Hugi Magazine #33: MP3 Power

Prologue

It was in another lifetime that I (Magic) was a visitor of The Party 1993 in Denmark. At this particular party I met Chaos of Sanity for the first time. He was so kind to give me a 3.5" floppy with the latest Sanity demo (Amiga) called Arte on it. At that time Sanity was one of the best demogroups on the Amiga. Who could have ever imagined back then that Chaos would also be (for a part) responsible for one of the best and popular PC demo groups 7 to 14 years later? Today Hugi gives you, with the help of Gizmo / Farbrausch, an insight in one of the most popular and active PC groups of the last years. With releases like The Product, The Popular Demo, Candytron, Precision and Platinum just to name a few, they have left their marks in the demoscene. Ever wondered which members exactly shape Farbrausch, how Farbrausch is organized, and how they work on their productions? For answers on these questions and more read on..

Introducing Gizmo and all other FR-members

Hi, I am Gizmo of Farbrausch, I'm an artist within Farbrausch and I will tell you a little bit about our group. At the time of writing this, at the end of 2006, Farbrausch consists out of roughly 20 members, about half of them active. 95% reside in Germany, 2,5% in Austria and 2,5% in Finland :) Full list of active and non-active members:

• Benjamin "acryd" Bär (krieger:)
• Benjamin "BeRo" Rosseaux (code)
• David "Bombe" Roden (code)
• Dierk "chaos" Ohlerich (code)
• Jan "chaotic" Winters (msx)
• Kai "cp" Pöthkow (gfx)
• Marco "crash" Schultz (code)
• Dirk Oliver "doj" Jagdmann (code)
• Dennis "exoticorn" Ranke (code)
• Frauke "fashion" Bänsch (gfx)
• Thomas "fiver2" Mahlke (gfx)
• Frank "franky" Baumgartner (code, msx)
• Christoph "giZMo" Mütze (gfx)
• Tammo "kb" Hinrichs (msx)
• Matti "melwyn" Palosuo (msx)
• Leonard "paniq" Ritter (msx, gfx, code)
• Michael "rawstyle" Krause (code, msx)
• Fabian "ryg" Giesen (code, msx)
• Ronny "rp" Pries (msx, gfx)
• Nils "torus" Pipenbrinck (code)
• Timo "visualice" Harju (gfx)
• Sebastian "wayfinder" Grillmaier (msx, gfx)
• Felix "yoda" Bohmann (code, design)
• Peter "entropy" Koen (code, msx)

Farbrausch Demomaking..

We mostly communicate in the German language, after this in English. There is no dedicated organizer in our crew. No one gets ever kicked or removed :) Once a farbrauschmember, always a farbrauschmember. Usually the most active members give their ok to a new member, but this is not mandatory :) If someone fits then he or she is in without debating.. there is really no such thing as an organizer within farbrausch (except for 'party organizers' like myself, acryd, ryg, kb, wayfinder etc..) What we have is a director or project leader. Usually it's the person that has the most interest in the demo/production or simply the person who started it in the first place. It is this person's vision that has to be delivered. Everyone else will do his best to support him or her. And there is no arguing about the direction the demo takes. The director always has the last word over the production. The tools we use to create our productions are amongst others Visual Studio, werkkzeug3 (own creation), Softimage XSI, Photoshop, Zbrush, Mudbox, Buzz, Logic Audio etc etc.. For some releases we have teams within the team. It happened quite often in the past that we (the Hamburg located Farbrausch members) arrived at a party with a release and were caught by surprise that the Berlin fraction also had a release ready to launch :) Creation processes vary from production to production, so I can't give you a more general explanation to this. We use IRC and have real-life meetings at some member's place over the weekend e.g., plus we have the "Elitehaus" where the coreteam gathers once in a year for 14 days to finish productions. Usually the Elitehaus is a rented summer residence in Denmark with swimming pool etc.. The Elitehaus traditionally takes place in december, too cold to go outside plus no other living humans in a 5 mile radius, no families, no internet, no drugs, no rock'n'roll, only demomaking. Sums up to the most intense scene-experience you can have :)

Farbrausch Motto

Organizing is still an important job in a demogroup, the more complex a project gets, the more you need someone who keeps an eye on everything. In our case it's the project leader (usually one of our artists), in others it's the group's internal organizer.. Luckily we didn't have any organizing problems within Farbrausch since we all agreed to have a simple structure to ensure maximum freedom and personally I believe if a group is wasting time on reorganizing then the whole thing is way too complicated already. Bureaucracy kills creativity! The Farbrausch-motto is simple: produce! When an organizer is not needed anymore because all members work together automatically and create without someone motivating them, this is how a group should work. Anyhow, this is the reality within Farbrausch and it is working quite fine :) Everybody is happily producing stuff, I guess :) Speaking of, I really gotta finish my work on the breakpoint07-website now, cheers!

Epilogue

And here Hugi leaves Farbrausch in time and space. The interview with Gizmo was made at the end of december 2006. Now on the 18th of April 2007 we can say that FR released two outstanding demos. Vicualice's FR-055: 828 and Fiver2's Breakpoint 2007 winning demo Debris. The tentacles of time will most probably trow out more smashing demonstrations by this group. I am curious though. Will they release more smashing demos of this high standard? When the current Werkzeug 3 will be outdated compared to the new demoscene standards will there be a new smashing and updated Werkzeug 4 to stay on top in the demoscene for a couple of more years? The future will answer this question. Hugi wishes Farbrausch all the best. To put it straight and simple: Demo or die!