[HN Gopher] Boris Vallejo and the pixel art of the demoscene
___________________________________________________________________
Boris Vallejo and the pixel art of the demoscene
Author : blakespot
Score : 463 points
Date : 2024-09-30 23:31 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (marincomics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (marincomics.com)
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Fair warning that some of the art is NSFW.
| shit_game wrote:
| I was about to say that it felt very Gorean, but then I
| realized _duh_ there's a reason why.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| 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 lack much in the
| way of composition. The bodies are nicely rendered as oiled-up
| perfected sex objects, but that's about it.
| thfuran wrote:
| And that's the argument you'd go with at work?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I'm not making any commentary on the art thereof.
|
| This is a forum hosted by venture capitalist investors and
| frequented primarily by IT professionals ("hackers"),
| unwittingly opening some NSFW material probably won't fly
| well in that kind of environment.
| Symbiote wrote:
| If this counts as NSFW, then browse with images enabled.
|
| The National Gallery (of the UK) has this page one click
| from the homepage, "Our most famous paintings"
|
| https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/must-sees
| Symbiote wrote:
| ^ I missed the negation. I meant to write "If this counts
| as NSFW, browse with images disabled".
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| This does in fact count as NSFW in every workplace I've
| ever been in. Perhaps stop trying to argue with the
| poster who was merely trying to give people a friendly
| warning just so they know they might get in trouble if
| someone sees them looking at this art at work.
|
| Whether the standards of workplaces should allow artistic
| nudity is _completely_ beside the point. Neither you, nor
| I, nor Dalewyn control such things. All we can do is work
| around them.
| surfingdino wrote:
| So, you're telling us that NSFW material belongs in Kenya
| and other places curating content?
| https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/ How
| hypocritical.
| ogurechny wrote:
| I can actually imagine "venture capitalist investors"
| participating in some oiled spanking ritual, Vallejo style,
| because someone opened an "NSFW" link, and "corporate
| culture" dictates that kind of punishment must be
| performed.
|
| Normal people, not so much.
| scotty79 wrote:
| 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.
| veunes wrote:
| Art can evoke a wide range of reactions, and that's often
| what makes it so powerful and meaningful
| scotty79 wrote:
| Appreciating it requires a certain state of mind. A state
| of mind of a 13 year old boy, in one way or another,
| looking at Boris Valleyo painting.
| armitron wrote:
| Compare Vallejo to Frank Frazetta and it's immediately
| obvious why the latter is considered a master of fantastic
| art while the former is drifting towards obscurity.
|
| Frazetta's art is full of tension [1] and energy [2] whilst
| Vallejo is simply drawing his circle of bodybuilders in
| various poses. The environments he paints have absolutely no
| effect on his posed subjects and the end-result is
| disconnected and comes across as "fake" in its intended
| setting as it evokes memories of bodybuilding gyms.
|
| [1] https://www.frazettagirls.com/cdn/shop/products/frazettag
| irl...
|
| [2] https://frank-frazetta.pixels.com/featured/the-destroyer-
| fra...
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| You might as well be comparing Slayer and Cannibal Corpse.
| Both styles have their place and they can be enjoyed in
| their own right.
|
| I prefer Frazetta too, but Vallejo is rightly recognised as
| one of the greats. He does his own thing. Not everyone can,
| or should try to, be Frazetta. That'd be pretty boring.
|
| Or, like I once told a friend: you gotta stop comparing
| everyone to Bugs (Bunny).
| rawgabbit wrote:
| It is also interesting that when I ask ChatGPT to create an
| image inspired by Vallejo or Frank Frazetta, I get hit by
| content policy violation. I don't see anything indecent about
| heroic fantasy. Oh well c'est la vie.
| eru wrote:
| ChatGPT also refuses to make pictures of yoghurt. It's
| refined by a special flavour of prudes.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| That's what happens when you let Dark Helmet dictate the
| outputs.
|
| "Yogurt! Yogurt! I hate Yogurt! Even with Strawberries."
