Mudia Art

By Adok/Hugi


Mudia Art is an unusual diskmag. It focuses totally on music and art. In each issue, 1-2 musicians and 1-2 graphicians are introduced with interviews and samples of their work. That's pretty much it. It's a quick read, but if you want, you can spend a lot of time checking out the artworks and analyzing them. The main editors of MudiaArt are s7ing of Alcatraz, and Mop. The code was done by T$ of Alcatraz, and the interface graphics are from Noogman of Alcatraz. All issues released so far can be downloaded from the Alcatraz website.


Mudia Art #1

Mudia Art #1 was released in August 2007. After the great title picture by Noogman we come to the main menu, which is also very well designed. Too bad the contrast between the font and the background is a bit low. The font used also isn't the best possible one. The controls work with mouse or keyboard. When scrolling with the mouse, it is a bit irritating that there are no buttons for page-wise scrolling. Instead there are some for line-wise scrolling and some that will scroll about half a page.

There are charts for the most wanted artists, best graphicians and best musicians. However, no votes have been collected from the readers and so the charts only reflect the opinion of the editors. The featured artists of this issue are the graphician Spiv and the musician Chromag, both of whom are from Germany. Apart from the five sample tunes by Chromag, there's a bonus track by pOWL of Alcatraz.

It's a nice first issue that has some flaws but is in general well executed.


Mudia Art #2

In January 2008, Mudia Art #2 followed suit. The title picture this time is from Critikill of Brainstorm, who also created the title picture for Zine #13. The background graphics are similar to the ones from issue 1, but they have been altered to fit the time of the year (winter).

The artists in focus this time are the musicians ne7 and Jogeir, and the graphicians Raven and Calvin of Gfx Twins. Some of the articles were written by Mop of Alcatraz, the ex-editor of ROM on Amiga (Rewarding Orthographical Masterpiece).

The flaws mentioned in the review of issue 1 haven't been fixed. Despite that, it's a good second issue.



Mudia Art #3

The third issue of Mudia Art was released on October 31st, 2008. It features a new interface with a better legible font and graphics by Wade of Alcatraz. The annoying mouse controls (no button for full-page scrolling, and having to click on the line-wise scroll

button again and again instead of keeping the mouse button pressed) have still not been changed. 34 voters contributed to the charts, the categories are graphicians, slideshows, musicians, musicdisks, pictures and tunes. (In the pictures category, the closing picture of Hugi #34 shares place #1 with a picture by Helge of Haujobb.)

The featured artists in this issue are the musicians Dreamer and Magnar, and the graphicians FadeOne and Cougar. The articles introducing the artists were written by Mop, and that's why they are in a good style and interesting. The selection of the sample works of art is also good. Apart from these contents, there are also some reviews of slideshows, pictures and musicdisks.

In the article about Dreamer a mistake struck my eyes: The article stated that Dreamer was born in 1987. I was immediately puzzled because I was born in 1983. Four years younger than me and a PhD already? Then I read that he is already more than 30 years old. So it should have probably been 1977 instead of 1987.

In the article about Cougar I was unhappy to read that he is driving 100 km a day from his hometown Kempten im Allgäu to his work place in Munich. What a waste of time and talent! How many good pictures could Cougar draw in the hours he loses every day taking such a long journey! Or he could spend more time with his family if he was living closer to his work place.

A few remarks about the code: The zooming of the text when entering or leaving an article is great. What's annoying is that when you press the right mouse button to return to the main menu, it sometimes happens that you exit the magazine.

All in all, it's a decent issue with an engine that could still be improved a bit.


Adok/Hugi