7 ms·
1-Bit Hokusai’s ”The Great Wave”
- rcarmo 3y agoHoly cow, that web site takes me back...
- statico 3y agoThis site design is one of the best retro Mac site designs I've seen. The author really nailed the pixel perfect fonts — it looks perfect on my low-DPI and high-DPI displays. If anyone's interested, there's an active HyperCard community with some fun projects. There's a Discord server, too. https://hypercard.org/ https://hypercard.org/ I found that community through the Avara community, a port of the classic Mac multiplayer networked mech shooter from Ambrosia: https://github.com/avaraline/Avara https://github.com/avaraline/Avara Also, if you're into retro Mac stuff or just want nostalgia, the Infinite Mac project is amazing. You can run all the major Mac OS Classic releases right in the browser, you can drag and drop files from Macintosh Archive or Macintosh Garden onto the window, and you can even create an AppleTalk network between browsers: https://infinitemac.org/ https://infinitemac.org/
- lmm 3y ago> The author really nailed the pixel perfect fonts — it looks perfect on my low-DPI and high-DPI displays. It has some weird rainbow effect to it on mine, and the background flickers when I scroll.
- Prickle 3y agoSame here. Also a more minor issue for people like myself, the site causes some 'glare'(?) and is difficult to look at. I've had this issue since my childhood, now that I think of it. On paper (especially grids) and websites. I should probably figure out what it is.
- adzm 3y agoDo you have astigmatism?
- Prickle 3y agoI just looked it up and based off of anecdotal evidence, I think the answer is yes. I have had glasses for nearsightedness in my left eye but it isn't bad enough for most situations. Never had an eye exam in my life.
- dan353hehe 3y agoI have astigmatism. I had the same issue with grids, certain fonts with lots of vertical lines, and other regular high contrast repeating patterns. Got some glasses a few years ago for the first time from an optometrist, and now it doesn’t bother me anymore. So I would recommend getting it checked out.
- Prickle 3y agoThankyou for the recommendation! I'll go about scheduling that.
- thrdbndndn 3y agoSame here, I think it's caused by the font it's using (BitGeneva12 [1], which obviously is a geneva [2] clone but I can't find where it (the font) is from. Maybe the author created it themselves?). [1] src: url(//www.hypertalking.com/wp-content/themes/hypertalking/fonts/bitgeneva12-webfont.eot); src: url(//www.hypertalking.com/wp-content/themes/hypertalking/fonts/bitgeneva12-webfont.eot?iefix) format('eot'),url(//www.hypertalking.com/wp-content/themes/hypertalking/fonts/bitgeneva12-webfont.woff) format('woff'),url(//www.hypertalking.com/wp-content/themes/hypertalking/fonts/bitgeneva12-webfont.ttf) format('truetype'),url(//www.hypertalking.com/wp-content/themes/hypertalking/fonts/bitgeneva12-webfont.svg#webfontx0MbJbLm) format('svg'); [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_(typeface) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_(typeface)
- vertis 3y agoHow I miss Escape Velocity and Ambrosia Software. It was the first game I bought. Had to call the US at some weird hour from Australia and pay with Dad's credit card over the phone. I'm aware there are similar games like Endless Sky (which I've played quite a bit). I really wish the people behind Ambrosia could be encouraged to open source everything.
- birracerveza 3y agoThe website is really good but the font is blurry on my windows machine, only in this blog post. If I adblock the (beautiful) “Great Wave” image, the font reads perfectly.
- mouse_ 3y agoIt's beautiful, but unfortunate that the font is trying to use cleartype, which screws up the aesthetic bigly.
- selimthegrim 3y agoOf possible relevance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Views_of_Mt._Fuji,_by_Hokusai https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Views_of_Mt._Fuji,_by_Hok...
- sgu999 3y agoIs it worth reading? :)
- selimthegrim 3y agoInternet archive is your friend here. Yes very much so, especially if you can get the book Zelazny based the story on.
- karaterobot 3y agoThat story rules, as does the collection it's in (Frost and Fire).
- selimthegrim 3y agoI’ll have to find that, rather I used IA to find the back issue of the magazine it was published in.
