Anhk: Hi Unreal and welcome! I know this will probably sound stupid but can you please introduce yourself to our readers ? Mainly for those who have spent the last 5 years on another planet

Unreal: Hello Anhk & SceneCity! My name is Wojtek Podgorski, I'm a 22 years old boy from Poland. Most of my scene time is devoted to programming, although I also try to do some graphics (eg. Level-D Records cover was done by me), and a little modelling/texturing. I was a member of groups like Surprise! Productions, Pulse, and I'm currently in CNCD and newly formed Sunflower. I study Maths at the University of Wroclaw - together with my great friend Yoghurt.

Anhk: When did you find out about the demo scene ? Who introduced you to it?

Unreal: I found out about scene in .. 1989, yes. That's when my friend got an Amiga, and we watched some cracktros, intros, demos etc.. But at that time I had no contact with anybody. The first real contact was possibly the same or the next year when I met a guy calling himself "Jack soft" (everybody in Poland at that time was somethingSoft, hehe), later renamed to The Trader. At some point he was one of the Amiga swappers that had most contacts.. His house was a stamp recycling factory almost, hehe.





Anhk: What decided you to code rather than anything else ?

Unreal: It came naturally.. When I got Atari around 1986, my father used it for work, and suggested I learn something. I didn't have any music nor gfx programs, so I wrote some stuff in Basic. So when I moved to Amiga, it was sort of natural to try to code. Huge help to RST/Katharsis for answering my incredibly lame questions.. he was a god, and I still have a huge respect for him.

Anhk: What was your first group name and who was your model then ?

Unreal: Argh, I can't even remember. Let's forget pseudo groups like Black Hole etc, I'd say the first was InvestatioN, one of the main Amiga forces in our country. I didn't really have idols back then, don't know why - maybe I just can't remember them? But then maybe, The Trader or RST - for one of them was known in the world (hundreds of letters from abroad on his table etc), and the other one was a great coder.

Anhk: What is the best production you have ever made ? And why ?

Unreal: There are two demos I hold most dear to my heart.. Sunflower and Wonder. Wonder is my latest kid, and it's a bit too early for me to be able to judge it. But I know Sunflower was something very important in my life. It was a year after my last demo, and I missed 3-4 parties trying to release something. All my friends turned back and were joking and laughing at me, not believing I am able to make another demo. Scorpik made a tune for me, Falcon finished it.. Later I changed the concept of the demo, and then he & Falcon got pissed off at me and said they're not doing a new tune no matter what. So I took some unfinished Falcon tune and asked him to finish it at least. Luckily he agreed. I think the only person being fully with me, was Camel.. huge thanks to him. Made painted me a great logo, I must add.. Rest of the people doubted me and treated my demo making as shit. Thanks for the help from Tudor, Lazur etc, but they (esp. Lazur) just did "fuck off" work, and it was me against the world, which was very sad and frustrating. But I made the demo, and it was quite a success, and in some evil way it was good to show people who have forsaken me, that they were wrong. I hope certain people regret not helping me back then.. Certain things changed, and my feelings towards some people changed quite much.Another reason why I'm pointing Sunflower, is that it was not only completely "directed" by me, not only programmed by me, not only had 99% of the ideas by me, but I also did almost 100% of texturing (UV mapping by hand etc), some modelling, movements and textures. I really did lots of work in it. This demo was my biggest success ever, that is why I decided to call my new group Sunflower - I hope I will be as glad as I was after the demo, and I hope it will change my life and myself just like the demo did.You can see that the people who helped most are in Sunflower the group: Made, Camel.. Voomie would be if he was interested in the demo scene, unfortunately he is not interested.I would also like to send huge, huge thanks to Alex Garnier (Alex/Melon).. Working with him on Tribes was totally amazing, but I'm ashamed of the technical quality of the demo, I wish I was better when I was doing it. I owe Alex a lot - I hopefully learned a lot from him and the way he works. He truly is a professional, and I bow to him, for he is the true master.

Anhk: And what's the best production you have ever seen ?

Unreal: I may be boring.. but my favourite demo is Stuff by XTACY.. It still is an incredible demo, I still love it, too bad I can't run it anymore (no GUS, etc). It is the kind of fast paced demo with amazing music..My other favourites are Deep (Psylocybin Mix), Killer, Inside (all by CNCD), Moral Hard Candy and Bakkslide 7.

Anhk: Not that long ago you have joined CNCD and then founded your own new group called 'Sunflower'. Can you tell us a bit more about Sunflower ? Who is in and who does what ?

Unreal: I joined CNCD back in 1998.. 5th march of 1998 to be precise. Hehe.. About Sunflower. We're 11 people. We'll hopefully make some amazing demos, and more. My personal plans is to make Sunflower something more than just a demo group, but we'll see. There's a hint - the group includes no musicians. We want to make demos FOR, WITH or USING musicians - real life or scene. If you're releasing a CD, need a video, just contact us, and we can do it for you. Right now I have two such videos planned, we'll see what comes out.The people are: (most important demo groups he contributed/belonged/belongs are listen in parenthesis)Camel (Pulse), Echo (Fudge), Mrock (Hellcore), Silver Eagle (Pygmy Projects), Statix (Acme, Pulse), Yoghurt (Poison), Unreal (Pulse), Frank (Orange), Made (BOMB!), Nero (Matrix), Saffron (TBL).As you see, it's not exactly Pulse 2, as some tend to think. 3 out of 11 have contributed to Pulse demos.

