Wonder Boys - Complete

An animated computer movie made in 1984 using a ZX81, and a home-made organ. I was 11.

My voice is now two octaves lower, and my scripting is much improved. Fortunately...

BTW, this is the completed version of the movie references elsewhere on teh interwebs.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• animation
• movie
• zx81
• computer
• retro
• Retro Style
• Full
• Film
• 80's

[mjperigo]

Wonderful. It might not win any Oscars but it shows great creativity. It is very unusual to see the ZX81 used for anything other than games. So how about some more details. Was it all entirely a one boy creation? Script, Graphics, Programming & Narration? How is it that a youtube quality recording was made 28 years ago?

[SteevAtBlueDust]

@mjperigo Entirely my fault, I'm afraid! Story, script, graphics, programming, theme music, voices, sound effects, the lot. BASIC for most of the character renders, with assembler for the wipes. I recorded it to video back in 1984; it took a few takes as some components (e.g. the asteroid field) needed manual control to avoid the (randomly generated) asteroids. I then used the audio dub feature on my parents VCR to record the voice and organ. I did the video capture this year.

[SteevAtBlueDust]

I rarely re-watch my old stuff, so I estimate that the tape had been played 2 or 3 times in its life, so it's been relatively well preserved. The low-res of the original, though, means that the missing lines of a VHS recording aren't as noticable as they would on a Spectrum render.

[mjperigo]

@SteevAtBlueDust All very impressive. Which part of using computers for creative arts was the main focus? Did this lead to a computer career or a media career by any chance?