jams and from time to time I do get lucky with something intriguing that then will be tweaked and/or completed at nightly hours.

So, how did it all start? Tell us about your discovery of the C64 and the scene!

Xmas 1988. I vividly remember the discussion my parents had with my brothers and me about whether a NES or a C64 should be found under our Christmas tree. At that time, I've played on the NES at a friend's place and sure, it was good fun, but while my underage brain couldn't really grasp the possibilities of a "personal computer", having something with a keyboard surely would be superior, right? Based on that, a C64C found its way into our home.

The next couple of years, playing games that were traded at school (feels strange that I'm now in touch with some of the guys who created these cracks, may it be by Triad, Fairlight, Hotline, G*P, Legend and so on) and typing in code from the 64er magazin filled a big part of my afternoons until it slowed down in the mid 90s with me switching up to SNES and then PC.

Thanks to the power of the internet (h/t cia.c64.org) and emulation (h/t CCS64) the C64 returned into my life in digital form around '96ish and this time it never ever disappeared again.

Up until 2010ish, "the scene" wasn't really something that I thought about and sites like CSDb.dk only were mere download platforms to me, but joining Google+ (IMHO still peak social network) opened up a way to take a look behind the curtain for a noob like me. By celebrating new games such as C64anabalt, Micro Hexagon as well as sharing and discussing mind-blowing demos ("freaking rotating raster bars!"), it was easy to get in touch with fellow retro gamers and exchange a post or two with the folks who made the magic happen (h/t to Ruk/Booze Design). In hindsight, I think I was only a single step away from becoming an active member of the C64 scene, but the level of quality you guys put out at that time was just too intimidating. Also, my spare time was way too limited due to having started another nerd project (I'll get into it down below), so I stuck with being a gamer for another decade.

Cut to early 2024: While most folks slipped into the scene, I in fact can point my finger at a single person to blame: Raistlin/G*P. I stumbled upon his site c64demo.com and started following him on Twitter for not missing any updates and on Feb 7 2024, he announced C64GFX CharSet Logo Competition 2024 and added "finally a compo not restricted to CSDb users" and I guess that was my call-to-action to finally get my ass up after 35 years of being a C64 user only.

And what about your discovery of PETSCII, tell us about that, it seems you have found it slightly addictive?

I don't draw, never did, but I do have an eye for design and layout as well as a love for shifting pixels around until it all fits due to my background in UID/UX. That and joining a CharSet focused compo naturally led me to starting out with PETSCII and - highly addictive as it is indeed - I've come back to it over and over again, trying to find a new 3-char combo that just works; I love this puzzle-like aspect of it.

How do you come up with the idea behind each graphic? What is the process?

The idea of someone thinking there's a process made me smile. As of now, it's all fooling around until a first small piece clicks followed by de- and reconstructing it. Most of the time, it doesn't work but on the rare occasion of a workable shape turning up, I just tag along for a ride exploring colours, positive/negative masks and so on, all while trying to keep it simple for letting the initial spark shine through. I'm trying to note down the evolution of each pix over at jmin.at, so take a look if you're interested in work stages and variants.

Last-minute changes and releasing it early has been in my favour so far, even though it has also led to releasing buggy/wrong pic.

What tools related to the C64 are you using currently?

For PETSCII, it's more or less all been petscii.krissz.hu so far. I was looking for a tool that's not loaded with tons of functionality and it also needed to be browser based, allowing me to use it on my private gear (PC and Chromebook) as well as on my PC at work. I dig placing each and every char by hand; it's soothing. lvllvl is the other extreme and I'm looking forward to using it, but as of now, my pictures aren't asking for layers, fills and other features.

HiRes is another format that I'm interested in and for that, I've taken Albert for a spin. It too has a limited set of features while offering everything I'm asking for and its work stages feature goes beyond everything by recording each and every action which then allows creating timelapse videos. Fantastic!

My list of tools to try out is long and I hope I'll find time to do so soon. Apropos, the number of tools created by the C64 community for the C64 community is mind-blowing. Kudos to all the coders! Wouldn't be here without your endless hours of work.

There has been a fair bit of push and shove on this whole "AI in graphics"-topic, further to this, the usage of taking a picture and then bringing it over to the C64 without crediting the original artist or being transparent on the fact that it was "copy". What are your views on the matter?

