Make 8-bit art | Hacker News Reader

Make 8-bit art

make8bitart.com

109 pointsof36 comments

I made something similar a while back: http://jathu.me/pixels/

Check the source: https://github.com/jathu/pixels. You can also undo/redo by pressing z and y on the keyboard.

Very nice. I like the simplicity of your interface.

It always makes me smile when I hear the term "8-bit" used to describe art. The strict hardware and software limitations of early computers spawned a complete visual aesthetic!

And yet I can't think of many 8-bit systems that let you set any pixel any color like most of today's "8-bit" art. Most had tile based systems with various color limitations in each tile, to save memory. Graphics on different systems had a distinctive look because of this. Most of today's "pixel art" games look pretty samey.

The current 8-bit art just uses some inspiration from old games, it does not aim to remake the same experience (which will be pretty boring because there already is a ton of games like that).

And I have to disagree to the fact they all look the same. When I watch Super Meat Boy, Shovel Knight, Void & Medler, Swords & Sorcery etc. they have really distinctive design.

You picked an interesting one, Shovel Knight, because its graphics engine actually emulates how the NES graphics chip works (with a few enhancements). That gives it a look that stands out from a lot of others.

Super Meat Boy is an example of the visual sameness in my opinion. It looks exactly like Broforce or Super Time Force Ultra or a million others. The aesthetic seems to be 256 color VGA with really tiny sprites. It doesn't really remind me of anything or look inspired by anything in particular IMO.

Further the color channels offered by today '8-bit' don't correspond to the RRRGGGBB packing of the systems they emulate.

aseprite [0] a great open source (desktop) pixel art editor

[0] - http://www.aseprite.org/

Seconding the aseprite recommendation. The support for layers and animations is really nice.

Great work @jennmoneydollars! This is fun.

I feel that I missed my calling as an artist. http://imgur.com/zxE2QKC

If you have any problems, open an issue on GitHub (jennschiffer/make8bitart) or tweet at @jennschiffer. She's about to have time to work on stuff soon hopefully.

My personal favorite: http://www.danielx.net/pixel-editor/

Source: https://github.com/STRd6/pixel-editor/

Let me know if you want any tips for reliable undo, Bresenham's line algo, or flood fill.

https://jackschaedler.github.io/goya/

Cool. This works pretty well with a Surface pen. The only limitation seems to be that it doesn't recognize the eraser as distinct from the tip; it would be neat if the eraser would draw the transparent color.

i'm assuming the eraser only triggers a touch event in the case of a web browser, so i'm not sure if there is anything i can do to change that but i'll look into it!

I decided to learn something today and got this working :). I sent a PR on GitHub.

yessssss thanks I will be able to check it out early this week!

I think you have to use pointer events to detect the eraser -- e.button should be 5 for pointerdown events. I'm not sure how hard it is to use pointer events when available (currently only on IE/Edge, it looks like).

Check out also Draw![0], you can use it to draw tiny pixel art pictures and GIF animations.

Update: I made a while ago to experiment with Redis and the <canvas> element. The code is open source at https://github.com/potomak/drawbang.

[0] http://drawbang.com

Getting around the challenges of portably saving files from a JS application by using imgur's API is clever- I may use the same idea in a project I'm working on. I make little coding sandbox things and allowing users to easily record gifs or screenshots without a separate tool would be a boon.

The auto-upload to imgur is a nice touch!

This is me: http://i.imgur.com/5JUJt5g.png

Well gee, as long as we're adding our competing projects in the comments, here's mine:

http://pix.pe

Awesome. Also, love @jennmoneydollars.

Looks like it doesnt work on Android.

Yep, I also tried in Chrome for Android. Won't paint or grab anything.

The flood-fill tool seems a little slow. It seems like it is doing something much more complicated than I would expect (simple breadth-first search) - and I get some weird results with different brush sizes.

Very cool little time waster. Kids will love it.

But it's 32 bit..?

don't let the cops know!

should implement a proper line drawing algorithm

yes, i'm working on it but have been v busy with work lately. gave a talk about bresenham's line algorithm at genius back in march (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zytBpLlSHms) embarrassed it's been so long without a product. #opensourceisaprison

cool, but runs like a dog for me :(

oh noooo pls let me know what environment you're running it on!

i'm really enjoying playing around with this actually!

one other small niggle i've found is that it doesn't respect my swapping of cmd+ctrl on mac for e.g. cmd+z undo. tiny niggle, but niggling all the same. :)

its a 2012 mac mini with windows 8.1 and chrome as the browser.

works fine if i use firefox and osx 10.10 on my 2013 macbook pro. :)

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