1-bit Hokusai’s ”The Nice Wave” – Hypertalking
5 years in the past I began a now fully stalled undertaking (fingers crossed I can work out the best way to restart quickly) to attract all of Hokusai’s 36 views of Mount Fuji as 1-bit pixel artwork.
Why?
I began this undertaking for no different purpose than I like to get into the ‘stream state’ from this sort of inventive endeavour, and clearly I like to make use of outdated Macintosh computer systems.
It feels very satisfying to get every pixel to fall into place, capturing each the unique imaginative and prescient of Hokusai and the aesthetic that Susan Kare mastered early on with ‘the Japanese lady’.
Kare’s image after all starred on the duvet of each field of MacPaint and you may nonetheless buy beautiful prints of it immediately, straight from her.
One other difficult side of this undertaking is to verify the photographs are the unique Macintosh display decision of 512 x 342 pixels. Why do I do that to myself?! Properly, it simply felt ‘proper’ and I assume I’m a glutton for punishment once I need to make issues really feel genuine.
How?
The concept is to recreate each one in every of Hokusai’s woodcut prints from the collection on an early black and white Macintosh, utilizing modern {hardware} and software program.
I often use both my Quadra 700 or PowerBook 100, principally as a result of these are my dependable and simple to entry computer systems (that run System 7, my favorite and most acquainted OS of that period).
Software program-wise I take advantage of Aldus SuperPaint 3.0, which is what my household had once I was a child. Sure, I’d say that each one of that is 99% nostalgia-driven…
Anyway, @polyducks urged me to share at the very least the primary of those (though this was truly the 2nd or third of the collection I tackled, unsure why I did them ‘out of order’), “The Nice Wave off Kanagawa”. Took me some time to get round to it, however right here it’s:
Please, in the event you reproduce this or put up it wherever remember to credit score me and hyperlink again to this web site!
Bonus!
As just a little further, when you’ve got a Macintosh with a 640 x 480 display, you possibly can obtain a model (PNG | PICT as compressed .zip) to make use of as a desktop sample.
I’ll goal to put up extra from this undertaking quickly.