Interviews
Interview with Dokk
Published in Vandalism News #51
Performed by Morpheus
Paul 'Dokk' Docherty was regarded as one of the best artists on the C64, he became a part of the ancient CompuNet network, freelanced for Firebird and worked for System 3. His graphics were used in gems such as Dominator, Druid 2, Hammerfist, Quedex and the ill-fated but now available in demo form, Tyger Tyger. This interview is reprinted with permission, when I read it I couldn't help asking to have it here in the pages of Vandalism, to share with those that might have otherwise missed it, enjoy!

M)
Hey Paul! Please start this interview off by giving us some information about yourself (full name, birthplace and date, where you reside, job and interests).
D)
I was born Paul Martin Docherty in Edinburgh, Scotland on the 15th of January 1969. Currently I live in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City, not far from Brooklyn Heights. I work as a film and video editor, working mostly on historical documentaries. Interests are pretty much dominated by movies (watching, discussing, making), writing, and music, though I do like walks in the park. Oh yeah, and kittens.
M)
When did you start out with the C64 and drawing graphics for it?
P)
I was the second person in my primary school class to get a computer. My best friend was the first. He got a ZX81 kit for his birthday and I was fiendishly jealous! Then that Christmas my parents got me a VIC 20, which was actually kind of embarrassing because it was ridiculously superior to my mate's hand-soldered black and white bleep box. I totally bought into the home computer hype. By the time the Sinclair Spectrum had been out for a while, I was ready to upgrade, and the C64 was the next logical step. This was 1984 or 85 maybe? After that, I was always trying to justify to my parents having such an extravagant toy in the house. So when Compunet came along I jumped on that scene straight away: "See mum, it's a tool for communicating across the globe blah blah investment in the future cough cough."
For those who don't know, Compunet was a C64 server based network, shared by dial-in users who had to buy a specific modem for their machine and were assigned a username. Mine was PD10. It was like a mini version of the Internet. It had email, message boards, download areas, and online chat. Things we all take for granted now, but back then it felt pretty avantgarde, at least for a know-nothing teenager like me. I got into swapping software and music with friends around the country, hanging out at C64 trade shows, and then my mate from Birmingham, Roosta, gave me a copy of the art program Paint Magic. Boom! That was it. Changed my life forever.
M)
Were you already drawing by hand at this point?
D)
I was a 'naturally talented' artist when I was young, something I totally under-appreciated in school, and something my dad didn't think was appropriate for a career. There was talk of me going to art college at school, but my dad was set against it. He thought I should have a trade, like engineering. So, for a number of reasons art college didn't happen. I was flirting with comic artwork when Paint Magic came along. I wasn't a prolific artist before that. If anything, Paint Magic facilitated art for me. I invested more time in C64 art than I would have if I had another outlet for it, I suspect.
M)
What other programs did you use to draw graphics with? I imagine there were quite a few custom editors around written for the games you worked on.
D)
I'm going to be a disappointment if you're looking for details like that. I really don't remember. There was a sprite creation application I used that I could superimpose sprites in layers and animate them together. That allowed me to do the mixed resolution sprites for All Terrain Gardener for instance. That was a very very helpful tool, I just have no idea what it was called. Most other tools were proprietary, or designed specifically for the project. Those I liked less. Tools designed by game programmers tended to be crude and unfriendly.

M)
Were you a part of the demo scene?
D)
I pottered around doing C64 graphics stuff for friends, just dabbling really, until I got involved with some other C64 friends in Edinburgh. The chain of events is a little murky now in my head, but as I remember it, I was approached by Dunks and Sly of Pulse Productions, a demo crew. They'd seen my stuff on Compunet and wanted me to join their group. We met for the first time at the video arcade on Lothian Road. Pretty sure that place is long gone now. I was the club-joining kind at the time and took them up on the offer. There was Sly (or Eggo – he had a few nicknames and I don't recall his real name anymore), Dunks, and Graham Hunter. I think John Cassels was involved too, but he was on his way out for whatever reason. I never actually met him.
