Spin by ASD

Ever since my first Commodore 64, I have been an avid follower of the demoscene. For many years groups like Fairlight, Kewlers, The Black Lotus, Orange, Farbrausch and more recently ASD (Andromeda Software Development) have been pushing the art of realtime graphics into new extremes.

While entertaining to watch however, demos usually had a tendency to lack in the art direction department. The would excel in cool visual effects, pumping more and more graphics at better framerates and higher resolutions – but being primarily created by coders, not artists, the majority were more of a technical showcase rather than an artistic pursuit. In the recent years, the new breed of demos started emerging – one where art and code truly go hand in hand. One that can easily rival the amazing vfx and motion design pieces from the world renown motion design directors.

I would like to share with you one of such pieces: Spin by a Greek demo group Andromeda Software Development, a 1st place winner at Assembly 2011.

You may watch it below via YouTube, or download the code and run it yourself.

If you are new to the demoscene, but the video arose your interest, a good place to start would be the archives of scene.org. In there you will find years worth of demos as well as the information about the latest competitions (and their results). Another good starting point could be AssemblyTV – the official YouTube channel of possibly most well-known demo party (competition).