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| It's a copyright thing not the nudity.
| javajosh wrote:
| 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 innocence in its singular
| interest, its lack of subtext, if not in its sexual content.
| skeptrune wrote:
| Never even occurred to me that this art style would be
| something an adult should be ashamed of, but makes complete
| sense now that I thought about it. Reminds me of recent space
| marines 2 drama.
| Sander_Marechal wrote:
| I'm out-of-the-loop, what Space Marines 2 drama?
| 127 wrote:
| Yes, it's fantasy. Well spotted.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| 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.
| userbinator wrote:
| I don't think Vallejo's art was necessarily limited to the
| demoscene; in the late 70s/80s that style was very common on
| video game cover art.
|
| Related amusing article:
| https://www.globalnerdy.com/2007/09/14/reimagining-programmi...
| pvg wrote:
| That's not really a claim of the article, right about from the
| first sentence.
| beeflet wrote:
| Oh hell yes, I really like the covers in that article you
| linked. It's just amusing to me that "A buff dude and a hot
| chick fighting dinosaurs on a volcano on mars" somehow is
| analogous to "Porting COBOL to Excel in TPS reports". The "Pair
| Programming" one at the end is good, because there is some sort
| of vague connection you could make with the image. It's like
| saying "by doing how to do this boring and specific thing
| you're KINDA JUST LIKE THE GUY ON THE COVER TOO SO YOU SHOULD
| TOTALLY BUY THIS BOOK". They say sex sells, but what does it
| sell? This is like an experiment in the most unsexy thing that
| sex could sell.
|
| The programming textbooks today just seem a bit too 'quirky' by
| having a single animal or something on the front cover that
| this is the extreme version of.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| And TTRPGs
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I think Racunari magazine had a couple of non-photo covers in
| that style, but maybe being a Galaksija spin-off gave them the
| connection to a F/SF artist?
| shit_game wrote:
| "I had learned to appreciate the color limitations during the
| old-school graphics competition at Evoke, where we could only use
| a predefined color palette. The first time I submitted an entry
| in 2022, I hated it. The second time, in 2023, I came to accept
| the limited color palette as a problem to solve. And by 2024, I
| actually started to enjoy the challenge."
|
| I've found that limitation in artistic mediums can serve as
| motivation and even inspiration in art. I primarily work with
| glitch art; the definition is finicky, and creating it without
| bleeding into the more generic genre of New Aesthetic can be
| difficult because of how volatile and uncooperative glitches are.
| A hard limitation on a number of colors in a palette seems
| simultaneously incredibly frustrating and liberatingly-simple.
| While it doesn't inherently affect the medium of the work (pixel
| art), it poses limitations that challenge it (fidelity in detail
| being most notable). These limitations also pose some ceiling on
| the work that can be done - a limited color depth makes an
| artists focus much more on effective detail than perfect detail,
| which I think adds character to an art piece.
|
| Very interesting article.
| kbouck wrote:
| _> 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 constraints. Here is one of the few
| effective keys to the design problem: the ability of the
| designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible,
| his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these
| constraints. The constraints of price, size, strength, balance,
| time and so forth. Each problem has its own peculiar list.
|
| Interviewer: Does Design obey laws?
|
| Eames: Aren't constraints enough?
| ebcode wrote:
| For more (great stuff) in this vein, check out Lars von
| Trier's _The Five Obstructions_.
| veunes wrote:
| A perfect illustration of how limitations can push an
| artist to think in new ways
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >limitation in artistic mediums can serve as motivation and
| even inspiration
|
| Also known as: The quality of software is inversely
| proportional to the power of hardware.
| veunes wrote:
| It's like discovering beauty in imperfection
| myself248 wrote:
| If that's glitch art the way I understand glitch art, then it's
| only volatile and uncooperative because its practitioners want
| it to be. The majority of people I've seen glitching circuits
| have no understanding of what they're doing, actively resist
| gaining any, and then act frustrated when the humidity changes
| and the glitch doesn't work anymore, or the chip dies after a
| few more tries.