What we started working on, though, was a side-scrolling C64 shoot 'em up together. I don't think we actually made any demos together. There were some disagreements about the direction of the game and I took my graphics elsewhere, and they eventually turned up in the love letter to Pulse that Radix Developments created called Peace on Pulse (how terribly Noel Coward of me). Graham and I went on to make more demos, because (1) it was fun, and (2) the demo scene on Compunet was really hotting up. It felt good to be part of that, and Jane Firbank was extremely supportive of that culture on her network. (I always saw it as hers, though I guess reading about it now she wasn't as involved as I'd imagined. She was very good to us, though.)
That all fell apart after our dealings with Thalamus, basically. Graham didn't enjoy programming large projects – Radix was never really about that – and so we parted company.
Then I was briefly involved with the Nato crew, which was me flirting with doing graphics just for fun again, after doing work-for-hire stuff for a couple of years and just not enjoying it that much any more. But that was just before I moved to London in 1988 (I believe), so when I left Edinburgh, that was the end of that.
M)
Jane's been greeted in a few demos and seemed popular. What more can you tell about her and the team behind Compunet?
D)
I didn't really interact with her that much, but she was the only contact with Compunet I ever had. So I always assumed she was in charge. My impression now is that wasn't the case. Others knew her much better. She was a champion of Doug and Bob, and I was with Doug on one of the rare occasions that I can remember spending time with her at a trade show. But she looked out for the talent on CNet. We were good for business. She was supportive of the likes of Radix, and that was a big deal to me.
M)
What was the most alarming thing to happen at a trade show?
D)
The last Commodore trade show I went to, I only went for part of the Saturday. I bumped into some friends who told me there was some Scandinavian guy looking for me, hair stacked up like mine (I had some funky Eraserhead thing for a while) and wearing a long black coat like the one I was wearing. Not alarming I guess, but it's the only time I even suspected I was being stalked. For the record, I never met him. No idea who it was.
M)
Are you aware of that fact that your graphics were ripped and used in a lot of demos back then?
D)
I never really had a sense of a scene outside of Compunet. I was very myopic; if it wasn't right in front of me I wasn't interested. So, no, I had no idea. I didn't have friends in the scene to keep track of that stuff for me, and I was just throwing myself into work. I didn't pay attention to what was going on in the C64 world outside. I can appreciate now that that's very much who I am. Tunnel vision. I miss out on a lot of things.
M)
Tell us how your professional career started, because it almost seems like you came from nowhere and suddenly appeared to grace the world with your beautiful graphics.
D)
Flattery will get you everywhere. All I wanted was attention. I was getting lots of positive feedback from friends and fans on Compunet, but what I really wanted was to get a picture in Zzap!64, the only games magazine I read cover to cover every month. They were printing a lot of artists work in there, now that Cnet was getting exposure, but they hadn't featured me yet. That really bugged me. So I went out of my way to create an image I knew they'd be interested in. I did the Judge Dredd portrait specifically to get into print. It was a conscious effort to use more colour than I usually did, and to focus on a single, powerful image that demands attention. Worked like a charm. That opened some doors for me.
M)
What doors?
D)
The sequence of events is a bit murky for me, but I'm pretty sure that I had already done the Leviathan loading screen by the time my images were printed. Through the attention from Zzap!64, I was approached by Firebird, and that was really where my career became a regular money-maker for me. It wasn't like I suddenly became a hot property, not by a long shot, but I was taken more seriously by prospective employers, definitely.

M)
Did you submit work samples to various games companies looking for jobs?
D)
Sure, I sent out demo disks, but the first job I got was through Rich Hare, who had done the in-game graphics for Leviathan for UBI Soft. I met him though Sly at Pulse, and that was my first paying gig. I'd sent a demo disk to UBI Soft, and he recognized my name and was my advocate for the job.
He gave me some great advice that stuck with me. I'd told him I wasn't happy about the screen because it was a complicated piece of artwork that didn't translate to the C64 very well. And he quite rightly pointed out that it wasn't my job to copy art exactly. I had to interpret the design, use my knowledge of what works on the C64 and adapt the art. Obvious, really, but I wasn't operating like that then.
M)
Leviathan for UBI Soft? Leviathan on the C64 was released by English Software. Was there a connection between the two companies?
D)
Busted. I didn't remember the name of the developer, so I looked it up, I saw it listed as UBI Soft, but they must have been the US distributor or something. English Software wrote the check, yes. My bad.
M)
When it was decided that you were going to do the graphics for a game, how much time did you usually have to finish it?
