The Blender - NicheInterests/mistfunk GitHub Wiki

Differentiating itself from the 3D modeling tool [Blender] with its definite article, The Blender is an improvised computer art competition (or "compo") established by Hennifer and Warpus of Lazarus Blocks at the end of 1996, and run on a more-or-less weekly schedule for a year. It is given its odd name on the basis of competitors needing to synthesise (or "blend") all of its multiple impromptu topics into a unified whole, traditionally someone doing something (eg. a HORSE), the activity they are doing (eg. DANCING) and a location where they are doing it (eg. THE WHITE HOUSE LAWN.)

Because The Blender was a computer art compo and not a pure ANSI art compo, Mistigris artists began excelling at it -- Handiboy won several compos on the basis of his thematically appropriate tracker music compositions, and we recruited Skrubly on the basis of his incredible and prize-winning works of Blender short fiction. At some point on a monthly or quarterly basis TEAM BLENDER or BLENDER KOMBAT installments would be proclaimed, explicitly encouraging collaborative entries from within the different crews striving in the rankings, and the unorthodox creators of the Mistigris computer art collective started racking in the points with their nutty entries (such as the "Mad Cow Man and Beef Fat Boy" text adventure.)

Somewhere around the 47th installment in late 1997, Warpus (Hennifer had since drifted off) kept running the compos but stopped scoring submissions, updating the rankings and releasing the results as artpacks. Cthulu, unwilling to allow this profile-boosting boon to the Mistigris crew to evaporate, took on running compos on Warpus' behalf once he faded away, but without the missing compo results following compo #47, was unable to make official updates to the rankings. Following a dozen of those compos, among diminishing returns Cthulu also resigned from running the Blender... but at the start of 1999, Hennifer returned to revive the Blender series with B2K numbering, hosting nearly a further dozen entries in the series... but by mid-June 1999, the momentum had well and truly run out.

However, Cthulu was still in possession of the unreleased art from the dozen Blenders he'd hosted, and after reviving Mist for its 20th anniversary in 2014, in 2015 he also released a bundled "Blenders 48 through 60" artpack to vent the unreleased art and hosted a ceremonial Blender compo, in its traditional home on channel #blender on the EFNet IRC, to celebrate the occasion. Old artscene heads showed interest in the revived Blender (and indeed, it may have proven influential in the reformation of Lazarus, Fuel and Fire), and they have continued along, first on an annual basis through 2019, twice in 2020, then quarterly ever since.