|
| If you want a glitch to ground out a sync pulse that travels
| between chips in a Speak N Spell, but do so _without_
| overstressing the chips and eventually destroying them, there
| are absolutely ways to do that. Buffers and diodes are not
| rocket science, and once the signals have been found,
| manipulating them can be made repeatable, safe, and durable.
|
| If you want a glitch to happen somewhere between the 4th and
| 40th scanline of a video frame and always during the horizontal
| blanking interval, it's absolutely possible to construct a
| trigger circuit that will do precisely that, every time,
| perhaps still with a configurable degree of randomness but
| never in a way that will smoke the chips.
|
| Which is to say, suffer for your art only if the suffering is
| the point. Which I suspect may actually be the case.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I met him, back in the 1980s, when I was still doing paintings,
| myself[0]. I was surprised at how short he was.
|
| BTW: He was a bodybuilder, and was the model for many of his
| paintings. His wife also featured in many.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40917886
| vibbix wrote:
| Thank you for sharing, the paintings are pretty awesome
| Nevermark wrote:
| Really great!
|
| While being obviously simpler than old school sci-fi/fantasy
| paperback covers, the scene arrangement and energy is spot on.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I love "Fugitive" :-D
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That was one of my earlier ones.
|
| If you look at the ring on the lizard-finger, you'll see "CDM
| 84."
| cubefox wrote:
| I like the high contrast in "Dragon Rider".
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That was partly the photographer's fault.
|
| The pictures started as 8X10s, taken with a Hasselblad, but
| the guy that did it (for free, so I didn't complain) was a
| portrait photographer.
|
| Also, many of the subtle color differences did not come
| through (like thalo blue vs. thalo green, in _Sentinels_ ).
|
| Nowadays, a digital camera could do a lot better.
| erickhill wrote:
| 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.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >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 shooter work well on it, because
| apparently the Amiga didn't have direct framebuffer access the
| way PCs did with VGA mode 0x13.
| winternewt wrote:
| It certainly has direct framebuffer access. But the bitplane
| representation where the bits of each pixel's value are
| spread out across multiple bytes can make certain kinds of
| updates very time consuming.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| Yeah, that's what the video was discussing. Sorry, I got
| the terminology wrong.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| 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.
| predictsoft wrote:
| I used a VGA monitor with my Amiga 1200 (with an adapter).
| It was not flickery at all and was full resolution.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Yes, I know. I had that setup myself. :)
|
| I posit though, that by the time Amiga 1200 was out,
| Amiga as a commercial venture was already dead in the
| water. The 1200 was a last ditch effort. Still loved it,
| of course.
| vintermann wrote:
| I remember that there was some sort of shareware with a
| 40 day trial that my brother ran, but it stayed at 40
| days. They had removed the clock as a cost saving measure
| on the A1200.
|
| Yup, pretty desperate.
| badpun wrote:
| A1200 and A4000 could be hooked into a VGA monitor for the
| flickerless experience. The caveat was that the flicker-
| free display modes were added on top of old ones, which
| meant that, while you could run Workbench and most
| applications on the VGA monitor, all games ran in the
| obsolete PAL modes your VGA display couldn't handle. This
| created a market for niche dual-mode displays, which solved
| the problem, but were a bit pricey.
| pjc50 wrote:
| It might have had a rocky transition, but it was also very
| badly mismanaged by Commodore.
| amiga386 wrote:
| The article links to the "no copy?" site:
| http://www.kameli.net/nocopy/ which was highly influential in its
| own time...
|
| Demos are ultimately about impressing, also copying without being
| seen as copying - if you literally copy/paste other people's
| stuff, that makes you "lame", but if you quote/reference it, if
| you one-up it - if your rivals put out a demo with 200 bobs, you
| put out one with 240 bobs - then you look cool and people look up
| to you.
|
| I don't think many people would be too concerned that Amiga
| musicians sampled presets of existing synths before putting those
| sounds to use in an original composition that fits the Amiga's
| hardware limits. And they would think it _amazing_ if you could
| cover a well-known tune with any kind of fidelity in those tight
| memory limits.