D)
I honestly don't remember. Most projects had really, really short production cycles. Nothing like the two years I spent on the PC game Montezuma's Return. Project management was a huge problem in the business at the time. So many young, naive kids were creating the games and were being managed by other young-ish, under-qualified people who had little or no managerial experience. It was borderline chaos all the time. Well, the projects I worked on were.
System 3, for example, projects languished in development for what seemed like ages (Tusker, for example, which was never ever going to recoup development and production expenses). Or the falling out I had with the Firebird project manager on Tyger Tyger, which was a painful experience. I was so invested in it that I felt utterly betrayed. We didn't know any better, it was pretty unpleasant. Took me a long time to get over that.
M)
What happened exactly?
D)
Ah, well. The short version is Tyger Tyger was running over schedule, development was unstructured, and this was the project manager's first non-budget title for British Telecomsoft. So the project manager had a lot at stake, and was feeling the pressure. The way I remember it is that there was a 'crisis meeting' at Liddon's place where I was renting a room at the time. The problems with the project were placed on my shoulders by the project manager and I didn't agree. But I was the only one in the room who held that view, apparently. And it was the first I'd heard of it. Liddon was backing up the project manager's assertion that I was to blame by not defending me. He just kind of let it happen.
Maybe this was some kind of motivating technique they were shocking me with, but frankly being yelled at and being solely blamed for failure of a team project was not my idea of problem solving. So I quit on the spot. I made a deal with Cale to buy out my contract with Telecomsoft, and that was the end of it. I moved out of Liddon's place shortly after that and we didn't talk again for years.
M)
Guest question from Frank Gasking: What was the reason for Tyger Tyger running over schedule? Was Tyger Tyger found to be too overly ambitious in what you were trying to achieve?
D)
That's a very romantic notion, that Gary and I were pushing ourselves so far that we reached beyond our ability to grasp. It was more like simple project management issues that happen to lots of projects for lots of reasons: lack of forward planning and clear goals, set deadlines and general confusion about how to overcome obstacles. In hindsight, we could easily have come to a satisfactory solution to whatever problems were plaguing us, but I was young and inexperienced, as were others on the project, and so things didn't work out.
Talking about Tusker, I think it's clear that it was a game that took forever to finish because the game is bad and seven artists drew graphics for it. What was wrong?
I never played it, so I can't really speak about the game. The project didn't really have anybody in control of it. I didn't see other projects going that far off the rails there, so project management issues were worked out after Tusker (or they improved at least). I think this was the first project for Cale that he developed without John Twiddy, Hugh Riley and Mev Dinc, so there were assumptions made about how things would play out and some of those assumptions were wrong. But that's my interpretation, I really wasn't that involved.

M)
Do you remember what you drew for the game?
D)
I think I did some screens, like the Elephant's Graveyard. I'd be happy to take no credit for any of that, though. :)
M)
Which C64 game you drew graphics for are you most pleased with?
D)
All Terrain Gardener, an unreleased Firebird game I developed with Ubik. That was the first time I conquered sprite animation. I was horribly embarrassed by the sprites I did for BMX Kidz, the first game I did graphics for. They were basically stick figures, not much actual animation going on. So next time out I was determined to push myself. The game was really simple, and working with Ubik was a real pleasure. He was game for anything.
Exterminator for Audiogenic was the last C64 project I was utterly proud of. Doug Hare programmed it and we worked out of his flat in Shepherd's Bush. We wanted to make it absolutely faithful to the original, but the graphics didn't transfer well from the arcade version. So I re-created all the graphics from scratch. I was horrified to read the first review of the game suggesting that those graphics were digitized. What a jerk! Didn't do an ounce of fact checking. But that's always the problem, right? The harder you work, the more invisible the effort is to the audience.
M)
But it was a compliment that you could draw graphics that good, don't you agree?
D)
I'm always listening for compliments, but that review didn't have any compliments in it for me. Regardless I'm still very proud of the work I did. I know I did a great job.
M)
What game are you most displeased with that you worked on?
D)
Everything I did for Probe Software just never come together for me. No idea why, but I couldn't make it work. Also, I'm kind of shocked by the screenshots of Tyger Tyger. What was I thinking with that colour scheme? I had a dream recently about working on that game. I was watching a 'lost' level of the game that had the most amazing castle sequence with a dragon wrapped around a tower throwing fireballs at the hero. In reality that project was a huge missed opportunity. Such a shame.
