. l . . b / s /
- WHO DREW THIS, anyway?
memo
+ ries
Kids are generally excited to celebrate a birthday, on into their teens when
the occasion not only yields presents but new freedoms. At some point in
adulthood the shine sometimes wears off and people may get a little more
secretive about the celebration of their birth -- some actively avoid the
topic, as though by failing to acknowledge the passage of time they could hold
back their descent over the hill, down its slope and into the grave. While
were not trying to hide from our birthday in this fashion -- weve been
actively hyping it up in our infofiles since May -- we have wound up scheduling
its observance at a particularly inconvenient time of year, sandwiched
uncomfortably between big annual celebrations of Halloween and Christmas. Do
we really need to throw ourselves a birthday party? Cant our continuing to
make and share art be festivity enough, a rolling celebration of our ongoing
creativity? Well... sure. But this years was a little special, marking not
just one more trip around the sun, but ten holes punched on our ticket since
holding our most improbable reunion in 2014, itself on the 20th anniversary of
our first release. 30 years! Its a milestone that warrants some kind of
acknowledgement. Mist XXX! Well, we already anticipated that eventuality
with mistigris.org/y so lets find a different angle. No, put away the wedge
pillow!
We knew it was coming, as surely as it came for our colleagues in Fire earlier
this year, as inevitable as it strikes our old fellow travellers in Fuel next
year and Lazarus the following year. Weve just collectively reached 30 years
since the boom and bust of the original underground PC computer artscene, and
all of these crews by all rights ought to be shopping around for 30th
anniversary party hats. But when youre still hatching schemes for releases
on a month by month basis, a 30th birthday party can seem a little abstract
and challenging to concretely plot out plans for. So it is that we got to
October, made things really scary, pulled off another full advent calendar
before Dec 1st, and then realised that wed short-changed our own
decaversary. Well, who cares if theres not a lot of opportunity between
Christmas and New Year, as for three years between 2018 and 2020 we released
bonus artpacks on top of wild monthly runs! during this little rest period
after the holidays but before the return to the office -- so weve already
established that theres enough space in there to squeeze in one more holiday
celebration... right? Well, were going to give it the college try.
Actually, were going to attempt to cram in two more, but I digress.
Something nostalgic must have been vibrating through cyberspace, as a number of
our old colleagues looked us up unexpectedly over the last little while. The
TABNet colleagues who formed the core of Mist Classics lit division were
enshrined by Misprint Manuscripts for their own 30th anniversary in November of
2023, even if they havent found out about it yet. We crossed paths on our
Discord with the Pablo creator Minus this year for literally the first time
since 1994, and his successor Eto also wanted everyone to know that even though
we couldnt get a new version of PabloDraw together in time to bundle with this
release, hes still tinkering away on it in his spare time even if its
Wikipedia entry was mulched by the donation-courting Philistines steering that
ship off the edge of the world! Thanatos emerged from retirement long enough
to add a tiny design to MIST0524, and weve also lately heard from Kestrel,
Tincat, Maeve Wolf, Bryface, Mage, The Extremist, Publius Enigma, White
Insanity and Hacker Joe -- who is busy putting to rest the final delicious
slice of unresolved Mist Classic business, to be shared early in the New Year.
None of these casual encounters have had a whit of impact on the contents of
this artpack, granted, but its still nice to learn that the old gang are still
hanging in there. None of us have died!* *except for those of us who have,
see below.
Despite all this, a few oldschoolers who were here in the early days and even
right at the beginning did manage to represent 30 years down the line, and this
collection features: a poem by Crowkeeper, artworks by Etana and Onyx
celebrating our first WHQ BBS!, and music by Sentience and Melodia just like
you would have found in any Mist pack circa 1994-1996. Furthermore, we achieve
some additional oldschool representation through Cthulus bizarre solicitation
for our current crop of digital artists to remix works from old Mist packs on
this occasion, so we get a fresh teletext take on an Eerie doodle by
AtonalOsprey, new light being shone on hirez screens by Grim Reaper and the
late Silent Knight for surely the first time this century by The Green Herring,
and a return to an amazing AFlamingoCup piece by The War on Christmas. For a
different kind of call-and-response theme-and-variations, check out the handful
of versions of ConsoleJockeys Mistfunk logo done in your own style by an
assortment of respondents!