What's art, what's a creative process, what's allowed and what not? Well, me, I'm not the one to judge (especially as I'm not understanding myself as an artist) and to a certain extent, I don't care. Share your work and be transparent about how it came to be and I'm the first one rooting for you. If your process was importing a found pic and clicking on a button then well, happy you enjoyed creating something. If you're using a converter to get a rough glimpse of a possible direction to follow, be my guest. If you paint something in oil on canvas, split it up into a 320x200 raster and translate those colour dots into pixels by hand then well, I'm happy for you too. I'm not a fan of AI grabbing everything available to build up its libs for spewing out pixel art, but then again, I'm doing the same but at a much, much, much slower pace. I love deconstructing PETSCII pics and I have learned a lot while browsing C64gfx.com and sure, the journey is a big (fun) part of the product but we're all using tools and are copying & stealing on some level (even from ourselves, but in that case, it's dubbed "style").

As said, being transparent (and/or calling for transparency) and finding adequate labels is key and should be our priority.

On a similar note: what's more surprising to me is the fact that the scene doesn't seem to be that open for remixing. I'd love seeing sceners taking released pics and giving it their own spin & style.

What inspires you? What makes you curious?

I'm GenX, so there's no burning motivation for revolutionizing the world, I'm just out there doing my thing while trying not to bother too many people. Due to my profession, playing with boundaries and limitations (in regard to C64 it's more lack of my skills/experience than soft/hardware limits) is something I deeply enjoy and creating something that seems to go beyond is pure bliss.

Same with checking out the works of fellow graphicians, who create this steady stream of inspiration and who are with ease bending and breaking the same rules that I'm fighting with. Of course, digging through older pics is a blast too, especially when looking up artists and laying out their progress and experiments over the years.

What kills your motivation - what bores you?

Pixeling is all too fresh for being boring and having limited time helps not getting burnt-out fast. Sure, it can be frustrating not being able to find time for doodling for a week or two and I've missed a couple of compos already that I had marked down on my calendar but I'm in for the fun, so that's OK. I've got a ton of "failed" doodles that didn't lead anywhere but I don't consider those as wasted time, nothing really is, if it's part of your hobby, and who knows, revisiting failed concepts can be surprisingly rewarding, as I've seen for myself with the Color GP logo and how it went full circle within the scene.

Do you think there's going to be a scene in ten or twenty years - do you see yourself still tapping away on the keys when you're an old age pensioner?

I'm a Nerd and that doesn't change through age alone, right? After retirement, I do see myself sitting in an old cottage in Ireland looking out through the window at the sea while doing a PETSCII of a sheep or coding some bouncy raster bars.

The scene will be here for as long as we're here; doubt anybody reading VN in 2024 sees it differently. Beyond that, I'm sure there's always gonna be curious minds interested in the early days of computing and thus will stumble upon the C64. The number of active sceners will get smaller for sure, but love and enthusiasm for the breadbin will sustain. Same as with cineasts: there's still so much appreciation from young folks for movies that are a hundred years old. Speaking of old, I've recently joined F4CG, a group that's almost as old as myself and I'm happy to report that the group's spirit is sparkling fresh or, as Goerp had put it, "there's still life in the old beast". We're all in for the fun and I guess that's the key element for keeping the group and scene alive for the next decades to come.

Tackling multicolor format any time soon? A different beast altogether compared to textmode/hires.

I've failed at creating Multicolor charsets a couple of times now and thus stepping up to MC bitmap would be the way forward, to learn juggling colors, and for "getting a feel" for it. Main problem is that it's so much more time consuming that it gets pushed back over and over again. Right now, I've been fumbling with a weird mode that combines the two: PETSCII but used in MultiColor mode. It's not really popular because it combines the disadvantages of both, but it might be another way for me to wrap my head around Multicolor. Hearing cheers at Pagadata 2024 when my Hyperdrive Monkey hit the big screen was enough motivation for me to follow up on this in some form.

What would you like to see improved on CSDb?

I love CSDb for its pragmatic "here's the Info" concept and while it might look dull to the younger generation, I'm deeply enjoying its simple early WWW look. There's of course room for improvement too, e.g. beefing up scener/group/event pages by showing screenshots of the linked releases. For the comments section, I'd love to see a simple react-button for each comment, allowing a quick "thanks for your comment"-response.

What is the scene all about in your opinion? How do you describe what it is to someone?

The 80s kid in me would say "it's the cyber-Olympics" with everyone upping their skills for the next compo. At the same time, it's not really comparable with sports but more with art (and yes, coding is art too) and thus it's a friendly competition and the lines of what's good and what's not are heavily blurred. Another aspect that I love about the scene is that the ol' hacker ethos of documenting & sharing stuff with everybody is in place, which means, despite being split up in groups, it's all one big family.

Is there anyone in the scene that you look up to? Does someone or something in the scene motivate you and why?