M)
You know, it's never too late to PM Mr Liddon and pick up where you left off. You can even fix the colour scheme this time! C'mon, all your fans are eagerly waiting for the next DOKK master piece!
D)
I wouldn't ask the world to hold its breath waiting for that one...
M)
Generally speaking, are you pleased with what you drew?
D)
Tough question. I mean, I was learning all the time, so the early stuff is hard for me to like. By the time the C64 was ending its life as a viable platform, I'd moved on to the challenges of 16-bit graphics, so things like my Exile loading screen were a bit passionless, though technically very accomplished. Looking back at it from this perspective, it all does feel like a body of work. I've never really stopped to think about it like this before. So I can say, at this moment, I'm pretty proud of what I did. It was all so full of potential.
M)
What game was most fun to do?
D)
I can't think of any C64 games I worked on that weren't fun on some level, though the focus and sense of accomplishment from Extreminator puts that one pretty high up the list. Pity, really, since it's a conversion and not an original title. Tyger Tyger was a blast but ended badly, so that doesn't really count. Creatively I had the most input I ever had on a game and playing with ideas was really exciting. Plus Liddon was really great to work with. We ended up working together at Strangeways Software a few years later. My favourite times as a developer were definitely at Strangeways, but that's post-C64 and doesn't really fit here.
M)
Second guest question from Frank Gasking: Apart from Tyger Tyger and All Terrain Gardener, were there any other C64 games that you worked on that never saw the light of day?
D)
There was a Super Mario Bros clone I worked on for Firebird with a programmer whose name escapes me. It was fun to do, but the game was considered too derivative to market, sadly. Or maybe it was just crap, I don't remember.
M)
What drove you insane about drawing graphics on the C64?
D)
What an odd question. I imagine you're thinking I felt held back by the limitations of the medium or something, craving more colours or more resolution. I didn't experience any of that. I really enjoyed the struggle to get a good image out of the machine. Playing with the limited palette and the limited resolution was what it was all about for me. Nothing about it drove me insane. I was already insane. :)
M)
Did it ever bug you that the pixels weren't square?
D)
No. Never. Did it bother other people? It drove Ste Pickford (Ghosts'n Goblins title screen, etc.) insane. It must be mentioned though that he was more of a Speccy kid. I was a Commodore guy. I have no sympathy for those Speccy victims. I started out on the VIC 20, so anything was an improvement.
M)
Was there a lot of planning involved before you started drawing or was that something that was done along the way?
D)
Maybe if I'd planned more I would have had an easier time of it. But no, I developed directly on the C64. It was about the pixels and the limited colour palette for me. I loved (and still love) the luminance of the pixels on a TV screen, that analogue glow of a cathode ray tube. LCD and plasma screens don't have the same look or feel. We lost something when everything went flat screen, though I did regain a lot of desk space.
M)
Did you have any special drawing techniques?
D)
I always worked with a Kensington joystick. I realize now that was a handicap rather than an asset, but you get used to working a certain way and rarely have reason to question it if it works.
Dithering was a signature of mine, I suppose, that checker-boarding effect with pixels to create half-tones and blends. You'd really have to ask other people about that. I did whatever it took to service the image at the time. I don't think I had specific habits or techniques. I was always trying to be better, faster, more exciting.
M)
In which title screen did you succeed best with dithering?
D)
It was an on-going thing. The Leviathan screen has some crude dithering, though I like the yellow and pink exhaust fumes. By the time I did Druid 2, I was using just enough dithering to blend the colours, trying to be efficient. From there I did stuff like No One Special which has almost no dithering, just on the face, and enough on her shirt to suggest form. Dithering for a reason. The Magnetron screen is almost all dithering, but I'm trying to break up the regularity of the pattern, at least in the background. And then there's the Nato screen which was just an orgy of blending and dithering. So with each screen I'm trying to be better, to perfect something, or do differently something I felt I'd 'perfected' before.
M)
Did you have a lot of artistic freedom when drawing?
D)
On most of the later loading screens, yes. But to begin with, not usually. Most of the games I worked on were original titles, so I had carte blanche under those circumstances. Games like Exterminator that were adaptations, I was supposed to deliver something close to the original. Those jobs were about the technical challenges of working within the limitations of the hardware.
