The best art direction category honors demoscene productions that excel in the fields of design, direction and graphical talent. While previous scene awards have also honored these fields their impact has rarely been considered in a more holistic sense. In this context art direction concerns the overall visual appearance of a demo, how it communicates visually and how do these factors complement the concept of the demo. These productions are aesthetically significant even outside their demoscene context.

The demoscene is not just about demos and intros. This category honors the best interactive productions of the year, such as games, musicdisks or interactive experiments.

Many low-end demos or intros feature pixeled delights by many artists that should be recognized for their great efforts and technical skills.

Most categories have a focus on technical achievements, but there are also a lot of productions trying to tell a story (and maybe not feature the latest and most awesome effect). This is also supposed to be another cross-platform/cross-compo category, as all productions alike (from music to gfx, demo to intro, dfox to Gartenzaun) can tell a story in their own way and media.

Size limitation is one of the most interesting traditions of the Demoscene that truly separates what we do from the modern in-game cinematics of late. The high quality music and visuals created by these tiny programs require immense skill to achieve from programmers and artists alike, which makes these productions stand in a category of their own.

Demos show off what sceners are capable of when they are allowed to use any of the available tools and techniques without limitation, using the latest hardware. This makes these productions a perfect showcase for the pinnacle of our art-form, and worthy of recognition.

A great demo cannot go without a great soundtrack, and making audio and visuals work together nicely is a big effort that must not be underestimated.

The ultimate one-man show for coders. Because tiny intros always have been a very important part of the scene but also needs more attention (compared to big demos).

Oldschool continues to be a strong pillar of the demoscene, with lots of amazing productions (mainly demos) released in 2015.

Released in a size-limited party competition, released as an intro, or regarded as an intro on its platform, and between 1K and 64K in size

"Faking it" has been part of the demoscene forever. And faking it so convincingly that jaws drop is what this category is supposed to honor. It is all about making the impossible possible, and doing things that you would not believe your machine is capable of.

This category is for everybody who has either made a memorable entrance into the demoscene in the past year (with their first productions), or suddenly came to full glory in 2015 (breakthrough improvement, new platform or discipline)

You suggest, you vote! This category is pure democracy!

Specialized tools for demo or intro production are now a well established part of the demoscene. Many of these tools have been made publicly available by their authors in order to benefit the scene as a whole, and as a medium for mutual inspiration. It could be fitting to award the tools that have made the greatest impact - without which (parts of) the demoscene would look quite different.

While fierce competition at demoparties (namevoting, friendvoting, presence, nationalism) often prevents objective evaluation of a production, some prods have been celebrated in the general paper or electronic press and thus enhanced visibility of demoscene in undeniable ways.

Because a prod might be released out-of-band between two famous demoparties and stay very little time in "latest release" category for example, or very first comments were bad, or any other reasons, it can sometimes be overlooked.

Because sharing knowledge and skills is now essential to the scene. High-end has to compete with commercial games and low-end has to welcome newcomers. Both need transfer of awesomeness to increase overall quality. Making other people make better things is as important as making things ourselves.

Art is art is art.

Group-Logos come in many visual forms. If painted or coded, they represent the groupname in a production.

Greetings are as old as the scene. So with every prod it becomes harder to produce a creative never done before greetings-part. Lets honor those who accomplish this task. Greeting-parts are in most of the scene-productions, but I think there was never an award for them (correct me if I'm wrong)

Most awesome music from the compos tend to be forgotten unless they're part of an awesome demo, so I think it's time to honour them mods, sids and stuff seperately :)

Because invitations are important for partys and partys are important for the scene.

Because else demoscene is dead since 1991!

A lot of work is done by organizers to make demoparties happen, but there's usually not much you can earn, except fame and the permission to wipe up the puke of certain sceners (whose identity is hidden here, to protect the guilty). It is about time to honor that work more.

Making drama and thratening others with ragequits costs an immense amount of time, that could else be invested into demomaking. An effort that should be honoured.

Traditionally, 2d art at one time was very important in productions - on older platforms, it was often the primary way of delivering 'design' or 'direction.' It's not particularly easy to do such using only 2d, either. It could also provide "something to look at while the next section loads." These days, it's less used in productions as people do more with sculpting via 3d or using shaders... but it's still important: Every flyer for a party, every bigscreen ad, every sticker, and every T-shirt design fits within this category. Every 'handdrawn' compo picture, and in many cases, 'computer aided' - 3d techniques made to assist the 2d artwork - they all fit this category. It's a broad category, but in my opinion far too large to not be mentioned. HOWEVER: Most photography is more about using 3d space to create a scene than using 2d. While 2d can enter into it, the MAJORITY of photography entries would not fit this category. Because this category is so wide already, effects that create a 2d image without use of an artist's direction - such as a 'tunnel effect' mapped to 2d (or whatever the colorful scene is about 2/3 of the way through 'Pulse' on Atari ST by Checksum) should NOT be shoehorned into it. That is an effect best recognized as wicked code effect (or contrasted with this category - showing both are techniques worth exploring.)

"Best soundtrack", as previous awards did, doesn't do justice to sizecoding musicians. In size coding, it really takes much more effort to create good sounds and fit the complex music data in little space, while still making it sound good. Making a good sounding MP3 is not a greater challenge anymore nowadays.

Music disk, or musicdisk, is a term used by the demoscene to describe a collection of songs made on a computer. They are essentially the computer equivalent of an album. A music disk is typically packaged in the form of a program with a custom user interface. Plenty of music disk still released these days. Ok they are not actually disks anymore but still....

The Wild Compo is an integral part of many Demoparties, so it should be represented at the Meteoriks.

Much love is already going out to pixel artists and oldschool graphicians, but 3D modeling has so far been just a subaspect of "best graphics". This category is to explicitly honour the most skillfully crafted 3D model used in any demoscene production - no matter if it's animated or static, high-poly or low-poly, NURBS, SDFs or any other technique.

Loadingbar, rubbercube, starfield, scrolltext, greetings. A lot of demos follow pre-established tropes, and just change the content in the format. This category is for releases that do not conform to established tradition, and present themselves in an original form. Note that this is not limited to demos, but can explicitly be everything from musicdisks to semi-interactive javascript demos, from diskmags to hand-soldered oscilloscope catapults.