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AKIRA
Late 1992 : Graphics and Program - sunteam_paul : Music - sunteam_phil
Not counting the curiosities that were the I.Q bic Demo and Coming Attractions, the Akira Demo was the very first officially released Sunteam Public Domain project and was distributed, as with our other things, through Five Star Software. After being a big fan of the comic, I had seen the theatrical release of the movie in the UK in a very loud cinema in London sometime in 1991. It was a 'Star Wars' moment for me - a truly stunning movie experience that I have rarely felt since. Of course, back then the manga/anime style was not nearly as widespread as it is today. A few imported comics here and there, some cool pictures in video games, that was all we got. So to see a fully blown (if not stylistically typical) anime movie in the cinema was just such a treat, and it saw the birth of the Manga Video label, which did much to bring anime to the UK. Yes folks, this was a time where the word 'manga' was often misused and Manga Video was actually held in high esteem.
This demo shows my first steps into getting anime pictures onto the Amiga. They are pretty basic when compared to later efforts, as my technique and skill improved steadily.
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Opening the demo, and the first time of many, was the CD-Rom System screen from the PC Engine games console. Being a big fan of the machine, I always tried to use this when I got the chance. This was accompanied by a jingle from Wonder Boy III - Monster Lair.
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Back then Manga Video was cool. Such a shame that it slid into mediocrity after a strong beginning. I don't like them much now. |
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Played out to the dramatic drumbeats of the original soundtrack, the city explodes in a simple, but effective colour-cycled screen. |
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I noticed that this picture of Tetsuo that I did was used in a computer magazine in a news article about Akira. I didn't get any credit for it. |
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These images are used periodically throughout the demo, flashing quickly on and off. They are presented here as one screen. |
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The lack of backgrounds were down to either conservation of colours for smaller files, or that I was too scared to try and draw them in. |
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I've always like this picture of Kiyoko. The softer colours work really well. |
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This image took a long time to draw. And I mean a long time. Remember that I was doing this on a small portable television and using a tiny image from the back of an 'anime comic' for reference. I'm very pleased how it turned out. |
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UNUSED ART
At one stage, myself and sunteam_ian were going to produce an animated Akira demo. The pictures below show some of the work in progress. |
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A far more primitive test for the city explosion, likely designed for colour-cycling. It looks like we forgot to remove the DPaint menu bar at the top when drawing the curves.
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This is a pretty nice street scene we did. All the red lights were animated and we drew some tiny bikes that would zoom along and skid around the corner. It's a pity this was never used.
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A sketch by sunteam_ian with smoke sprite.
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