history of antique toy 2003
by megus/brainwave

elph> as for me, antique toy is the most successfully organized one among other virtual compos, which are held not so often as they could be. i want to ask you some questions, concerning the organization of this event, i think you are experienced now. it's up to you to decide whether they are worth of answers or not, but it would be great to get this interesting information.

megus> thanks for your appreciation. really, we don't think that it was a perfectly organized compo. too much mistakes took place during the process. i hope we'll find and eliminate them to prepare the next compo. the main drawback - we couldn't make an antique toy official site. the other big mistake - too low promotional activity that we held to make people compete and vote. so, i'll try to be as more correct as possible in my answers.

elph> whose idea was to held the antique toy compo and when did it appear?

megus> after returning from cc'01 there appeared idea in my mind to make a virtual compo purely devoted to the music. i was so excited with this idea and i began to figure out the rules and look for any cooperation. i decided, that it would be nice to convene a pre-select jury (and i still think that even virtual compo must have such thing). i picked out some famous musicians, from ex-ussr, from other countries, sent them the invitations to take part in organizing and pre-selecting. but only few of them replied. among them was siril, who had similar ideas at that time. and it was his idea to make a cover compo, and to divide the music compo into mainstream and progressive entries. also he suggested the title - antique toy, it's the name of the track from some electronic project (can't remember, maybe orbital, or some other). however, the project of antique toy stopped. i asked siril to make a rough version of the rules, but he didn't reply me. and later i became frustrated too. but the compo's new life started at cafe'2002. mmcm, andy fer, justinas and me decided to resume this project. so, i think, this fact can be called a reference point in the antique toy organizing.

elph> how quickly did you compile the rules, and the most interesting aspect is dividing music and graphics entries into the separate compos correspondingly - it is what spectrum compos usually need.

megus> the preliminary version of rules was ready in september. at first, it must have been only a music compo, but stanly/stall offered to include also the gfx compos. that's how he became the organizer too.

everything was ok with music compo, we just had to choose tracks for cover compo. but it was a bitter debate about gfx compos. organizers almost raised a quarrel among themselves. they disputed about gfx dividing into separate entries, about rules and so on. i can't remember now, how long they discussed the rules, i think, for a month, maybe more. and then the rules were translated into english and published.

elph> what did you think during votesheet collecting and after that?

megus> i was a little disappointed with low voter's activity in the voting period of time. anyway, with all mistakes that we had made in organization we were happy to get those 40 votes. i think, that results are quite objective. it's great that english musician gasman took part in a compo held by russians and was one of the best. maybe this fact will change the attitude of foreign musicians to our parties? maybe they will believe that it's possible to be rated high here, in russia? :)

elph> what caused the pc version of compilation to be late and why there was no tap version, though tr-dos pack was made brilliantly?

megus> the pc compilation was late because the last works, that had been sent after the deadline, were accepted by stanly, not by me. i saw them only when stanly sent me the final compilation :) so i had to ask him for all music and new gfx works i had to extract from this pack :) you should ask stanly and capry/stall about the absence of the tap version. however, i think it was because of time. they just had no time to make it, but they wanted to.

after all, i hope that people will support antique toy, if we'll decide to make it again, and we'll get both works and votes :)))