8 ms·
8-bit GIFs of Japanese life
- fiatjaf 11y agoI don't know why this is so great.
- kactus 11y agoAre there any 8-bit games that use nice color palettes like this?
- carrja99 11y agoWhile the pixel resolution is 8-bit the palettes used remind me more of 16-bit games of the early 90s.
- veli_joza 11y agoThere's no "8-bit pixel resolution". The 8-bit means there's only 2^8 = 256 colors in single image. Depending on console, those 256 colors were either pre-selected or you could define your own colors (even modify them in real time). Those concepts are loosely carried over to modern pixel art. In most cases 256 colors is enough for static pixel art, especially if you avoid gradients (as most artists do).
- CJefferson 11y agoI always thought 8-bit was referring to the graphics produced by machines with 8-bit processors, in particular the NES.
- wk_end 11y agoWhen talking about graphics that's correct, but I think in this kind of context the "8-bit" refers more to (nostalgic, rose-tinted memories of) the visual style of so-called 8-bit consoles, in particular the NES/Famicom, and most consoles that we consider 8-bit didn't allow for anywhere near 256 colours on-screen. Here the 8-bit qualifier refers to the 6502 CPU's word size; the NES in-particular only had a total palette size of 54 colours [1], and additional colour limitations meant that in practice you'd rarely see more than around ~25 at a time. Or take the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, a 16-bit console; its colour capabilities didn't give anything close to 2^16 = 65536 on-screen colours. Instead you got a 9-bit palette with only around 64 on-screen colours [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_console_palettes#Famicom.2FNES https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_console_pal... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_console_palettes#Mega_Drive.2FGenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_console_pal...
- laumars 11y agoGIF only supports an 8-bit colour palette (256 colours per frame - albeit colours can be picked from a 24-bit colour space), so it's definitely an 8-bit colour palette. There's no such thing as an 8-bit pixel resolution. In fact even amongst the 8-bit consoles, their output resolutions differed: NES: 256x240; Master System: 256x192; Game Gear & Gameboy: 160x144; and the Atari 7800 supported a few different resolutions.
- Hortinstein 11y agoI would check out Hyper Light Drifter. Similar palettes and amazing music. It is not out yet, but the trailer on the Kickstarter page is beautiful. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1661802484/hyper-light-drifter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1661802484/hyper-light-...
- moviuro 11y agoI don't know if Risk of Rain[0] counts. Also, the music is fantastic. [0] http://riskofraingame.com/ http://riskofraingame.com/
- norea-armozel 11y agoI bought that game recently. I really should play it some more. It's a very fun game.
- cseelus 11y agoSworcery also has this kind of muted colors. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u4GIsmwnlpg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u4GIsmwnlpg
- bchar 11y agoI think Cave Story might be an inspiration for some of these.
- brobinson 11y agoCave Story and its entire soundtrack were also created by a single Japanese person. Really great game.
- bemmu 11y agoThis is apparently the artist's own page: http://1041uuu.tumblr.com/ http://1041uuu.tumblr.com/
- Raphmedia 11y agoThe color scheme of this website is really smart. I love how everything is dark except for the GIFs. It gives the "cinema" feel.
- creamyhorror 11y agoA great selection of his older art on Rocketnews24 (also found on the next page on his Tumblr page): http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/12/03/all-your-ordinary-moments-through-a-sweet-retro-gaming-lens%E3%80%90animated-gifs%E3%80%91/ http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/12/03/all-your-ordinary-mome... I submitted this guy's artwork some months ago but it didn't get to the frontpage. Finally getting the attention he deserves.
- Kenji 11y agoThe magic of pixel art like that is that they define a picture but leave the details up to your imagination. Because of that, you subconsciously interpolate in a way that appeals to you, which makes it that much more perfect than high resolution imagery. Well, that's my opinion at least.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- agos 11y agoit can be argued that impressionism did gather quite some attention, though.
- cousin_it 11y agoYeah, that's a popular theory. I'm not sure if it's a complete explanation, though. Pixel art (and other art as well) is often stylized, which means it's trying to present a more appealing version of reality. The viewing angles are carefully chosen, the colors and lights are more vibrant, the shapes of everyday objects are more varied and graceful, the people are better looking, etc. The end result is that you're looking at a rough description of something that you want but don't have. You could achieve the same effect with a high resolution image, but then you need to make all the little details beautiful as well, which takes much more work. There are certainly high resolution paintings that manage to be as haunting and evocative as the best pixel art, for example Shan Qiao's "Story of the city" (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/story-of-the-city https://www.artstation.com/artwork/story-of-the-city), Nivanh Chantara's "Babiru 02" (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/babiru-02 https://www.artstation.com/artwork/babiru-02), or pretty much anything on http://reddit.com/r/backgroundart http://reddit.com/r/backgroundart.
- nogridbag 11y ago>> You could achieve the same effect with a high resolution image The first animated GIF from the article is based off of this higher resolution image: http://kusakabeworks.net/gallery/the-house-with-signs-of-marufuku/ http://kusakabeworks.net/gallery/the-house-with-signs-of-mar... ...so it would be interesting to see which people find more appealing.
- ameesdotme 11y agoYep. We used up its bandwidth.
- larrys 11y agoHosted at Bluehost.com. Like other hosts (charging only I see now "$3.95/month") they promise you "unlimited bandwidth". The TOS then defines "unlimited" in a way that let's them do things like this. Meanwhile the more honest webhost is at a disadvantage in trying to compete with this scheme.