|
| I don't think many people are upset if coders reverse-engineer
| their rivals and they all share among the many hardware tricks
| you can do - because there's always someone looking to go one
| step further and is experimenting to find yet another new trick.
|
| And finally, graphics artists weren't exactly penalised for re-
| drawing a Boris Vallejo by hand - it was difficult to do, and
| "the scene" liked those sorts of pictures (i.e. naked chicks and
| fantasy art).
|
| Effectively there was not just "this is my original art and it's
| on message", but also "I _can_ copy this well-known art, because
| i 'm technically capable enough to do it, and you're not". And
| like the generative AI is doing today, or the camera did to
| paintings... back in the 1990s, scanners and photo editing
| software lowered the bar so much that even talentless fools could
| just scan in an image, rather than have the technical skills to
| reproduce it by hand, taking away what was otherwise a good
| channel for showing you had talent and others didn't.
| eru wrote:
| Yes. Of course, there's plenty of skill to be developed in
| photographing, too.
|
| And nowadays there's still plenty of skill left in coercing our
| limited AI generation tools to produce passable pictures, yet
| alone great ones. (But the field is evolving so far, that the
| achievements that still require skill constantly evolve, and
| the skills required also still shift.)
| bitwize wrote:
| Boris and Julie are husband and wife, and both were bodybuilders,
| which gave them plenty of ideas for their paintings of male and
| female warriors with heroic physiques.
|
| Fascinating couple. And rightly influential over fantasy art in
| general.
|
| Back in the day I used Borland Resource Workshop to pixel in an
| image of Rafiki holding baby Simba over his head, using the Lion
| King VHS cover as a reference. I can totally see where a
| demoscene graphician, more talented than I, would do the same
| with a Vallejo painting.
| throwawayk7h wrote:
| How did his art become the face of 80s fantasy? of GoldenAxe? of
| D&D?
|
| Anyone recommend other articles about him?
| esafak wrote:
| I never thought I'd ever have the occasion to mention this, but
| Golden Axe's artwork is due to Dermot Power:
| https://www.mobygames.com/game/199/golden-axe/promo/group-28...
|
| I wonder if he was influenced by Vallejo.
|
| https://dermotpower.com/
| cubefox wrote:
| Well, the Golden Axe II cover was actually by Vallejo. The
| article links to his known game covers:
| https://vgdensetsu.net/2_BorisVallejo.html
| surfingdino wrote:
| The 80s had a different approach to nudity and body shapes. It
| fit in with the zeitgeist.
| LanceH wrote:
| The 70's certainly did. The 80's is when everything started
| to get covered up.
|
| As to why? I think you'll find Sir Mix-a-lot has some answers
| for you.
| strix_varius wrote:
| I was born in the mid 80s so I don't get this reference -
| what do you mean?
|
| (I was struck by how erotic the works in the original
| article were. They would nearly all be censored out of any
| big name AI today... Which seems kind of a pity)
| pjc50 wrote:
| 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.
| Keyframe wrote:
| Influence of Vallejo and Julie Bell cannot be underestimated on
| fantasy illustration. Personally, when I studied anatomy for
| animation work I did back when I was still doing he was a big
| part of it, even though his work did incline more towards
| bodybuilding kind of types. Stylistically though, big influence
| on fantasy. Sorayama was mentioned as well. Again, personally it
| was: Burne Hogarth, Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell,
| Luis Royo, Sorayama. Even they're not of same period, I group
| them together as major influence and study sources.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Brothers Hildebrandt, Jean Giraud, Richard Corben....
