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

(blog.decryption.net.au)
1034 points decryption | 1 comments | 12 Jul 25 08:45 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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seabombs ◴[12 Jul 25 10:57 UTC] No.44541090[source]▶
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 pictures in anything but the tools of the time wouldn't just change them, they'd be totally different artworks. The medium is part of the artwork itself.

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al_borland ◴[12 Jul 25 13:08 UTC] No.44541815[source]▶
I have to imagine that fully realizing a vision can only truly take place when the artists are not working at the limits of the present day tools. I’m thinking of something like games today that choose an art style and run with it, rather than trying to push the hardware as hard as possible.

Was this the artist’s vision, or were they simply making the best of the tools they had?

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1. nine_k ◴[12 Jul 25 15:42 UTC] No.44542835[source]▶
I'd say that the nearly opposite is often true: the limitations shape art and even make it art. The masterful handling of limitations, and doing apparently impossible, is a legitimate part of art.

Academic Western poetry shed the metre and the rhyme in an attempt to be free from limitations and more fully express things. Can you quote something impressive? OTOH rap, arguably the modern genre of folk poetry, holds very firmly to the limiting metre and rhyme, and somehow stays quite popular. If rappers did not need rhyme as a tool of artistic expression, they probably would abandon it, instead of becoming sophisticated at it.

Same with pixel art, and other forms of pushing your medium to the limits, and beyond.