- karaterobot 3y agoInspired by this thread, I just reread it. There's a reproduction with the original woodblock print images, which was useful because I didn't have that when I read this story as a teenager. https://fictionbooks.top/24-views-of-mt-fuji-by-hokusai-301637/read https://fictionbooks.top/24-views-of-mt-fuji-by-hokusai-3016...
- aaron695 3y agoHokusai (1760 - 1849) also did tentacle porn NSFW art - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s_Wife https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%2... Book -https://pulverer.si.edu/node/277/title https://pulverer.si.edu/node/277/title
- injb 3y agoI don't understand- in what sense is this "1 bit"?
- sebastianz 3y ago2 colors per pixel - black or white.
- Synaesthesia 3y agoEvery pixel has 1 bit of color depth, basically black or white.
- ggm 3y agoIf you transmitted it one pixel at a time left to right top to bottom scan, or boudestrophon l r l r l r if you prefer then the pixel stream would equal a 1 bit value toggling on or off.
- masswerk 3y agoGenerally, "n bit" describes the color depth of an image by the number of bits used to store the color information of a pixel. Some common formats: 1 bit .... b/w (foreground or background color set per pixel) 4 bit .... 16 colors (indexed color palette or 16 shades of grey in 1 channel) 8 bit .... 256 colors (indexed color palette or 1-channel greyscale image) 12 bit ... 16 x 16 x 16 colors, 3 color channels at 4 bits for 4,096 colors total 24 bit ... 256 x 256 x 256 colors, 3 color channels at 8 bits for 16,777,216 colors total 32 bit ... as above, but including an extra alpha channel (mask) for 256 levels of transparency There are also high-resolution color modes (e.g. in Photoshop) using either 16 bits or even 32 bits per color channel. (So 8-bit, 16-bit or 32-bit may also describe the depth for each individual color channel in imaging software.) "8-bit" is also used for graphics on 8-bit computers, most often a palette of 8 or 16 indexed colors in some sort of sub-palette (e.g., 2 bit = 4 out of 8 or 16 colors), in rare cases even 128 colors (like on the Atari 2600). Here, "8-bit" relates to the platform and not to image depth or a specific implementation.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y agoThe property that a good font should have: on or off, present or not present.
- dekhn 3y agoWhen I was getting started with my laser engraver, I used the Great Wave as my template image. It translates to black and white quite nicely. Since the laser has a power range, you normally use grayscale but dithering also works. The stucki and jarvis options are both very good. To me, dithering reminds me of early Macs (just like the link).
- WoodenChair 3y agoIf you're interested in showing photographs and paintings on a classic Mac, I actually made an app for that. It takes modern images, dithers them to 1-bit, and then exports the results to MacPaint format (encoded in MacBinary for easy transport). It works on modern versions of macOS: https://oaksnow.com/retrodither/ https://oaksnow.com/retrodither/
- lukas099 3y agoI wish I could run my entire display in retro dithering mode.
- calibas 3y agoWhen viewing the site in Firefox, the font in the paragraphs has a very subtle rainbow effect. Here's a screenshot of it zoomed in: https://i.imgur.com/ir0MmPq.png https://i.imgur.com/ir0MmPq.png I was wondering how they achieved that effect, but it doesn't seem intentional. It's not part of the CSS, and I only see it in FF, doesn't happen in Chrome. It goes away if I switch fonts, it looks like it's some weird result of how Firefox renders the site's "BitGeneva12" font. Another odd thing, it goes away when I used FF's "Take Screenshot" feature. Also only happens when the font is 12px in size.
- MivLives 3y agoI assumed this was intentional to sorta look weird and retro. Sorta wild it's just Firefox messing it up.
- waboremo 3y agoIt's not just Firefox, it's reproducible on Chromium browsers on Windows (10) as well.
- wesleychen 3y agoIt's probably due to anti-aliasing. A similar thing happens on some versions of Windows with ClearType turned on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearType https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearType
- asynchronous 3y agoVery cool drawing, as a side note I’ve seen Stable Diffusion be able to achieve very good pixel art with some Loras and textual embeddings plus some skill. Also seen it able to do amazing img2img art like pictured here.
- ftxbro 3y agoI know this isn't the point, but if anyone wants to make pictures like this automatically you can use dithering.
