User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Oct 30, 2018 2:58 pm

As some of you in this small corner of the universe know, I sometimes like to spend my off-hours browsing old PD disks. It’s a very relaxing pastime I like to do on occasion to unwind. It’s one part Commodore history research, one part art hunting. I don’t usually spend a ton of time with the software (with some exceptions) but I very much enjoy running across photo galleries some editor curated for his or her computer user group 20+ years ago.

I have found a lot of visual treasures, some of which I’ve never seen posted online before. As such I’ll push them online here and there on my Twitter or Instagram feeds.

In any case, last night I was too burned out to do anything productive so I started flipping disks into my 2000. I usually use Directory Opus 4 to view the images I run across if the disk doesn't come with its own viewer. If I find one that really speaks to me, I’ll then load it up in Deluxe Paint III to find out its stats (number of colors, resolution, etc.).

Last night I found this:
tron1sm.png
I posted it to Instagram then Twitter and the posts received a lot of love as I figured they would. The image is freaking so kick-ass! And to think it was made over 30 years ago on home-consumer hardware really is mind blowing. It never fails to astonish me.

As is usually the case, I started to wonder who the artist was.

He always used the very stylized “Greg” in the bottom right corner of the pieces of his I've found. Not a lot to go on. But in tiny little letters of one of his images, he actually revealed his entire name: Greg Tsalidas.

Thankfully that’s a pretty unique name.

After about 10 minutes of research, I ran across what looked like a promising and relevant account on Twitter. So, I took a chance and contacted him. It was the same Greg!

And he was very appreciative to have been shown the Tron artwork - an image he had lost many years ago.
Screen Shot 2018-10-30 at 2.51.06 PM.png
I was a tad excited to have located the artist - even more so when I learned he was still very active in the entertainment industry using his artistic skills.

So after the first exchange I went way back to my photos. (I take pics of everything I see, even if I don’t share 99% of it anywhere. You never know when you might need something, right? And pixels are cheap.)

I remembered having at least one other image with his D&D-style sig in the corner. And speaking of D&D:
IMG_7587.png
So I shared that image with him as well now that I realized these were long lost images of his and asked how he created them.

He then explained:
Screen Shot 2018-10-30 at 2.57.08 PM.png
What an awesome feeling it was to have that exchange, and to have gotten him to see his old, lost artworks again.

Who says using old floppy disks is a waste of time? <3

User avatar
A10001986
1986

Posted Wed Oct 31, 2018 3:21 am

My old floppies, all bought in 1986, have practically no read errors. (At least none that weren't there from the beginning)

Can't say the same about my self-burned CD ROMs from the 90s or early 2000s, not even to mention floppies from that era.





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