Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Boris Vallejo and the pixel art of the demoscene

marincomics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 123 posts

Re: Boris Vallejo and the pixel art of the demoscene

#61

Post by pjc50 »

throwawayk7h wrote: post #27

How did his art become the face of 80s fantasy? of GoldenAxe? of D&D? Anyone recommend other articles about him?

The origin of the whole style seems to have been Frank Frazetta doing illustrations for pulp serials of Conan and John Carter of Mars, then book covers for Conan, then Gygax reads a whole load of pulp novels including Conan and builds a game system to play the adventures of those novels. Vallejo also did Conan art, and it seems his first book cover was for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Barbarian

There is a "Borisography" online if you want to explore his work.

Re: Boris Vallejo and the pixel art of the demoscene

#62

Post by veunes »

ebcode wrote: post #36
kbouck wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've found that limitation in artistic mediums can serve as motivation and even inspiration in art. There's a great 1969 interview with Charles Eames in which he discusses design, and constraints as being a necessary component of design. Some Excerpts: Interviewer: Does the creation of Design admit constraint? Eames: Design depends largely on constraints. Interviewer: What constraints? Eames: The sum of all constra…

For more (great stuff) in this vein, check out Lars von Trier's The Five Obstructions .

A perfect illustration of how limitations can push an artist to think in new ways

Re: Boris Vallejo and the pixel art of the demoscene

#63

Post by pjc50 »

erickhill wrote: post #11

It sincerely pleases me to see the Amiga so rightfully discussed in this article. In the 1980s, Amiga was a magical computer years ahead of so many of its peers (including the PC by miles). Sadly, the video capabilities that made it so special eventually became its Achilles heel.

It might have had a rocky transition, but it was also very badly mismanaged by Commodore.

Re: Boris Vallejo and the pixel art of the demoscene

#64

Post by jkbyc »

You might enjoy an entire talk on using a limited color palette for graphics in early games and how it stimulated creativity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcJ1Jvtef0

"In this GDC 2016 talk, Terrible Toybox's Mark Ferrari discusses and demonstrate some of his techniques for drawing 8 bit game graphics, including his celebrated methods for use of color cycling and pallet shifting to create complex and realistic background animation effects without frame-animation

GDC talks cover a range of developmental topics including game design, programming, audio, visual arts, business management, production, online games, and much more. We post a fresh GDC video every weekday. Subscribe to the channel to stay on top of regular updates, and check out GDC Vault for thousands of more in-depth talks from our archives."

Re: Boris Vallejo and the pixel art of the demoscene

#65

Post by veunes »

black_knight wrote: post #50
voidUpdate wrote: post #48

> "featuring idealistically rendered warriors and princesses, muscular and scantily clad (but not indecent)" Picture a couple of lines later shows two completely naked women. Might be considered "indecent"

I don’t think naked bodies are widely considered indecent in art. That’s just the puritans. I think the line is usually drawn around explicitly sexual acts. (I also don’t believe being indecent is necessarily a bad thing in art. It is sometimes just another effect which can be used.)

Which can be a powerful tool to provoke

Re: Boris Vallejo and the pixel art of the demoscene

#66

Post by veunes »

scotty79 wrote: post #43
shermantanktop wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know these types of images take hold in a 13-year-old boy’s mind and make him a lifelong fan, and for anyone who lived through that particular time and place, I understand the appeal. But for most everyone else, this is some cheesy artwork. I say that as someone who read more than my share of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The article author himself realizes that the image he is copying has no narrative. Many of the images…

All art is cheesy. If you briefly find any of it profound it's only because in some aspect you are briefly a 13 year old boy full of awe and excitement. That's what "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is diplomatically trying to say.

Art can evoke a wide range of reactions, and that's often what makes it so powerful and meaningful

Re: Boris Vallejo and the pixel art of the demoscene

#67

Post by royjacobs »

pavlov wrote: post #59

I used to be a teenage demoscene graphics artist back in the waning days of the Amiga and earliest days of Windows-based demos. Vallejo was definitely a popular source and influence. But demoscene graphics were really more of a technical competition than expressive art. The participants were teenagers — it was pretty obvious that most 16-year-old boys don't paint like Frazetta while also having mastered the skills fo…

The demoscene needs you back, Saffron!

Re: Boris Vallejo and the pixel art of the demoscene

#68

Post by 082349872349872 »

javajosh wrote: post #5

There's something touchingly innocent about Boris Vallejo's work. It is as if he is channeling the fantasies of a 13-year-old boy without shame, guilt or even self-consciousness. It is that rare artwork that is only about itself. It is like a picture that is run through iterative image generation using only the words "hotter" and "heroic" and "mysterious" over and over until an asymptote is reached. It seems pure and…

13-year-old me fantasised about working with big deterministic boxes; these days the boxes are much smaller and a little less deterministic, but I'd hope I'm still channeling that fantasy without shame, guilt or even self-consciousness.

Re: Boris Vallejo and the pixel art of the demoscene

#69

Post by actionfromafar »

pavlov wrote: post #59

I used to be a teenage demoscene graphics artist back in the waning days of the Amiga and earliest days of Windows-based demos. Vallejo was definitely a popular source and influence. But demoscene graphics were really more of a technical competition than expressive art. The participants were teenagers — it was pretty obvious that most 16-year-old boys don't paint like Frazetta while also having mastered the skills fo…

Hey, I remember that sabre tooth picture! I'm having a "meeting a famous person moment" :-D

Re: Boris Vallejo and the pixel art of the demoscene

#70

Post by actionfromafar »

shiroiushi wrote: post #33
erickhill wrote: post #11

It sincerely pleases me to see the Amiga so rightfully discussed in this article. In the 1980s, Amiga was a magical computer years ahead of so many of its peers (including the PC by miles). Sadly, the video capabilities that made it so special eventually became its Achilles heel.

>Sadly, the video capabilities that made it so special eventually became its Achilles heel. How weird: I was browsing YouTube last night (with the SmartTube app) and somehow stumbled on a video that discussed this exact thing, basically making the case that Wolfenstein 3D killed the Amiga and discussing how the unique video capabilities it had which were great for 2D side-scrollers made it so difficult to make a FPS…

It didn't exactly kill it. Wolfenstein being feasible on the PC and not the Amiga, was just a symptom of stagnation. The Amiga (as a promising commercial venture!) had doom (pun intended) written all over it even before Wolfenstein. Commodore ignored the Amiga for years and years.

Edit: I just recalled something - the Amiga recquired either a TV or increasingly rare monitors with PAL/NTSC frequencies. You couldn't just walk in to a computer shop and buy an Amiga and a VGA compatible monitor. It was a flickery and low-resolution monitor or a TV. Not exactly endearing to professionals. I mean, I loved the Amiga maybe too much, it was always the underdog, but it was increasingly also the losing underdog.

Post reply on HN