Bustard
- Well, I must say I don't like to speak about
myself, it's one thing I hate actually, but I'll try and make an exception
to the rule this time...
As you probably guessed, my name is Paolo Martella, I'm 24 and I live
in Rome (Italy) the same place where I was born; I'm studying computer
science engineering at "La Sapienza" University in Rome and
working as computer consultant and computer graphics artist. I first
got in touch with a computer when I was 7 or at most 8 years old: I
obviously started with a Commodore 64, then went through Amiga when
I finally made it to PC's. I've always loved computer graphics and programming
(and playing videogames, of course) so that I wrote my first BASIC (!)
demo on my loyal C=64, more or less it looked like this: I ripped some
spaceship sprites (!) from a wonderful shoot'em up game called Armalyte
(by Thalamus) and then made them fight over a background image I had
drawn with Koala Painter (does anybody remember?)... Believe it or not,
the result was impressive! When I then moved to Amiga (because of the
first Xenon, by Bitmap Brothers) I almost stopped programming, I thought
AmigaBasic was a heck just because it could not manage sprites in a
native way :) So I turned to something easier but as satisfactory as
programming, graphics drawing and music composition: I tracked my first
mods with SoundTracker, a tiny little program I had accidentally bought
from my reliable software pirate... I guess I'll never thank her (!)
enough!!! At the same time, I was getting more and more experienced
with Deluxe Paint so I started to code some demos which were basically
made of still images and background tunes accompanying the scene. Some
times later, as I was getting tired of working with NoiseTracker (Amiga
Freelancers!) on the Amiga sound chipset (only four voices, low memory
amount), my friend Marco Scoderoni showed me his flaming new PC equipped
with a SB 16 sound card and a totally new sound tracking program called
FastTracker... Well, definitely it was love at first sight. I suddenly
realized I was breaking my back while things could be so much easier,
that's why I quickly moved to a P200 with a SB AWE64 on. The next step
was a 3DFX Banshee because I felt I had to see Unreal and Quake 2 running
on my little screen in my little room; right after that, performance
became my primary concern so i turned to an AMD K6-2 400 processor but
after some overclocking tests I was so disappointed with my latest buy
that I gave it away (to my girlfriend! and she's still stuck with it!
eheh...) in two weeks. I realized that P3 was worth the expense and
bought a 450 Mhz processor and an nVidia TNT video card: finally I was
getting some satisfaction! Everything from performance to compatibility
was so amazing that I'm still equipped with that old CPU, although I've
clocked it a bit :) Just in the last few months I've replaced my loyal
TNT with a GeForce 2 MX video board, mainly for compatibility (please
read T&L) reasons. And that's all for my computer history, now let's
say something more about my sources of inspiration... VIDEOGAMES!
While playing videogames I've always been looking at the graphics, no
matter how poor the gameplay could be; some of them could merge these
two qualities together and they became my favourites: I'm speaking of
Armalyte on C=64 and Gods on Amiga, two wonderful action games featuring
some of the most stunning graphics I have ever seen; amazing animations,
metallic reflections, maybe this are the reasons why after a long time
this site is still full of metallic elements... Another game that really
impressed me was The Killing Game Show (Amiga) and if you have ever
played it you might see (and hear!) its influence in GL Excess (Psygnosis
used to rock at that time... sniff). More recently I've gone mad for
games such as Duke Nukem, Half-Life, Quake 3 Arena and Severance: Blade
of Darkness, man graphics are getting better and closer to reality every
year, I just can't think of what is going to happen in the next few
years! Maybe I'll look at GL Excess and laugh at it :)
Now, if you've made it to the final part of this boring introduction
about myself, it means you are really interested (more likely you have
nothing better to do...) so I've decided to praise you with some personal
info (^_^).
I wake up very late in the morning (1 - 2 pm... err... I guess I'd better
say in the afternoon...) and I'm off to sleep very early (in the morning:
5 - 6 am). I spend most of my time in front of this monitor studying,
working, playing, surfing, reading, eating, smoking, coding, recording
and drawing. When I have some spare time (yes but the question is: when?!?
eheh...) I like to go out for dinner or for a walk with my girlfriend
Rosalba and her dog Theo; I don't like cinemas a lot, I'd rather hire
a tape and see it at home; I like to meet new friends but I hate sports
in general. I love to hear and play music, eighties, smooth jazz and
instrumental works in particular; my preferred music artist and bands
are Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, Sting, The Police, Jeff Healey, Toto,
Alan Parsons, A-ha, Sade, Tori Amos, Incognito, Gino Vannelli, Massive
Attack. My favourite writers are David Lehane and Patricia Cornwell
while my favourite films are Die Hard (the first one of course, great!),
Nikita, Leon and Back to the future.
Well I guess that's all for now, I must say it was easier than I thought,
thanks for your dedication and feel free to drop me a line if you think
I forgot something... L8r!
Paolo "Bustard" Martella
