After too many years without contributing anything to the demoscene, I recently reconnected with demogroup MFX’s member Uncle-X (with whom I had already worked on fan favorite 1995). After catching up he got inspired by my Somedays project, and somehow 20 minutes later we were already working on a new demo to be shown at the Outline demoparty online event.

This webGL demo is an homage to classic 80s/90s Detroit/Berlin techno music. Based on a cube that spins showing an array of effects, it serves as kind of a three dimensional collection of “animated” vinyl recordings. We had three weeks to do it, which seems kind of enough until you realize that oh yeah, you have a day job and a family and a life! But we made the deadline and are reasonably proud of the result.

My work consisted on creating 19 “sleeves” for the 19 effects which you can see below, as well as providing 3D models for 4 scenes. The design was informed by minimalistic, rational German design and the vinyl sleeves from that era (Tresor Berlin recordings etc). It was harder than expected, but a whole lot of fun!

We were fortunate enough to get help from Pandur (cables.gl developer, the tool used to create the demo) in the tech/effects department, and one of my favorite demoscene musicians, Ronny Pries of Farbrausch fame, providing the music.

… and in the end, “Square One” got first place on the democompo!

Watch the demo online in realtime (recommended, you’ll need a somehow modern GPU), or check it out on youtube.