Slideshow review
SEVEN SEAS
by Fairfax/Andromeda

Fairfax, the guy who has taken his handle from a cigar label, is one of the absolutely highest ranked graphicians in the scene today and also one of the most productive ones. Can he with his slideshow "Seven Seas" keep up his and the in general great Andromeda quality?


Presentation & design
"Seven Seas" was revealed from the infinite Andromeda in the beginning of this year. The slideshow is something special, not only the pictures are good, the overall design and presentation is really nice as well.
   After a short introduction where the credits are shown in a really fancy way, it happens; the screen fades down and up comes a harmonic high-mountain motif - great! But what happens? It moves. . . It scrolls. . . The whole picture begins to scroll horizontally and turns out to be an about 4 screens wide masterpiece. The idea with a big scrolling picture is not new (Legalize It 2, and some others), but this is one of the better and it's a really admirable piece of art with a lot of work behind. Fairfax says about the planning of this huge picture:  "This seemed like a grand project" and "I was not extremely excited by the idea of making it".
The other pictures are then shown in rapid sequence and when the show is over a picturemenu appears where you are able to choose and watch the pictures again or read an information scroller where Fairfax says some words about every picture.

Pictures
"Seven Seas" contains 13 masterpieces (the intro and menupictures excluded). Most of them are seen before in different productions and competitions. There are for example his 2nd placed picture from The Party II ("Encounter"), his 5th placed picture from The Gathering '93, ("Purpleworm"), the winning one from the Rendezvous party last summer ("Smoker"), the intropicture in Andromeda's "Mindriot", etc. But there are also some new ones. Among these are one of my favourites "Soria Moria", a picture representing a person looking out over a misty moor. Maybe not the most difficult picture to draw, but there's a really special feeling in it. This is something that goes for most of Fairfax's pictures. His motifs are really harmonic and far away from the common fantasy-dragons and naked women. More like 'real' art actually. . . Something he's very good at are mountains and nature motifs, but that's not too strange as he's living in the beautiful country of Norway.
   Unfortunately, there are not many pictures that are entirely drawn by Fairfax himself. He's got inspiration and sources for redrawing from artists like Mark Harrison, John Howe, Tim Hildebrandt, Theodor Kittelsen and (of course) Boris Vallejo. This does again throw light upon the fact that the highest ranked graphicians in general don't know how to compose a picture by their own, but Fairfax does with a few images show that he actually is able to draw his own motifs. Another positive thing in this matter is that some of the pictures are painted using just a black and white photo as source and some others are redrawings mixed with his own compositions - facts which indicates that he's come rather far after all.

   Fairfax has been said to be 'the master of interlace', and this is for sure true. His way to utilize the possibility to use rastering as a main technique is really good and he uses the possible 64 colours very well. Maybe it's just imagination, but in some strange way I think he is able to make the pictures flicker less than usual too. . . There can't be anything bad said about his technique in the interlace resolution, but unfortunately some of his lo-res works tend to look somewhat unsharp if you study them closely. Maybe this is because he's used to painting in interlace where quite another technique often is used.

Music
The two soundtracks used in "Seven Seas" are composed by InterPhace, and are very atmospheric. To link up with the name of the slideshow, some sea-samples are used.

Code
Nothing special, really. But what does one expect in a slideshow. The code from Dr.Jekyll fills its function very well and the introduction are rather nice and good-looking. (Though an annoying detail is that one of the pictures, "Mindriot", isn't displayed during the main show!?)


Overall comment
Without any exaggerating I can say that this slideshow is more than far from the average - it's stunning! Maybe the best slideshow ever. Really good motifs that differ from what is common on the Amiga, painted using a if not perfect but still great technique, nice design, atmospheric music and overall nice arrangement. But still, there are very few pictures that actually are originally drawn by Fairfax. . .



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Graphics:           8
Code:               5
Music:              7
Design:             6

Overall:            9
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- Electron / Citron.

Footnote: The 'screenshot' included is Fairfax' "Purpleworm". The lousy quality does obviously not justify the quality of the original picture.