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MacPaint Art from the Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today

blog.decryption.net.au

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Re: MacPaint Art from the Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today

#101

Post by wenc »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #43

This dithering is somehow so pleasing. It’s like “sand dithering”.

“Dithering” is the key — except this seems to have been done by hand.

When I was a kid, I owned a monochrome display that could only display at CGA resolutions “640x400” 1-bit (and 320x200). Many games and art and didn’t support that showed up garbled.

Then I got hold of Deluxe Paint that would load pictures in color and dither them with an algo called Floyd Steinberg. And the pictures that I saw on my friends VGA monitors suddenly looked beautiful on my monochrome screen.

See examples https://surma.dev/things/ditherpunk/

Games like Monkey Island were also ditherered for monochrome displays and they looked great.

Re: MacPaint Art from the Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today

#102

Post by mock-possum »

gxd wrote: post #3

Awesome! You can also find great art made with Deluxe Paint for the Amiga. The limitations from early computers in resolution and, most importantly, palette, create unique art styles: https://amiga.lychesis.net/applications/DeluxePaint.html

Using colour cycling to achieve animation-like effects is so hot.

Re: MacPaint Art from the Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today

#104

Post by sircastor »

One of the mild tragedies of my youth is that when we switched from the Macintosh SE/30 to the IIci, my MacPaint art didn't make the transition. My dad told me that the files were incompatible. I don't think that's actually true, but I didn't know enough at that age to be able to question it or even explore it. There are many many creations throughout first half of my life that are lost for a lack of storage space at the time.

As an aside: Do your best to capture at least something in a way that will be preserved.

Re: MacPaint Art from the Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today

#105

Post by tombert »

taylorius wrote: post #32

The lack of photorealistic fidelity gives your brain a bit of room to use imagination to fill in the blanks in your internal model. This fosters a certain type of engagement with the content that you don't get with photorealistic images.

I think that's part of the reason that a lot of indie games have converged around pixel art.

Obviously a large part of it is likely due to the fact that a lot of the creators grew up with the NES or SNES and just like that aesthetic, but I think you get a lot of "implied detail" when using pixel art, which is great when you're working on a limited budget.

This isn't to knock it, to be clear. I love good pixel art.

Re: MacPaint Art from the Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today

#106

Post by xattt »

sircastor wrote: post #104

One of the mild tragedies of my youth is that when we switched from the Macintosh SE/30 to the IIci, my MacPaint art didn't make the transition. My dad told me that the files were incompatible. I don't think that's actually true, but I didn't know enough at that age to be able to question it or even explore it. There are many many creations throughout first half of my life that are lost for a lack of storage space at…

Good thing I backed up my precious memories to Jaz cartridges.

Re: MacPaint Art from the Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today

#107

Post by andai »

When I was a kid, I used to think that better tools would automatically make me good at art.

For example, I was making animations with EasyToon, and I only had a mouse, while the really good animators were using graphics tablets.

Clearly, if I bought a tablet, my own animation skills would drastically improve!

I guess I still kinda believe that, when I look at how fancy some of the newer computers are. If only I had one of those, my creativity would be unlimited!

The funny thing is that my fallacy sorta came true: my friend was showing me some insane stuff he rendered on his 5080 with a custom Stable Diffusion...

Re: MacPaint Art from the Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today

#110

Post by justsomehnguy »

dan-robertson wrote: post #30
gxd wrote: post #3

Awesome! You can also find great art made with Deluxe Paint for the Amiga. The limitations from early computers in resolution and, most importantly, palette, create unique art styles: https://amiga.lychesis.net/applications/DeluxePaint.html

These seem worse IMO. Not sure if it’s the medium (eg more saturated colours, the particular website) or if I just like the compositions less.

The usual case of looking at pictures what was made on and for a CRT monitor (or even TV).

You can try Screenitron to imitate something like this.

https://littlebattlebits.xyz/screenitron

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