C64 Pixeling: Hires /Helmposted on: Wed, 02 Aug 2006 12:34:42 +0200
Most graphicians are passionate about the scene only because of nostalgia and not because of what the machine itself stands for aesthetically. Same with the Amiga, where the best pixel technicians occured (Made, Danny, Lazur, so on) there was so much interest because the Amiga was cutting edge. When most of these people switched to Photoshop (as that was cutting edge then), they made -in my opinion- mostly bad or uninspired art. What changed? What changed was the limitation of the machines. They were working on Computer Aesthetic without knowing it. The discipline of hand-pixelling, of fixing your color ramps yourself, not just blur tool, dodge tool and photo tracing. You can pixel a c64 mcol pic today on a PC and still respect and understand that methodology and the aesthetic it feeds. The c64 is no longer cutting edge. But it is magical.
I think the c64 is amazingly potent. Widepixels, the BEST DAMN 16 COLOR PALETTE EVER, restricted modes, character limits. All this stuff should be in the art. Reminding the user that he's not seeing a picture that could be anywhere else than on the c64.