- dspillett 11y agoShared hosting is a mugs game these days and has been for a long time, both for the hosts and the users. The only way to compete on any scale other than "hosting stuff for family & friends or your own clients" is to be deliberately deceptive in this way. Another common trick is "unlimited databases of any size (but we'll limit I/O so much that it'll never be practical to store more than some tens of Mb)". I used to run a small host many years ago. I quickly got out of the business. There are three classes of people still using shared hosting: 1. Those who know the game but to whom it really doesn't matter: they have little content and/or it is of such niche interest that they are not going to be anywhere near the limits associated with "unlimited". They are aware of the game and using a shared host is either habit or just the quickest way to put the files.scripts out there. They have little or no budget - as soon as they need to pay anything they'll switch to a VPS (but can't be bothered running one right now as they don't need to immediately). 2. Those who don't know any better and who have bought into the marketing of the other hosts. They will expect you to provide the same (or more) for the same (or less) that the other hosts are promising and when you tell them that you can't they will be disappointed, sometimes incredulous, even occasionally offended (as if you telling them it is not possible to make money that way is insulting, i.e. telling them their expectations are wrong is tantamount to telling them they are stupid). 3. Those who know the game full well are and playing it to the max. They've already been pushed off several hosts for using too much of their "unlimited" resources and fully expect to get pushed off yours at some point too (though they'll still kick up an almighty fuss when it does actually happen). Class 1 won't spend any money, class 2 and 3 will want to pay very little and will eventually try to kill your business via bad reviews when you let them go or otherwise don't give them what they demand.
- kubiiii 11y agoVery beautiful pieces of art. *Hacking a digital picture frame to make it daily cycling through them is now #9 on your todowhenyouhaveafewhourslist
- tempodox 11y agoAre there other GIFs than 8-bit?
- Raphmedia 11y agoIf your question is "Can GIFs not be 8-bit", the answer is yes. You can use frames from a movie or output a flash vector animation into as jif.
- creshal 11y agoGIF has 256-colour palettes, but they're not restricted to 8-bit colour depth, and you can have a dedicated palette per tile, so you can, theoretically, use full 24-bit colour depth. If you don't mind the resulting image file being bigger than a BMP.
- alanh 11y agoHuh — is the ability to use a separate palette per tile often done in practice? I have used quite a few gif creation tools over the years, and they all seemed to support only a fixed palette...
- creshal 11y agoNo, because it's inefficient as hell (I wasn't joking when I said "less efficient than uncompressed bitmaps", it really is), and not all viewers support it.
- diego_moita 11y agoIt feels like if Edward Hopper was Japanese and born today this is what he'd do. Like Hopper paintings[1][2], it captures a daily life where lonely people are just part of a landscape, nothing more. [1] http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/street/ http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/street/ [2] http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/interior/ http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/interior/
- nlawalker 11y agoAbsolutely. I think that these kinds of scenes and the feelings they evoke are actually the core component of "8-bit" art. Portraits, still life, most bare landscapes, and many other subjects don't really gain anything from the pixellation effect and perspective that 8-bit art uses. Also (anecdote incoming), I could show these to my wife and she'd just say they're "cute." They won't evoke the same feeling in her that they do in me, and I'm pretty sure there's exactly one reason - I grew up through the 80s and 90s playing video games, and she didn't. Ask anyone who did they same I'd bet that they'd all immediately say that these look like locations in a JRPG, all of which are generally designed to evoke the feeling that there is real, recognizable life happening in the locations that mostly serve as bus stops for your character's momentous story. That life is generally calm, to offset the stress and momentum of your quest, and the contentment and happiness of it is what makes the world worth saving. It's also got a comfortable routine: the old lady feeding the birds in her yard is always there; the train always comes every 45 seconds; the dog is always chasing the cat; the pretty waitress is always serving coffee. The environment doesn't heave, it gently breathes, and the animation loops forever and ever - the simple machinery of the background never breaks down, unless of course it's always broken, in which case the brokenness is a fixture of the local environment that one really minds. Also, most of these particular scenes are desaturated and "cold", even rainy or snowy. The feeling of sitting in your warm house looking out the window at the snow or the pouring rain is easy to connect to.
- liveoneggs 11y agoHow do I play this game? "pick up dog" isn't working.
- kdamken 11y agoI love these, they have such a comfy feel to them.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- noonespecial 11y agoReminds me of "Another World" so much I had a flashback of the feel of my old Slik Stik. Amiga games that should have been?
- partisan 11y agoUnrelated question: Some of the pictures show people on their digital devices, at work or otherwise. Has the quality of customer service dropped with the ubiquity of smart phones? I believe it has here in the US, but I think that there is a general culture shift driving the drop in quality as well and that the phones are just enabling the problem.
- defen 11y agoI've never even been to Japan and these gifs make me feel nostalgic...I guess for childhood games that used this art style? Very nice.
- beebs93 11y agoWow - way too many feels. I lived in Japan for ~3 years and this brought back so many awesome memories. I second the notion that keeping it in pixel art form invokes a childhood-like nostalgia. If someone made a series showing children's progression through the various computer + gaming consoles over the last 30 years I'd probably lose it.
- creamyhorror 11y agoYou'd probably enjoy this documentary about the evolution of videogame music in Japan over the last 3 decades (and how it's influenced a bunch of contemporary musicians): http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/19/7244859/rbma-diggin-in-the-carts http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/19/7244859/rbma-diggin-in-th... Stuff like Pac-Man, Sonic, Street Fighter, & Streets of Rage really is a nostalgia bomb.
- beebs93 11y agoAwesome - thanks for the link!
- solocshaw 11y agoI know I've seen this before. Maybe /r/cinemagraphs.