Review: "Animal Attraction" by ASD (Adok/Hugi)
Not unlike many of our readers, I like ASD, and Iconoclast is one of my favourite demos. So I was quite excited when I saw that this Greek group had released a new demo at The Gathering 2006 in Norway and it has even won first place.
The code of "Animal attraction" was done by Navis, the music by Amusic and the graphics by Amoivikos. The total duration of the demo is 5 minutes and 50 seconds, which is quite much. It starts with a very nice monochromatic loading picture showing the shapes of elephants that become increasingly brighter until the demo is finally ready to run. Immediately after that, the ASD logo is displayed, covering a 3D scene with buildings (no textures, just raw grids). The credits are displayed with cute pictures of animal masks, and we get to see a nice "rollup" effect. Blue, concentric circles appear as the camera rotates in order to display the sky, and the title of the demo is shown.
Next comes a scene with an effect that may remind you of We Cell by Kewlers, featuring a lot of corpuscles resembling erythrocytes in a blood vessel. Noise sets in and the melody of the background music slightly changes, getting a slightly orientalic touch. Nevertheless the accompaniment in the background remains the same. We get to see some typical demo poetry, which is difficult to read due to the font used. Then come geometric shapes like in the rollup effect in the credits part. This scene is very bright, and I think the rainbow-like colours make the watcher feel good.
Now the scene which I'd call the main scene of this demo begins: the zooming-out scene. This scene seems to be quite sophisticated, since while you have the impression that you're flying backwards, various 2D effects are displayed on some of the textures. By the way, one texture has reminded me of
a background picture which was sent to me for Hugi but never used (or at least not so far). If it's really the same texture (I'm not sure about that, it may just bear some similarities), that wouldn't be a great surprise though as the picture in question was sent to me by Amoivikos.
The music, which hasn't really made a great impression on me so far (you've noticed that I've hardly ever mentioned it), is now becoming slightly more interesting as vocals are setting in. When the camera zooms into the (kind of) expressionist animal pic, the climax of the demo is reached. I like the planets suddenly appearing and disappearing again; this has been a good idea. The next scene, which involves several cubes, is nice, too.
Finally text is displayed and moving around a big cube. The rollup and several other effects appear again, and the music is getting comparatively loud; there's some singing again. After
that, we get to see the closing screen, which has not impressed me much.
So let's summarize the good, bad and so-so points of this demo:
+ Colourful, some nice 2D pictures, good transitions
+ Source code of effects is included
o Funny: textures are encrypted (but the scheme is easy to crack)
o Music doesn't make a big impression; OK, but not catchy
- No clear message/meaning; you just watch it and perhaps memorize some images, but apart from that, forget it
- Fonts are hard to read
After reading other people's comments on this demo, I would also like to state the following points:
o IMHO this demo cannot be compared to Iconoclast. Iconoclast also rocked due to its great music, while the music of this demo is pretty average.
o IMHO the rather slow pace of this demo is a good thing. I prefer slow pace to extremely fast action on screen. (And I guess it is also less dangerous for people who have a predispoition to suffer from epileptic attacks. *smile*)
o Interestingly, some people especially loved the music, and some even thought that this was the best ASD demo ever (i.e. better than Iconoclast). Well, I tend to disagree. But opinions are subjective.
All in all, it's a nice demo to watch and listen to, but nothing groundbreaking.
You can download "Animal attraction" at pouet.
Adok/Hugi