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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

#61

Post by jameshart »

zozbot234 wrote: post #33
dan-robertson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They have more color but way less resolution, thus less detail. Pretty much what you would expect to see, given that the original Mac and Amiga came out around the same time.

Both Motorola 68000 machines, typically 512K-1024K of RAM. So similar underlying constraints, under which they made very different choices for how to prioritize graphics.

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

#62

Post by fwipsy »

lukan wrote: post #26
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…

Hm, are you sure that there is not some nostalgia at play here? To me they look horribly pixelated and at least some would improve aesthetically a lot for me with a higher resolution.

Of course there's a subjective element, but I was born about a decade after these were created and I find them to be beautiful. I love the mural with the tree, it's amazing how it creates a sense of openness that wants me to go outside, even with such a limited palette.

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

#65

Post by leoc »

layer8 wrote: post #63

These really need to be viewed with a CRT renderer IMO, as well as the Amiga art mentioned in this thread. The hard square pixels on the website aren’t quite representative of what these looked like on a contemporary monitor.

Up to a point, but the early Macintosh displays were quite crisp and clinical—certainly compared to something like a consumer NTSC or PAL CRT TV—as befitted a platform which was very focussed on WYSIWYG paper-document editing.

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

#66

Post by xgkickt »

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…

Vib Ribbon is one example I can think of that also exhibits that property.

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

#68

Post by anthk »

lukan wrote: post #26
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…

Hm, are you sure that there is not some nostalgia at play here? To me they look horribly pixelated and at least some would improve aesthetically a lot for me with a higher resolution.

You have no idea on how charming these games look.

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

#69

Post by vardump »

zozbot234 wrote: post #33
dan-robertson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They have more color but way less resolution, thus less detail. Pretty much what you would expect to see, given that the original Mac and Amiga came out around the same time.

Weird there were no hires images. Amiga's horizontal hires resolution was >720 pixels.

Of course, in order to get square pixels, you needed to enable interlace as well.

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

#70

Post by dahart »

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…

Switched on Bach is one of my favorite albums of all time.
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