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| But not Darrel K. Sweet[0] (one of the more published
| artists). His people looked like bobbleheads. He wasn't
| really so good at getting the human form right.
|
| But he was painfully detailed, and probably pretty reliable,
| so he got a lot of work.
|
| My fave for the human form, was Frank Frazetta[1]. He
| actually had a fairly classical bent to his work, and was
| probably an inspiration for Vallejo.
|
| Vallejo's people are perfect and beautiful, but always look
| like they are posing. Frazetta's people are constantly in
| motion.
|
| Old mulletheads will probably remember the cover of the first
| Molly Hatchet album[2].
|
| I also enjoyed Stephen Hickman[3].
|
| But probably, my absolute best inspiration was Roger Dean[4].
| His figures weren't always that great, but his imagination
| was amazing.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_K._Sweet
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Frazetta
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Hatchet_(album)#/medi
| a/F...
|
| [3] https://ixgallery.com/artists/stephenhickman/
|
| [4] https://www.rogerdean.com
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I had forgotten about Sweet -- yeah he was everywhere with
| his awkward looking artwork. I kind of loathe his color
| palette. (I loathe Vallejo's as well though.)
| Keyframe wrote:
| I always felt Vallejo's figures pumped up for their figures
| vs Frazetta's worked for theirs.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's a really good way of putting it.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _when I studied anatomy ... group them together as major
| influence and study sources_
|
| For a modern (born late 70s) counterpart with deeply classical
| influences, consider adding Roberto Ferri to your study
| sources:
|
| https://www.robertoferri.net/gallery/
|
| Studies: https://www.robertoferri.net/gallery-studi/
|
| Drawings: https://www.robertoferri.net/gallery-disegni/
|
| Paintings: https://www.robertoferri.net/gallery-solodipinti/
| Animats wrote:
| For a more modern approach, try using "I Can't Believe It's Not
| Photography" with a prompt including "in the style of Boris
| Vallejo".
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| Based Mr. Nagle dialing in the bants.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| > "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"
| black_knight wrote:
| 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.)
| veunes wrote:
| Which can be a powerful tool to provoke
| lcrz wrote:
| This comment exemplifies the puritanical view that nakedness is
| somehow bad or impure.
|
| Notice that the men in the paintings of Vallejo are also almost
| completely naked, hacking away at monsters with large weapons.
| Yet you did not point to them and say they were indecent.
|
| I really hope that the rest of the world doesn't take over the
| sex/violence sensitivities as are prevalent in the US.
| throwawayk7h wrote:
| Ok but quite a lot of these naked women aren't merely
| unclothed, they're definitely suggestively and even
| erotically drawn.
| black_knight wrote:
| Yes? This is fantasy art, not an anatomy book.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Modesty is a virtue shared by many cultures throughout the
| world. It is not exclusive to the US or Puritans. And the US
| is not a cultural monolith. Millions of people in the US do
| not hold modesty as a virtue.
| black_knight wrote:
| It is true that modesty is not an exclusively US puritan
| ideal, but the US has a disproportionately strong cultural
| influence on other societies.
|
| In my neck of the woods we are much more relaxed about
| nakedness, and find the scandals in the US around this
| topic amusing. But for instance the lengths at which for
| instance facebook goes to to avoid nipples and penises
| feels more like an overstep in cultural freedom.
| ogurechny wrote:
| Facepook is just another textbook example of bureaucracy
| breaking loose. Companies that give them money (for ads)
| declare that "content" (i. e. everything that exists in
| this world) can be "SFW" and "NSFW", and they only want
| the former. Ergo, women don't have breasts. End of story.
| All the excuses and exceptions corporate human robots
| invent afterwards are just irrelevant icing on the cake.
|
| It would be fine to just ignore that stupidity, but
| people who spend time in that hellish environment adapt
| to it, and actually start to believe that there is some
| deep meaning to the rituals they have to make, and even
| invent their own explanations.
| black_knight wrote:
| Is the misspelling of FB an intentional Russian joke? I
| haven't heard that one before, but I can probably not
| unhear it the next time I hear a Russian speaker say that
| word.
| ogurechny wrote:
| Sorry, that line was glued to my screen awaiting
| transmission, one letter fell down, then some illiterate
| peasant fixed it.
| int_19h wrote:
| "Modesty" is culturally defined in the first place. What
| you would consider "modest" today often would be extremely
| immodest a century ago. And, conversely, some societies
| don't consider nudity to be immodest in and of itself.
