Display : PAL& Who is Rank? I ask this burning&question because there seems to be a&slight similarity between the above&image, credited to Rank, and the cover&picture used for Cemetery News 2 and&credited to Turbo. See the Cemetery&News review elsewhere in this issue.&(Run the magazine twice if you want to&look at them both at once. What do you&mean, you didn't know you could run it
twice? It's an Amiga isn't it?)& So who drew it first, if either?&Assuming we can trust the copyright¬ices on the Cryptoburners pictures&then it must have been Rank as it&gives a 1992 date while Cemetery News&came out this year. But that doesn't&answer the question of who Rank is.&There's three possibilities... One:&Rank is a member of Cryptoburners and&all these slides are original works by&him. (I assume the artist's male!)&This is what I hope is true but I&can't be sure. The alternative&possibilities are... Two: That Rank is&an artist outside of the computer&world and Cryptoburners have scanned&or copied his pictures and presented&them as a slideshow of his work.&Three: Rank is a member of&Cryptoburners and these pictures are&copies of other artists' works and&Rank has touched them up and called&them his own. How can one tell? You&can't of course, unless you already&know who did the originals. But a leaf&should be taken out of LSD's Jesus On&Es where they credited all the sources&of the samples used in that music. And&if it's all your own work, a little&bit about how it was produced would&help to give it a touch of&authenticity. No need to give away any&secrets. Just something to let the%audience know how it came to be made.& The above is a response to the&widespread plagiarism found in the&Amiga world. The result of this is&that original artists' works will be&lost among a horde of very cheap&reproductions. So Amiga Groups, keep&those digitizers for more productive&things such as enhancing magazine&articles and only release original art&in the demos, music disks and&slideshows. Better poor art that's&observed to be improving with each new&release than disks that are no better&than a chocolate box lid. And if&anyone knows who Rank really is and&what the true status of Revelations
is, I'd like to know.& And so to this slideshow of about&twelve pics. It's good art, no&question about that. Most of it's&fantasy stuff but, surprise, surprise&and oh so refreshing, there's some&contemporary portraits here as well.&Two of them, going by the file-names,&appear to be real people, namely&Helena Chistensen and Pamela Hanson,&the latter picture being a stunner of&the lady in question lounging on a
couch.& Most of the pictures are of woman&with a few nudes thrown in for good&measure, though not of the brooding&Pamela. One of the nudes, a fantasy&picture of a female with a spear, is&called Feminism going by it's&file-name, though I fail to see the
link.& The music is just right too, an&evocative piece featuring a woman's&voice talking about something&happening on August 29th, 1997.
Something to look forward to.& Many of these pictures are in&hi-res interlace with the restricted&sixteen colour palette producing an&effect with the skin tones much like&carved and varnished wood, if you&ignore the odd green tint. This is&rather nice in it's own way but I&guess for many artists the pull of AGA&will be irresistible. Considering how&good these look with using only&sixteen colours, 256 colours from a&palette of millions should be more&than enough for most pictures. It's&the disk space that's worrying me&though - anyone for a four picture
slideshow?& Revelations is a great disk and&it's only marred by the last picture&which is, wait for it, a jet aircraft!&Sigh. At least it's at the end. I&might have given the disk over 90%&though if it had been left off. But&artists, unless you like really have&to draw fantasy art, please try and&seek out something original. Such as&perhaps getting a friend to pose on a
couch, or something?
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Postscript...$ I've since learnt through reading$the disk magazine Top Secret 14 that"Rank is definately a Cryptoburners"member. This still doesn't explain%whether the pictures are originals or
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