by Rowan "Sumaleth" Crawford

he process of making each weeks edition of loonygames is one that generally runs pretty smoothly, but from time to time the arrangment of feature articles needs to be tweaked a little, for whatever reason, and a couple of times (with the added complexity of the Xmas holidays) the result has been a mad rush for a cover image at 11th hour (or later).

On both occasions the artists work went largely unacknowledged so, just to set things right, loonygames gives a big thanks to David Jacques, who modeled and rendered the loonygames 'Game of the Year' trophy for issue 2.7 (with screenshots added by loonyboi's mad Photoshop skillz), and to Dines for last week's 13th-hour effort (which he produced at a breakneck pace).

A skin for the (bizarre) java snow dome program. (8k).

Dines had been keen to do a loonygames cover for some time so it seemed a little nasty to finally give him the chance, but then only give him two hours to do it! So we've got him back again this week as a way of thanks.

Probably best known for his logo and menu work, which has been showing up in a lot of places lately, French digital artist, dines, has also produced the occasional 'picture' utilizing his unique graphic style. We had a little talk about life, art, and the color green;

Sumaleth: First things first, what’s your real name?

dines: Durrenberger David. (that was easy =)

Sumaleth: They're going to get harder, trust me :)

Why 'dines' as a handle? Does it have special meaning?

dines: When I was still at school I was always dressed in green, so my friends called me 'dinosaur' 'dines' is the shortcut for this.

Sumaleth: You're probably lucky, they could have called you Kermit :)

dines: Hehe! No, since I am pretty big ;) (about 1m90 and 90 kg)

Sumaleth: So you have a job?

dines: At the moment I am finishing my military service. I'm doing it in civil, in the pollution monitoring network. Military service is about 20 months long in France.

Sumaleth: Are you enjoying it?

dines: It's cool. We have network here and we even get a 1Mb ADSL connection so I enjoy it =). I work on graphics too so it's not so boring.

Sumaleth: What do you plan to do once your service is finished?

Dines' skin work for the Awaken project. (12k).

dines: Maybe continue my studies to become a server administrator, or maybe I'll search for jobs like webdesigner. [Or maybe] go into the gaming industry! (my first dream)

Sumaleth: Have you participated in the demo scene at all? The demo scene in France seems to have produced many great digital artists over the years.

dines: Yes, I was first in a French group called blabla which is pretty inactive these days. We did some demos and won some compos at French parties like Volcanic and Saturne, and we got a second place at the last Wired party in Belgium.

Right now I am in Haujobb and we plan to release some PC/PSX demos for the Mekka party in April.

Sumaleth: How did you get started in digital art?

dines: I started painting 8bit, like everyone, in Deluxe Paint. Then I went to gfx2 (a French DPaint clone), and finally moved to Photoshop.

Sumaleth: Did you start with Deluxe Paint on Amiga or PC?

dines: My first try was on an Amiga500. I found an old French magazine called 'Tilt' and saw some demo scene gfx. There was a little tutorial so I started something which was horrible :).

Sumaleth: Have you ever worked with traditional mediums?

dines: I work a lot with pencil. Right now I do outlines of all my work with pencil first, scan them, and colorize them in Photoshop.

Sumaleth: Even the logos?

dines: Nono, not the logos. Logos are not like drawings for me; I invent at the time that I do them - add this here and here without thinking too much of proportions etc. I don't take so much time to draw logos, 3-4 hours at a maximum. Other pics can take me weeks.

Good proportions has always been my problem, so I loose a lot of time on this. That's what I am working on these days, especially for the models I am trying to build.

Sumaleth: Your logo work has been appearing in a number of programs lately, like the Milkshape 3D program for example. How do those projects come about; do you approach them or do they approach you?

dines: I get a lot of mail asking for logos, but most of the time I do logos for software that I appreciate. It's like a little contribution to people working hard for free. I think this maybe comes from the demoscene spirit.