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| Author | Doing graphics for software like in the 80's ? (Read 68771 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Bolkonskij
Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023 
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on: May 26, 2024, 09:54
Looking at some of the beautiful 1bit graphics in the game Deja Vu or the 16 colors car in Crazy Cars made me wonder about the graphics workflow for the creation of this artwork in software projects. Does anyone have either personal knowledge or can point to an article (e.g. in MacUser, MacWorld etc.) in what a typical workflow of a graphics artist of the day would have looked like? Would they first create a dribble on paper and then fire up MacPaint before stuff gets pasted into the resource file by ResEdit? Or start right away in their favorite programs? If so, which would those have been? It always felt like there was a lot more info on dev toolstacks of the day, but suprisingly little about the graphic's artists work, so I wonder. |
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cballero
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1024 MB  Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #1 on: May 26, 2024, 23:30
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From memory, in the late eighties the popular vector illustration programs were Aldus Freehand and Adobe Illustrator, both favored among software-driven designers. Macromedia FireWorks had a very cool dual vector and bitmap feature, and Flash similarly did web vector illustrations, both which came around a bit later. On the bitmap side of the house, PhotoShop was the epitome of bitmap programs, even if its slant was geared toward image editing and manipulation. I'm sure plenty of designers were also utilizing many other programs like MacDraw and MacPaint; I myself really enjoyed playing with Aldus SuperPaint, but this small list wouldn't be complete without mentioning GraphicConverter as well!  (even though technically that one didn't spring up 'till the early nineties)  And for those also working on Windoze machines, Xara Designer Pro was quite the illustration program, so I heard, lol 
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MTT
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256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer
Reply #2 on: May 27, 2024, 06:14
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soudesune posted a link in the MG's "Inigo Gets Out" page, pointing to a Douglas Adams movie on You Tube, where he interviews Amanda Goodenough. I think that she breaks down the process of graphic design as an interactive process succinctly, and in only a couple of minutes. The link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dB3_GcFV_0 and the interview with Amanda is at 06:22 - You may want to skip straight to this, as the video quality is extremely poor (modern browser required). As with movie and video production, the process of graphic video game creation back in those days was done in the old manual way of pencil and paper (storyboarding) to figure out the fundamentals and to see how it could work, before digitizing. Storyboarding is still in use today but software packages to help with the creation process now exist where they wouldn't have existed back then.
Last Edit: May 27, 2024, 06:50 by MTT
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #3 on: May 27, 2024, 13:45
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I think you hit the nail on the head @MTT. Workflows have changed over time, but when things started moving to digital most workflows followed the traditional path. PageMaker followed the flows and technics used in the analog world. InDesign came later moving to a workflow that was less dependent on the way things were always done and more toward efficiencies that could be gained from an all digital flow. You still see this play out today in 3d printing. Some prefer doing their modeling with an application where you a following a model of "push clay" into shape, while others work a path more akin to drafting. There is often a tendency to see digital tools as a re-invention of the wheel, but most advancements are more iterative, than inventive. "Disruptive" is a big buzz word, but that is about all it is.
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Neal_SE30
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256 MB Posts: 401 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #4 on: May 27, 2024, 14:29
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As a graphic designer at college using Mac’s in the early 1990s, Aldus, illustrator and Photoshop. I did a lot back in the day, predominantly Aldus. The other way was to scan in art on a scanner and choose the bit depth. Obviously scanning into an se/30 on photoshop would display 1-bit image as default anyway. I brought a new old stock scsi agfa scanner a few years back for £40, for a joke I filled in the warrantee card and sent it to them.
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #5 on: May 27, 2024, 20:38
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I'm familiar with the big commercial programs, I was rather interested in the individual workflows. Sketching on paper is interesting ... - What kind of paper would you have used? A regular blank? - pencil or pen? - Scan it in and work on it? - Or start blank and try to copy what you see on a paper in a paint program? - How would you integrate it into a program apart from via a Resource file? (Clearly a lot of apps don't) - Any kind of optimizing before ResEditing it into an application? Like in size or format? If so, how? Just a few questions that come to mind. Thus I wonder if there has ever been a contemporary report on that somewhere, be it in a big publication or an e-zine maybe.
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #6 on: May 27, 2024, 22:30
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The 8bitguy's YouTube channel has several videos about his developing his petscii robot and Planet X11. Those visuals were laid out on graph paper with each square representing a pixel. <https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNnAGlyFmOiHawIzqzXyEb8brtRl0C3lR> Modern Browser needed. They do deal with the Commodore Version, but I imagine the process would be somewhat similar for other systems. Most icon editors work with pixels. Create several icons that can be stacked as a person, create several stacks that follow a range of motion, then just quickly place them in succession to have an animated person on appear on screen.
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Neal_SE30
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256 MB Posts: 401 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #7 on: May 28, 2024, 20:49
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Ah I see. Use a graphics tablet. I used them back in the day and i use one on my se/30. Pretty much any package has various pencil, crayon, paint type effects. I would also often take a picture to the tablet and then draw over the top to get the accurate data points, lines, curves etc. I think I may have given away my spare vintage Mac graphics tablet but will Double check. So I would often scan in a background, then do art on the tablet in photoshop using layers. freehand you definitely need a graphics tablet. So technique is print off an image you have on screen reduce to the size of your tablet, tape it on then you can manually draw over the image by hand. Other than that yes scan in and modify .