| pksebben wrote:
| I wish we'd drop it ourselves. It's excruciating living
| amongst people who will pick up torches and pitchforks when
| anyone under 18 is remotely exposed to sexual content, but
| shrug and look stupid when that same cohort goes on a
| shooting spree.
| ogurechny wrote:
| Attributing it all to puritans is misleading and even
| anachronistic. A direct link would be possible at the time
| when the phrase "puritanism sells" made sense, but a number
| of generations have alreafy been born into the "sex sells"
| world.
|
| So there's a country with a giant porn industry, but at the
| same time newspapers are full of stories about "sexual
| predators" hiding under every bush, and someone's naked
| breast is considered worthy of being turned into a "national
| scandal". Intuition hints that one is intertwined with
| another.
|
| When people from elsewhere hear about gender neutral
| bathhouse (formerly "common village/family bathhouse", or
| simply "a river"), they picture themselves asking a granny
| how's steam in the sauna. In certain countries, they
| immediately think of some kind of orgy instead (based on
| media descriptions and fantasies). And certain people of
| limited wit even try to reenact them in reality, with
| pathetic results.
|
| Specific social convention makes people gasp, roll their
| eyes, and hide the children when they see someone without
| clothes, not their strict moral principles. It is highly
| unlikely that it will disappear by itself. On the contrary,
| there are forces that benefit from it. The aforementioned
| porn industry have successfully used commoners' fears to ban
| non-corporate-produced wanking materials from the biggest
| websites. Not even nature is allowed to compete with
| exclusive providers of images of sexual nature to the
| consumers.
| LanceH wrote:
| Not just puritans, but the other extreme as well will say it
| is objectification.
| Etheryte wrote:
| This is a very big Americanism that's not common elsewhere, if
| you look at classical art anywhere, you'll see naked bodies
| galore.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| The middle east has a lot of puritans, too.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| They are riding dragons, not doing anything indecent.
| veunes wrote:
| Really interesting article. Interesting to know how one artist's
| vision can ripple through different artistic mediums
| pavlov wrote:
| 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 for rendering
| those visions in 32 colors.
|
| There was great appreciation for technical factors like palette
| tricks, elegant hand-made dithering, and how to do antialiasing
| without a soft look. It was pretty easy to tell if an image was
| actually hand-pixeled vs. an overpainted scan. On a 320*240
| image, every detail is conspicuous. You quickly develop an eye
| for the hand-made detail.
|
| I took a quick look at my old hand-pixelled images to see if
| there's a Vallejo. I never did the straight-up fantasy pictures,
| but I think the large sabretooth in this drawing must be from a
| fantasy painting:
|
| https://anioni.com/pauli/site1999/work/katka.html
|
| I made this at age 16 in Deluxe Paint IIe on the PC, so it's got
| the full 256-color palette. The somewhat random color explosions
| on the sabretooth definitely show both palette excitement and
| Vallejo influence.
|
| The two cats are clearly from different sources. I didn't use
| scans, just worked the outlines from the sources (maybe with the
| help of tracing paper or something). It took around 40-50 hours
| to hand-pixel an image like this. In the bottom-left corner I've
| added the date and time when it was completed, clearly relieved
| that it was finally finished...
|
| This is the last hand-pixeled image I did in 1998:
|
| https://anioni.com/pauli/site1999/work/seqjesus.html
|
| It's a much better picture! By this time it was obvious that
| pixel graphics are a relic, nobody seemed to care about my
| antialiasing anymore, and I moved on.
| royjacobs wrote:
| The demoscene needs you back, Saffron!
| skrebbel wrote:
| Yeah it's about time y'all make a Contour final
| pavlov wrote:
| Just need to find the floppy with the Direct3D 6.0 SDK...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Hey, I remember that sabre tooth picture! I'm having a "meeting
| a famous person moment" :-D
| spookie wrote:
| I wasnt alive when you did this but those are incredible!
|
| There is something to be said about all these little tricks. I
| think your comment about scans highlights this, meaning you do
| loose character when the artist isn't in total control.
|
| I suppose one could, at the time, have a more personal
| technical style. Not sure how to word this and not even on a
| good level on the topic to draw proper conclusions. I do draw
| (mostly concept art, I'm good with humanoids though!), but its
| not what I do for a living, just to help the team understanding
| ideas for levels and such. I'm a programmer first and foremost.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| You started later but still made an everlasting impact with
| masters like Ra, Made and others...