I had to circle around to insert this paragraph after writing the entire rest
of the infofile, to thank the artists who provided us with our iconography
related to this release. I had to circle around to do so because we hadnt
initially figured out which logos we were going to be using, some of them only
turning up very late in the artpack packaging process. The FILEID.DIZ was
drawn by Grymmjack, initially intended for use quite a bit earlier this year
but we liked it so much we reserved it for our big blowout! The header and
footer art for this infofile are by Littlebitspace and Cthulu, respectively,
and similarly the header and footer on the memberlist are by Zeus II and LDA,
variations on a magnificent theme.
Now, where were we? This collection also features a little representation by
some folks who never stopped making art but who we stopped shaking down in our
renewed focus on purely digital computer art, including a painting by Nick
Lakowski and a sketch by Starstew, folks who have certainly earned seats at the
table at any celebration of Mistigris activities. While were keeping things
analogue, this collection also features two chalk designs of Mistigris logos,
by Teleko and Skrubly that latter reproducing Banzo9420s skinning of j33p33s
logo design from our 25th anniversary celebrations, yow, an incredible chain!
And while were looking at analogue art here, in homage to the completely
unexpected materials that have sometimes OK, often washed up in Mist packs,
we also include an airbrush illustration by Robert Evans, box artist for the
7th Guest, that he was commissioned to make by Brderbund circa 1982, that has
possibly gone unseen by any human soul since then.
Several special guests responded to our call to celebrate, so were very happy
to be sharing with you in this collection art by AdeptApril of Monoceros,
Darokin, goto80, Hortau, Andrew Ne7 Lemon, Nitron, Otium of Galza, and
another visitation from Amy, Jackey and Momo of Pizzatoe. Also we are happy
to be sharing a suite of ANSI art logos by Venom, who is apparently releasing
this stuff for the first time ever in an artpack despite having been in the
artscene sphere in the 90s and just never getting around to getting more
involved. Its never too late! Delukz also has sent work in to an artpack
for the first time! ANSI, whats that? I colour it in Python! Thus
providing one more reason why the art anarchists at Mist are surely so beloved
in the wider artscene. Was I just saying its never too late? We also
had late-breaking inaugural Mist pack appearances of some animated Unicode
pieces by MC Fresher and IndyJoenz, made in his Durdraw text art editor.
This collection also features works by some of our more sporadic contributors,
such as amouse, axb, discGator, Chris De Wil, CoaXCable, the Godfather,
Joninscii, ldb, Mozz, Polyducks, the60ftatomicman, VileR and XTComics, some of
which were submitted to demoparty competitions over the past year. And, huh,
since its kind of weird to highlight the rare contributors but not the regular
ones doing the heavy lifting year-round, do keep your eyes open for work by
Illarterate, littlebitspace, LDA, Mavenmob, and Zeus II, who I dont need to
name... its impossible to view this collection without their work making an
impression on you. And Moths comic... well, you just need to compare and
contrast the files. Aaaaand thats all of us! At least, unless someone gets
their submission in so late-breakingly that Im actually unable to incorporate
their name into the infofile. Thanks to all of our contributors as well as,
you know, the ones who didnt manage to take part this time, plus everyone who
sent art in over the past year, the past 10 years, or indeed the past 30! I
cast a wide net for my thanks, just call me Mr. Gratitude.
I could provide a fuller accounting for the year in review, or indeed of the
long, strange trip the past decade has been for us from our reunion to where we
are now, but ... isnt this infofile long enough? Ill put it in our 2024
coffee table book. In the meantime, please feel free to join us in voice chat
on our Discord Dec 31st to review and discuss the art in this collection and
our 2024 advent calendar, and maybe broadcast a little Unsilent Night at each
other while playing Eat Poop You Cat. Stay tuned for one further incredible,
impossible Mist release in association with BreakIntoChat.com before 2024
wraps, and well be seeing you in the New Year with our first e-mag this
century, a collection of art about food, and a Blender compo currently
scheduled Jan 18-19.
One final thanks to anyone out there reading this thing... anyone wandering
down the garden path of a Mistigris infofile in 2024 is definitely a glutton
for something, but by this point you should pretty much know what youre in
for. We get a lot of mileage out of pushing our art to subscribers over social
media, but theres still something magical about the unspoken and implicit
arrangement of collecting art in artpacks, releasing it out into the scene
and having people quietly enjoy it privately from the comfort of their local
systems. In a world of tracking cookies and software as a service, its a nice
exercise in hope and trust to send these archives out there into the world and
understand that somehow, against all odds, they will be found, viewed and
enjoyed. Thanks for holding up your end of the equation!
@echo on
ct