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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

#171

Post by Cthulhu_ »

akie wrote: post #142
manoDev wrote: post #96

These seem to be made by artists trained on traditional drawing. All drawings show knowledge of cross-hatching or pointillism, correct use of values, perspective, and so on. That’s why it looks great today, these qualities are independent of how advanced the digital medium of the time was.

Look at this one for example - my mind is blown: https://blog.decryption.net.au/images/macpaint/lesson3d.png How do you even do that? Zoomed out it looks like a nearly photorealistic street scene, zoomed in I just see seemingly meaningless patterns of black and white. Magic. Unbelievable.

There's a few - including that one - that look like they're photos pulled through a transformation code. I'm probably wrong though - dithering seems to be incredibly difficult to get right, see e.g. https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg136374...

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

#172

Post by jasonfarnon »

akie wrote: post #142
manoDev wrote: post #96

These seem to be made by artists trained on traditional drawing. All drawings show knowledge of cross-hatching or pointillism, correct use of values, perspective, and so on. That’s why it looks great today, these qualities are independent of how advanced the digital medium of the time was.

Look at this one for example - my mind is blown: https://blog.decryption.net.au/images/macpaint/lesson3d.png How do you even do that? Zoomed out it looks like a nearly photorealistic street scene, zoomed in I just see seemingly meaningless patterns of black and white. Magic. Unbelievable.

This image in particular made me wonder if there was some type of tracing aid involved. Maybe the dutch-looking street reminded me of Vermeer's method. I wonder what input device they were using? I was using a pretty nice input surface for doing CAD work sometime around 1990-93 on a PC, and we had occasion to lay transparencies on top and trace on them. I don't know if Macs 5 years before that had this type of peripheral. And anyway, there were certainly some special artists I knew of back then who could do this with a mouse and enough time.

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

#173

Post by Keyframe »

lukan wrote: post #160
Keyframe wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your point. Truth is on both ends though. There truly are games which peaked in their visual style and even with modern power at their disposal nothing could be added that would make them look better. The medium they used, some of them, they used it to its maximum potential. I'd take pixel art's swan song game of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Modern rendition of it with let's say more detailed graphics, e…

I get the aesthetics of pixel art games. And I would likely not enjoy modern remakes of them. My point above was just, that I do admire those arts as great of their time - but looking at them today like in the picture above, I simply don't like the pixel style as an art style on its own.

There's one, soon to be released, which is highly anticipated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkMFYMG3QLw

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

#174

Post by egypturnash »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #172
akie wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at this one for example - my mind is blown: https://blog.decryption.net.au/images/macpaint/lesson3d.png How do you even do that? Zoomed out it looks like a nearly photorealistic street scene, zoomed in I just see seemingly meaningless patterns of black and white. Magic. Unbelievable.

This image in particular made me wonder if there was some type of tracing aid involved. Maybe the dutch-looking street reminded me of Vermeer's method. I wonder what input device they were using? I was using a pretty nice input surface for doing CAD work sometime around 1990-93 on a PC, and we had occasion to lay transparencies on top and trace on them. I don't know if Macs 5 years before that had this type of periph…

They could have been cleaning up a scan of a photo, ThunderScan came out real early in the Mac's life.

Scanned drawing + painting over it with dither patterns is an option too.

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

#175

Post by wibbily »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #114
marhee wrote: post #76

If you enjoy this art-style, definitely check out the game Return to the Obra Dinn.

There’s a ditherpunk artist in Moscow named Uno Morales that I’m quite fond of: https://unomoralez.com/

I was just about to post the same link! Found his site today by pure happenstance.

Don't know this guy's technique, but the idea that people were drawing such elaborate pictures on tiny screens - with mice! not even tablets - boggles me. Every pixel a deliberate act.

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

#176

Post by [deleted] »

timoth3y wrote: post #52
seabombs wrote: post #21

There's a term I read about a long time ago, I think it was "aesthetic completeness" or something like that. It was used in the context of video games whose art direction was fully realized in the game, i.e. increases in graphics hardware or capabilities wouldn't add anything to the game in an artistic sense. The original Homeworld games were held up as examples. Anyway, this reminded me of that. Making these picture…

The same holds true for everything from cave paintings to Roman frescos. It's part of human expression. The tools of that expression shape it. For example, Bach's music was shaped by the fact that the harpsichord had no sustain. The piano changed that, but "upscaling" Bach's work to take advantage of this new technology would destroy them. You use the new technology to play them as they were written for the old. The…

[deleted]

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

#180

Post by promiseofbeans »

donkeybeer wrote: post #24
promiseofbeans wrote: post #19

The 2nd artwork ('A Door Somewhere " - Bert Monrov) had me really confused for a moment. When I scrolled down to it, there was a sort of flickering effect, like as if it were a gif, with a flickering light adding ambience to the scene. But no, it's just how that sort of black & white shading looks when you scroll past it - amazing effect!

What monitor do you have?

This was on an OLED Samsung phone, screen running at 120Hz
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