Oh, I'm bad with names, but almost each and every release makes me smile and thus keeps me motivated. Only after becoming a scener myself, I noticed how agile and alive everything is with new ideas & trends getting picked up quickly.

Ever considered game development?

Who hasn't? It comes in waves and ranges from "open world RPG based on Last Ninja coded in JS" to doing a small PETSCII dungeon crawler thingy on the C64. I also have prototypes of a DOS ASCII art top-down RPG somewhere on my HDD which dates back to my years at the university. It's fun dreaming up all those concepts and mapping out worlds, but they're all stuck at mock-up/prototype level, so nothing to share.

Your view on the scene and piracy? The way it has impacted the commercial scene?

Back in the day, we had a lot of copies but grabbing a game (bless those cheap Mastertronic titles) from the store was also precious, despite pocket money being very, very limited. These days and especially in regard to C64 releases, I do support developers but at the same time love having a cracked version with trainers and all too. All in all, it's this weird but perfect symbiosis that somehow isn't allowed to acknowledge each other publicly even though it's deeply interlinked.

Favourite books and movies at the moment or in the past?

Trying hard to find time for re-reading Clive Barker's Imajica which I fell in love with during an InterRail trip through Europe back in 2000 and who knows, maybe it sparks some GFX ideas. Listing my favourite movies would fill a disk side or two, but here's two more recent flicks that made my head spin for days: Perfect Days and Sparta, both circling around simple lives but one makes you smile while the other one is almost unbearable to watch. If you're just out for entertainment, watch Coupez!, but don't google it before watching. It's a blast!

I checked out both Perfect Days and Sparta, whilst the latter is of no interest to me, the opposite can be said for Perfect Days, I have to watch this! I have read some of Clive Barker's work (Hellbound Heart, Books of Blood, and Cabal), I had a break from reading for many years but picked it up again due to the desire to re-read The Silmarillion. Back to the interview… A bit more about jmin. Your family, music/graphic/arty/tech background?

Some quick facts: third out of four brothers, moved to Vienna in 2000, married, no kids, bookworm, movie buff, love for theatre & live music, game collector, pixel apprentice. I'm also cursed with over-sharing. ;-)

What are your other hobbies, likes, dislikes, aspirations and goals?

My nerd-time is split up into multiple projects with one being jmin. Another time-sink project of mine is bigboxcollection.com, a site where I've virtualized my collection of boxed computer games covering four decades of gaming. There's a bunch of C64 games on my shelf, so check it out. As with all of my projects, it's a labour of love and self-motivated but there's always like-minded people out there who I'm happy to pick up along the way for a ride. Painting smiles on people's faces, whether it be via a spinning 3D box of your favorite game or by sharing a colourful PETSCII, is priceless and I'm grateful for being invited to play an active part within these niche communities.

Another thing I'd like to pick up is learning ASM. JackAsser dropped a "Learn and do it. It would be AWESOME" comment on one of my pics and that's been in my mind ever since. I've installed some tools and I do have some (basic) ideas, but I can't promise that my first one-file-demo is ready when this issue of VN goes live. My deadline's 2045-ish, otherwise I won't be able to bounce those rasterbars in retirement.

For would-be pixel pushers and char coercers. With what you have learnt so far, have you got any tips, on graphics creation. This can also include sceners or people look out for or that you feel are undervalued (could also be outside of the scene)...

"Tiny ideas go a long way when they're having room to breathe" is something I keep telling myself, so try not to overdo a pic and allow yourself to start over with a pic. Also, errors are OK and a pic isn't ruined by it. I'm sure everyone of us has spotted a pixel or char that needed fixing right after having hit that submit button.

What can we expect from you in the future?

I like to think that I've already peaked with Mixin' Maze. It's a liberating thought that opens up a floodgate of possibilities but also reminds me to not take it too seriously. What's up next? Definitely more PETSCII experiments, hopefully some bitmap pics and I do wanna dive into coding for enhancing them. Color cycling comes to mind but also shenanigans like (mis)using raster bars or mixing display modes.

Also, F4CG has some stuff cooking and I do hope to get my skills up for contributing a bit or byte.

Please feel free to send any greetings to anyone you know...

Besides the folks and groups already mentioned and everybody I'm in touch with via CSDb, Discord or Twitter BlueSky, I just have to give a shout-out to t0m3000, Worrior1, Sande, 4gentE and jab. Everytime you guys put out a new PETSCII, I'm in awe!

Also, a quick h/t to Digger, CopAss and Katon!

Thanks for your time jmin, any last words to leave a final impression on the scene?

The pleasure is all mine and hopefully I'll meet you all sometime at a demo party! May the scene exist for some more decades before we start thinking of last words and final impressions ;-)