M)
Because of time limits, could you sometimes feel that you were not totally pleased with your work but it had to go because of the deadline?
D)
Always. But the beauty of working with such limited resources was that you had so few options on the C64 screen. Loading pictures were always needed yesterday, so that was a constant challenge. You can spot the screens I had no interest in but needed the cash. I don't remember sweating deadlines on game development back then, though. Maybe I should have...
M)
Was there a game you would have liked to draw the graphics for?
D)
Tyger Tyger. I wish we'd finished that. Myth and Salamander. I admired Bob's economy. I would have liked to have done a game like The Pawn, the one that Bob did all those really nice screens for. I would have liked to have originated a side scrolling shoot 'em up, too (as opposed to just doing sprites for Dominator) – create my response to IO and Delta. I was a fan of Armalyte too.
M)
What other artists did you admire back then?
D)
Bob Stevenson as mentioned and Hugh Riley. Those were the guys to beat. Bob was clinical, almost surgical in his placement of pixels. Hugh was so loose and free, there was a real liveliness in his lack of polish. Robin Levy, too, who appeared on the scene later. He had a style that in a way emphasised the pixels. It was meticulous and so tied to the C64 graphics chip. Magnificent. It was a great experience working with him.
M)
Were loading screens something the companies wanted if budget allowed? You mention that they were needed yesterday while today one would think that a loading screen is the first thing a gamer sees and therefore is very important.
D)
I can't speak for producers, but when a game is being developed, the loading screen is the last thing to be considered. Maybe not an after-thought so much as a very very low priority. So while I agree with your point that it's the audience's gateway into the game and should be taken seriously by producers, it generally wasn't. And that's not a judgement on the process, that's just how things were. The Druid 2 screen was definitely the exception rather than the rule.
Another thing was that developers often weren't involved in the process of mastering the game to tape, so the distributors made the loading screen decisions. That was a benefit, actually. I didn't have people critiquing my work. Distributors just wanted something that looked okay delivered quickly and cheaply.
M)
How much did you generally get for a screen?
D)
£100 for my first one. £200 was the going rate at Firebird, which was a lot for me at the time. I don't even know what £1 is worth anymore.

M)
Tell us how the amazing Druid 2: Enlightenment title screen came about.
D)
It was just a regular job. I got a call: "Can you do a screen for us?" "Sure, what is it?" "Druid 2." I nearly dropped the phone. I was a huge fan of Bob's Druid screen; its economy, a genuine interpretation of artwork instead of a straight transfer to the C64 screen. So I took this job as my mission to basically be the new Bob, at least in my eyes. I gave it everything I had. But really, it wasn't anything more than that. I didn't lobby to get the screen, it just landed in my lap. I was in the right place at the right time.
M)
Do you remember pixling on it? Was there a paper sketch? How long did it take?
D)
No paper sketch. I actually worked from a black and white photocopy of the original artwork. So some of the differences between my screen and the artwork are a product of the horrible reproduction I had to work from. I don't remember how long it took specifically, but I know I had more time than usual, so maybe I spent a week on it. I had time to play with composition and to finesse the colour selections, etc. For loading screens, I usually had original artwork as a reference, and I would work out the composition of elements directly on the screen. If no artwork was available, I would improvise directly into Paint Magic. I wasn't a traditionally trained graphic artist by any stretch of the imagination. C64 all the way.
M)
What was most fun to draw; title screens, sprites or backgrounds?
D)
Everything. I loved it all. We were always setting ridiculous challenges that pushed the possibilities on the C64. The ideas always outstripped the technology and our abilities. Title screens were a sweet chunk of money for such short deadlines, though.
M)
You did the really beautiful graphics in Dominator together with Hugh Riley. What did you do for the game? Did you draw anything together?
D)
I'm pretty sure my input was limited to sprites, so I didn't get to do the landscapes. I was heavily influenced by IO and Armalyte, so perhaps that comes across. Hugh's style was so very different from mine, I never thought it was a good mix, but it's nice to hear you feel differently. Like with most things at System 3, Cale let me do what inspired me at the time, and he was clear which bits worked for him and which didn't.
But Hugh had designed these graphics before departing to form Vivid Image with his cohorts John Twiddy and Mev Dinc. So we were never in the same building working on that game. His part was done by the time I showed up and I was there to add some