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Awesome work!
|
| And shoutout to the demosceners here - mode13h for the win!
| btbuildem wrote:
| Wow I remember the floating baby head! Yah this was the waning
| days for sure.. I think I'm a few years ahead of you. The demo
| scene back then was something else, sneakernet and illicit
| basement bazaars...
| jkbyc wrote:
| 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."
| vanderZwan wrote:
| And a direct link to the canvas cycling demo mentioned in the
| talk, as well as the blog describing it and a Q&A with Mark
| Ferrari:
|
| http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/
|
| http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article-Old_School_Color_C...
|
| http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article-Q_A_with_Mark_J_Fe...
|
| Sadly, Joe Huckaby (who implemented the web-based demo) never
| got around to finish the promised drawing tool. I wonder if any
| other pixel art programs since then have added interface
| support for color cycling.
| agys wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this incredible talk! Mark captures one
| of the main topics in art making perfectly: the power of
| limitations.
|
| Also: "The environment was small enough that you could actually
| think about it"
| Geenkaas wrote:
| Falling down the rabbit hole I stumbled on this link:
| https://gamedev.city/
|
| "I miss when people would just post gamedev resources on the
| internet without thinking about algorithms or engagement. In
| order to try to mitigate that, I decided to host my own link
| aggregator website!" - Pedro Medeiros
|
| This post has been an excellent waste of time and a great source
| of inspiration. Thanks.
| maxwell wrote:
| Boris Vallejo vs. Frank Frazetta
|
| https://www.sequentialartistsworkshop.org/blog/2015/09/3388
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Sigh... completely different styles, plus the guy nitpicked
| inferior BV images and compared them with FF's better works. BV
| also had several visceral and dirty fight scenes with Conan,
| yet the painter used some of BV's less detailed creations to
| prove his point.
|
| You do not have to put a number on everything and determine who
| is "best" and why... This isn't a competition.
|
| Everyone have different tastes. Both guys have unique style,
| nothing to discuss about this.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| I was delighted to see this name pop up in my HN feed of all
| places.
|
| I've the joy of being married to a fantasy illustrator, and
| through her I've been able to attend a number of fantasy art
| conventions and shows. As I've seen a number of comments as well
| as the article asking about such, I can say Boris is doing quite
| well! He's a regular fixture at Illuxcon
| (https://imaginativerealism.com/), a fantasy/sci-fi art show in
| Reading, PA. (Along with Julie Bell)
|
| He's a genuinely likable and modest guy. I remember a panel he
| was on some years ago where the discussion was how to break into
| the illustration market as a new artist. And more than anyone
| else on the panel, Boris just seemed to _get it_. He 'll tell you
| about how he had to get himself established coming from Peru with
| nothing, and it's kept him humble all these years.
|
| Cool guy.
|
| Edit: Fixed country of origin, Thanks!
| soneca wrote:
| * from Peru
| fullstop wrote:
| Ha, Boris is my neighbor. I used to see him and Julie walking
| their dog frequently, but it's mostly Julie now. I knew that
| they were painters, but I didn't appreciate who they were until
| recently and it's better that way. We say "Hi" to each other as
| we pass and go do our own thing.
| jokull wrote:
| Link to your wife's work?
| mrob wrote:
| The high resolution but limited colors example looks like screen
| printing. Screen printing involves squeezing ink through stencils
| supported by a fine mesh. It can produce excellent detail, but
| you need a separate stencil for each color so the number of
| colors is usually low.
|
| A lot of old arcade and pinball machines used screen printing for
| the cabinet artwork. I like it better than standard CYMK printing
| because it can produce more saturated colors.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_printing
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