Amiga creations show and tell

[guest7146]

Hey all,

The other day I found a 400mb hard drive in the attic which turned out to have one of my old Amiga installations on it.  From this drive I managed to recover a whole load of content that I created in the early 90s, when I was a young kid.

One thing the Amiga has always done well is to inspire creativity.  I was never much of a computer graphics artist myself, but here's a side-on view of a Range Rover that I created on Dpaint when I was a kid.  I remember going out and actually measuring my neighbour's Range Rover (our family were not rich enough to own one!) so that I could get the scaling right.  Even as a child it seems that I suffered perfectionist tendencies.  I haven't changed as an adult!

What cool stuff did you create on your Amiga back in the day? Show and tell!

[guest7146]

Here's a Land Rover 'lightweight' drawing I was working on.  It's quite a rare model of Land Rover but if you've ever seen one before then I'm sure you'll agree my attempt is not too far off the mark!

[guest7146]

I also tried my hand at copying an Amiga super-hero, Rick Dangerous.

Here's the original:


Here's my interpretation:

[guest7146]

Here's a front view of a Land Rover 110:

[guest7146]

And here's a silly space shoot-out most probably inspired by Frontier Elite, of which I was a huge fan:

[Ral-Clan]

Those are quite well done. I enjoyed seeing them.

In recent years I rediscovered DPaint and now fully appreciate it.  There's a lot of power there that I didn't realize it had when I was younger.  

It's still a very useful program if you're working in limited palettes and resolutions.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Ha, great stuff! I agree, the Amiga was the one machine that really inspired creativity. For me it was with the shareware program "3D Master", by Martian F. Staley, if I recall his name correctly. I was broke as a joke, but 3DM was one of the few programs that I managed to scrimp and save together the $35 shareware registration fee to use the full features. I remember spending hours designing things with that program, then leaving my pitiful A500 on overnight... 23 hours to render one 320x400 HAM image, LOL. Shame it was never updated for AGA, as I really liked that program. Even submitted some of my artwork to magazines and cover disk contests, 16-year-old-me was so proud!
 
Will try to dig up a few pics soon, think most of my disks with that stuff on it are still good... need to archive them asap!

[guest7146]

Those are quite well done. I enjoyed seeing them.

In recent years I rediscovered DPaint and now fully appreciate it.  There's a lot of power there that I didn't realize it had when I was younger.  

It's still a very useful program if you're working in limited palettes and resolutions.

Thanks! I think my drawings are very amateur, but to be honest I was never really much of a drawings person and so these are quite good efforts within the scope of my abilities.  The Land Rover drawings took me a long time because I would take meticulous measurements of real vehicles and then try to transfer the right scaling to my digital drawings.
They look pretty run of the mill now, and very low resolution, but go back to the late 80s / very early 90s and on what other computing platforms could you do stuff like this? Windows was nowhere.  Linux didn't exist.  We take graphics capabilities for granted now but back then this was quite revolutionary.

Ha, great stuff! I agree, the Amiga was the one machine that really inspired creativity. For me it was with the shareware program "3D Master", by Martian F. Staley, if I recall his name correctly. I was broke as a joke, but 3DM was one of the few programs that I managed to scrimp and save together the $35 shareware registration fee to use the full features. I remember spending hours designing things with that program, then leaving my pitiful A500 on overnight... 23 hours to render one 320x400 HAM image, LOL. Shame it was never updated for AGA, as I really liked that program. Even submitted some of my artwork to magazines and cover disk contests, 16-year-old-me was so proud!

Will try to dig up a few pics soon, think most of my disks with that stuff on it are still good... need to archive them asap!

I never got into the 3D programs, which is a shame.  I'd have been stuck in the same boat as you though; limited computing power.  Still, it would have been fun! I did marvel at some of the 3D creations that others were doing on the Amiga, though.  Again it's something that is taken for granted today but back then the Amiga was pretty much in a league of its own in terms of home computing capabilities.

Regarding archiving, YES definitely do it ASAP! In my experience, archiving is something that is neglected until it is too late.  After it's too late and precious data is lost, you will kick yourself over and over.
These days I am quite good at archiving but I've learned the hard way.