Anhk: What happened with Pulse ? Why did you quit ?

Unreal: Pulse was a step to something. A huge step, and possibly the biggest step in my life (scenewise), but just a step. After Pulse was on all the charts, in all cathegories, I realized my old dream became true. This dream was to have the best group, to be #1 on the charts. That was it.. on several charts we were #1 in almost everything. I really think Pulse, as a group of PEOPLE was something extraordinary - with gfx artists like Lazur, Antony, Haplo, Zeb, Visualize, and the less known but very talented Lucky or Fame, with coders like LCA, Statix, Ice, with musicians like Scorpik, Falcon, Radix, Shad.. let's remember Akira too. I really don't think there was, and it's highly probable that there will never be a group like Pulse. But after there was nothing more to do, I realized it's time for something new, as for me, Pulse was a group that was supposed to be the strongest in everything. With the time, I became (hopefully) more matured, and winning meant less than doing something good.. So after a year after 73Ms there's Sunflower, which is going to be the step to the next level of life.The time has come to put Pulse to forever sleep.. It was time when everything was great, and things could have only went worse - why wait. It was also time when some of my best Pulse friends became inactive or at least much less active in demo life - Akira, but also LCA, Ice, Antony, or even Camel. Thanks to these people for the great time we spent.. but "life goes on, niggah".

Anhk: What about the 'former' members of Pulse ? Lazur ? Scorpik ? ...

Unreal: Living their own lives.. Scorpik is doing a career in game industry, composing amazing soundtracks to games and programs, and also contibuting to several audio CD's.

Anhk: What's your personal recipe for making outstanding demos ? What are your ingredients ?

Unreal: I don't have a recipe.. which is a bit scary. Because there's nothing to lean on when I need to get something done. Evey time I make a demo (I made 14 or 15 of them until now I'm in a mess, I don't know where to start etc. I'm trying, hopefully with SOME success, to avoid cliches like "design". What do I mean: in most of sceners heads, design is a recipe for a demo. A year or two back, the design was : have a face in the right corner of the screen, add some jumping typography, flash to the music. Nowadays it's wireframe, yellow (or generally pastel) background, flat vectors. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong in making demos using these attributes, but lots of people tend to think just doing it means their demo is all style.. But let's face it - everybody can do it, and in my eyes, the only TRUE great style was in Moral Hard Candy and TE-2RB (BW tho).

Anhk: What do you think about the latest 3d accelerating boards ? Should we see more coders starting to use them ?

Unreal: I think we'll see more coders using them, mostly 3d player coders, some people will remain to do software demos for they have ideas that are hard to do on 3d acceleration, or they really know what they can do with the software rendering. But there aren't really too many people like that so.. For me, 3d acceleration is a great thing - now that I finally moved on to Windows + acceleration, I can do more than just stupid little demos that work on 5 computers.





Anhk: As a scene veteran what's your opinion on the effective scene ?

Unreal: Not really sure what you mean

Anhk: What's the story behind the nickname "Unreal" ?

Unreal: Was coming back from my friend (the same one I watched first demos with), and wanted to find a nickname.. I had all sorts of stupid nicknames before, and I wanted something exciting and cool. Some word that would describe something impossible, amazing etc.. And I came up with Unreal.. boy was I happy

Anhk: What diskmags do you usually read ?

Unreal: I browse Hugi and read all what I find in SHINE. Recently I got hold of the new PAiN and it was really nice, hope they'll be even better soon!

Anhk: What sort of music do you listen to ? Who's your favourite artist?

Unreal: I'd say Pink Floyd are the most amazing. I also love Smashing Pumpkins, Craig Armstrong, Tangerine Dream, Rage Against The Machine, Guns N' Roses, and always some electronic shit that changes so often I don't even want to list it all here

Anhk: What's your educational level ?

Unreal: Finished high school, currently studying on (again) first year of Maths.. Hopefully this year I will be less lazy and won't quit.. hehe. Last times I was on some stupid things like Electronics, Automatics & Robotics, it all sucked, was mega boring crap.. no more!

Anhk: Ok , now here's what we are going to do. I will give you several words and all you have to do is tell us as shortly as possible (one word if possible) what it makes you think of... Optimize ?

Unreal: asm

Anhk: Millenium ?

Unreal: love

Anhk: Beer ?

Unreal: more

Anhk: Internet ?

Unreal: slow

Anhk: Female ?

Unreal: mmm

Anhk: Orange ?

Unreal: X14

Anhk: Breast ?

Unreal: sweet

Anhk: Genius ?

Unreal: Silver Eagle

Anhk: Addiction ?

Unreal: food

Anhk: Disgusting ?

Unreal: old demos

Anhk: Thank you Unreal ! One last favour : can you give us your email address and/or url so that our readers can get in touch with you ?

Unreal: sure thing. I can be contacted under: -email- you can visit sunflower website(s):http://www.tpolm.com/sunflower http://sunflower.opengl.org.pl (these two are different!)

Anhk: Anything else you'd like to mention ? Greetings to your friends ?

Unreal: Yes. peace and love to all people who were and are in my life. Thanks to people that taught me important things..

Anhk: Ok , thank you for being our guest Unreal ! It's been a great pleasure to talk to you again after all this time ! Best of luck with your new group. We'll anxiously wait for your next production ! Byebye mate !

Unreal: Thanks my friend.. I wish everybody a great time on the scene..

Interview performed by Anhk