m!
Nature, red in tooth and claw.
We plan artpacks quite some time in advance, mostly out of an
understanding that people dont want to see Christmas-themed art in
January -- OK, stash that stuff away for the following December.
Anticipate enough of the years milestones Valentines, April
Fools, Halloween and to some extent your itinerary gets largely
plotted out on autopilot. But from time to time there are openings,
where you can indulge other themes or call a thematic amnesty and
just share a big pile of odds and ends. This months collection is
partially seasonally themed, and was mostly planned and curated for a
June release, but we got overwhelmed by high quality artwork of an
unthemed nature. We like to do at least one artpack every summer
that celebrates the natural world, as many of us make plans involving
going out and indulging in it at its best. The zeitgeist is
reflected in our creations! In the case of this collection, it
includes plants, animals, landscapes, weather phenomena and various
forms of outdoor recreation -- both nostalgically conducted in an
absence of social distancing, and critically viewed through a current
lens. But then Cthulus computer, on which he has sweated over every
Mistigris artpack release since our 2014 reunion, suddenly died,
thrown into a weird variety of Windows 7 kernel panic.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
But this eventuality had been to some extent anticipated. All
Mistigris incoming directories are mirrored on the cloud, in one of
the all-time greatest virtual accumulations of slush, so the
artpack release was still possible. But bereft of the usual
production environment, more hands were needed on deck, beneath
Cthulus studied guidance -- no one has ever put together an artpack
on a smartphone, and we wouldnt be hitting that milestone.. at
least, not this time around. But by sharing around the nutty duties
Cthulu has convinced himself are required to turn a directory full of
random computer art into an artpack, we would still somehow be able
to push this one out on schedule! Then Cthulus cracked filling,
which had quietly lurked uneventfully for two months, suddenly
revealed itself to be an emergency root canal somehow at once in
urgent need of attention and unable to receive proper treatment for a
month. At least there had been no pain! Oh, wait a sec.. through
Heisenbergs dentistry principle, by observing this state, we had
changed it. Actually, it hurt quite a bit! But all the same.. the
show must go on! Really, to Cthulu, nothing hurts quite as bad as
being denied the opportunity to write an infofile!
Nature vs. nurture.
So even though packaging the artpack has been a solitary affair since
our reunion barring mattmatthews help in recolouring that
collections infofile on Halloween, for the first time this
confluence of complicating factors led to the impromptu emergence of
an ad hoc senior staff to help ease the production off the assembly
line. So Id like to devote this paragraph for enormous thanks to
the tireless LDA, Picrotoxin, and Mavrik, who not only did the work,
but were able to put up with my insufferable guidance in so doing.
A huge thanks also to Zeus II for immediately rising to the challenge
of relieving my hardware failure! And for the work that you can
actually see for yourself, and that isnt merely implied -- congrats
to The Odd Fire Cat for basically reading Cthulus mind in the
commission of this collections FILEID.DIZ art, and a huge, massive
hats off to Malice for deciding, out of the blue, to try her hand at
text mode art typography again for the first time in a generation.
Our sincere social media congratulations for her efforts translated
into the creation of the ANSI art logo you can see and enjoy atop
this info file, her first appearance in an artpack this century!
We should also extend some congratulations to CoaXCable for the
placing achievements his works made in demoparties this summer.. we
would elaborate, but we are limited in just how much we can say about
them as he hasnt actually quite gotten around to submitting them yet
8
Thanks to mx for giving us an excuse to check up on what Phatals
been up to over the past few years! Our September artpack collection
will be revisiting subjects from the world of the silver screen, so
if youd like to send in any art celebrating movies, please hit us up
at info@mistigris.org! A big thanks to warpus and Discofunk 1974 for
providing the memberlist logo last minute from the most recent Sauna
2 pack. If you can believe it, a memberlist wasnt even on the menu
but weve scrounged one up for you folks. See you all next month!