Last Edit: May 28, 2024, 20:54 by Neal_SE30
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #8 on: May 28, 2024, 21:58
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I used a graphics tablet. Forget the brand, but it was made by a Boeing subsidiary. It had a clear soft plastic sheet one could put over the drawing and worked well for tracing hand drawings in the computer. My first scanner was a Thunder Scan, which was a print head replacement for the ImageWriter. Horrible scanner really but I thought it was pretty slick. While those methods were good for creating art pieces, I have no clue how one would transfer those images into something useful in a video game. The 8BitGuy wrote his own editor along the lines of a big icon editor, which would save the creation in digital, that could be directly written to screen memory. (On the Commodore almost all applications were written in assembly code.)
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Neal_SE30
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256 MB Posts: 401 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #9 on: May 29, 2024, 00:16
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I’d have to look it up but there was 3d modeling software, so you could bitmap imagines onto wireframes. Like in doom. 2d wise a wallpaper editor allows editing images into tiles but I fear wove is right in the 1980s likely coded. I’ll do some investigating.
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•_indigo_•
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4 MB Posts: 4 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #10 on: September 24, 2024, 04:42
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If you want that 1-bit look like in Deja Vu, you're going to want to play around in SuperPaint. That's the only application I remember that had all the different dithering brushes as pre-sets.
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #11 on: September 24, 2024, 09:46
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SuperPaint is a classic! I've been leaning towards EA's Studio series ever since but I might give it a try. But what really interests me is the whole production process, starting from the idea as pointed up above. How exactly was this done? The graph paper was great tip (thanks!). I wonder if there's any literature, ideally Mac-specific, on how to do graphics on things like a Mac SE? It kinda feels like this is knowledge about to be lost forever, as the people who did this are getting older and there's few documentation (as opposed to 90's graphics design on the Mac) And then there's the programming aspect - how would you add these graphics and given the hardware constraints, what "tricks" were used to optimize them?
Last Edit: September 24, 2024, 09:48 by Bolkonskij
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #12 on: January 11, 2025, 12:17
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While it isn't about pixeling for Mac software, this article I found discusses some great tips & tricks for doing graphics / layout on with the standard 1980's Mac software using: MacPaint and MacDraw. Found it interesting to read, especially since it describes much of the process, which is knowledge about to die out. Hope you'll enjoy it too :-) ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* Most Macintosh owners think of Desktop Publishing in terms of large page layout programs such as PageMaker, or Ready, Set, Go. There is an alternative to such big ticket programs. I have been doing page layout on the Macintosh since long before PageMaker was ever conceived. What did I use? Well, MacDraw is a good place to start. Any object oriented drawing program that allows multiple page sized docuements can be used for desktop publishing. The basic features of PageMaker are present in MacDraw, including the ability to place graphic and text objects on the same page. With a little work you can even use MacDraw to wrap text around irregular shaped graphics. Use MacPaint to do detailed graphic work, and use the scrapbook to hold the images you create. Once in MacDraw, open the scrapbook and paste in the graphics you have designed, placing them wherever you want them on the page. You can use a word processor to create text for the publication, then use the clipboard or a desk accessory word processor (such as MockWrite, from CE Software) to import text into your document. If you are a good typist, and don’t always need the sophisticated features of a word processor to type in an article, you can use the text entry capabilities of MacDraw directly, particularly if the newsletter you are working on is short. If you own a LaserWriter or Linotronic, I think I can safely assume that you can afford a big ticket desktop publishing package. Therefore Desktop publishing on a budget is aimed mainly at Imagewriter output. If you want higher quality output, use LaserWriter fonts (such as Helvetica and Times) for your text and take the document you have created to a LaserWriter equipped Macintosh. If the Mac you will be using with the LaserWriter does not have MacDraw, make sure you take your program disk with you. There are a lot of tricks to making your document look slick from MacDraw. Design all of your MacPaint artwork twice as large as you actually want them on the page, then select 50% reduction in the Page Setup menu from MacDraw. You will have to use fonts twice the normal size as well. (This will affect the number of pages you can print out.) Printing the resulting document will give you 144 dots per inch resolution on an Imagewriter for your graphics, and the text will appear to have been printed with the “High quality” option checked. You will be amazed at the results. Another trick is not really a trick, it is really a serendipitous situation. When you copy the Imagewriter original the copy machine will tend to smooth some of the “jaggies” and the copies may actually look better than the original. A good idea is to keep some cleaner handy and clean the copy machine glass before making your copies. You can also use a reduction feature on some copiers to increase the effective resolution of the document (this works best when planned for by setting your margins on the original wider than you actually want them). All of the tips mentioned above work just as well in MacDraft, and you can even do a lot with SuperPaint, although SuperPaint does not support multiple pages. Remember, great output is a result of a lot of work, even with the highest priced programs. If you can’t justify the price of a high end page layout program, but want to do occasional “desktop publishing,” don’t despair, you probably already have all the tools you need. P.S. Did you know that you can set up your Newsletters in a horizontal format? The “Page Setup...” menu selection, under the “File” menu in most programs, will allow you to turn the page sideways, giving you a “Landscape” format that offers a new twist to your presentations. Try this the next time you print out office invitations.
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #13 on: October 09, 2025, 13:36
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Some kind soul on Usenet made me aware that the old 1984 and 1985 issues of MacWorld magazin (U.S.) had a gallery section in which artists would present their Mac-created masterpieces including a description of *how* they did it. Very interesting, here's an example: http://revontulet.org/2025/10/09/d1ab182d5eaa4555a970cbb7d5bdc892.png
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Cashed
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128 MB Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #14 on: October 09, 2025, 14:09
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Very impressive MacPaint artworks thanks for sharing :-)
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