- nxpnsv 3y agoYou’re going to miss the pixel perfect lines. There’s a whole subtle esthetic in this version from the careful manipulation of pixels…
- nxpnsv 3y agoI love how it’s still beautiful…
- passion__desire 3y ago"Return of the Obra Dinn" game gives similar vibes.
- sph 3y agoThe author, Lucas Pope, went into deep detail describing the dithering process and shader used in Return of the Obra Dinn. It's outstanding work. https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg1363742#msg1363742 https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg136374...
- nxpnsv 3y agoThanks, that looks amazing, never heard of it before!
- tjpnz 3y agoI took my father to see the original in Tokyo today. It's a sight to behold and worth a look next time you're here. You can also watch a Sumo match nearby.
- robga 3y agoIt must have been a thrill to see a PowerBook 100!
- smcl 3y agoI thought he made and sold many prints of each piece, so that identifying the original one wouldn't really be possible.
- Someone 3y agoThe original are the woodblocks (it’s multi-colour, so I assume there were multiple blocks). Those wouldn’t show the full picture and would have been worn down, if we still had them. We don’t, though. The next best thing would be prints made by the artist. https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/great-wave-spot-difference https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/great-wave-spot-differenc... has a nice description using wear and tear to distinguish earlier from later prints. Edit: nowadays, artists write things like “3/50” on their prints (meaning they made fifty prints, and this is the third). That informs collectors/drives up prices for the low numbered prints.
- smcl 3y agoYep I also saw some in a Hokusai museum in Osube near Nagano
- perilunar 3y agoIt's a woodblock print — there were thousands printed, and ~100 known to still exist. I've seen the British Museum's copy.
- yardshop 3y agoI saw an original copy yesterday in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, along with the 50,000 piece LEGO version! They have a large exhibit about Hokusai, along with many of his contemporaries such as Hiroshige, works from his students and teachers, and many many examples of how the Great Wave has been reflected in art and culture over the years. They didn't have this beautiful little 1-bit piece though.
- robga 3y agoBill Atkinson of Apple developed a new dithering algorithm for early Macs. I wonder if it was used for this rendering. https://beyondloom.com/blog/dither.html https://beyondloom.com/blog/dither.html
- Someone 3y agoThe author says “Software-wise I use Aldus SuperPaint 3.0”, so I expect it was drawn 100% by hand.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoYou are probably right. Author could of course have neglected to mention their ThunderScan or whatever but looking closely at the image it does not show dithering but rather a concerted attempt at using regular but changing patterns to achieve, for example, the gradient in the background.
- hypertalking 3y agoyes, I drew it 100% by hand :-) Bill Atkinson's dithering algorithm is great, and I use it for photos when I put them on the blog, to keep them aesthetically in line with the rest of the site
- wiz21c 3y agoWhen I have a bit of time, I'll compare dither algorithms to that human version. Would be cool to see how they compare !
- tgv 3y agoOf course, you can close the blog post (top left corner of the window), or click the floppy icon, which will reveal more posts. There aren't more Hokusai posts, though.
- regularfry 3y agoThere's something very... right about the black and white rendering from those early macs. Can't exactly put my finger on it but they seem very natural in a way that I can't readily identify in any other setting.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoMy own sense is that black and white forced an economy of pixels. For glyphs, icons, artwork, I could labor over the placement of every single pixel. A crisp, high contrast display and neat, little square pixels just reinforces that kind of regenerative feedback loop.
- ddingus 3y agoYes. For me, part of it is the display tech in use. Those monochrome CRT displays look great! And that "white" phosphor helps augment the whole thing in a way an LCD misses the mark on, but just slightly. Still looks great. For what it is worth, an e-ink display will look fantastic! I have one and will view this eye candy on it soon enough.
- TiredGuy 3y agoDoes anyone know of any modern linux desktop environments that are specifically designed for 1-bit or grayscale? I really like the nice clean look as demonstrated here.
- ddingus 3y agoI love 1bpp pixel art and the whole site looks great! Nice work, or shall I say labor of love? On a whim, I picked up an e-ink display, 1800x1400 that has 16 grey shades, though I am unclear whether that is per pixel. Should know soon. As I learn to use the display, throwing some of this art on it should look great. That is all really. Just wanted to say nice work from one bit per pixel lover to another.
- hypertalking 3y agoThanks! :-)