![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Pixelart Animations With Low-bit Music
Apr. 6th, 2008 01:51 amMy roommate in freshman year of college was a chap named Keith Kelley. He was nominated for Student Body President. At Pensacola Christian College, this was a meaningless position of a functionally meaningless organization, since students were explicitly disallowed -- on pain of expulsion-- from taking an organized position in opposition to that of the administration.
Well, Keith didn't know what to say in the single campaign speech that each candidate was allowed. As an empty popularity contest, forbidden to exercise leadership, every speech was a standup comedy routine. Keith felt himself ill-suited to this skill. Finally, the day before the election, he said, "Matt, at the moment, your quirks are the only funny subject I can think of. I'm just going to talk about you. They'll probably laugh, but you always take that with good cheer. Is that OK?" And he told me what he would say in his speech. I happily permitted this.
He delivered it just as he had said. "I don't know what to say in this speech... let me tell you about my roommate, Matt Arnold. He's a great guy, and also a total nerd. I mean that in the nicest possible way. For instance. He listens to Nintendo music on cassette!" They did indeed laugh, and I hammed up the attention while attempting not to attract the notice of the hall monitors in the audience who might demerit me for disruption. "I'm ahead of my time! Just you wait and see!"
Fast-forward fifteen years. Right now I'm sitting at NOTACON watching the Blockparty Demo competition with a few hundred appreciative hackers and artists. The objective of a Demo is to get something artistically and technically impressive out of the smallest amount of computing resources. The master of ceremonies is pointing out, to general admiration, that the tune we just heard only occupied 4k of disk space.
When one of the Demos displeases us, we hurl grip-exerciser squishy squeeze balls at the stage.
So fifteen years later, hand-crafted pixelart animations with 8-bit chip music are still enjoyable and desired for their own sake. It's like I told Keith 15 years ago: I was ahead of my time.
Well, Keith didn't know what to say in the single campaign speech that each candidate was allowed. As an empty popularity contest, forbidden to exercise leadership, every speech was a standup comedy routine. Keith felt himself ill-suited to this skill. Finally, the day before the election, he said, "Matt, at the moment, your quirks are the only funny subject I can think of. I'm just going to talk about you. They'll probably laugh, but you always take that with good cheer. Is that OK?" And he told me what he would say in his speech. I happily permitted this.
He delivered it just as he had said. "I don't know what to say in this speech... let me tell you about my roommate, Matt Arnold. He's a great guy, and also a total nerd. I mean that in the nicest possible way. For instance. He listens to Nintendo music on cassette!" They did indeed laugh, and I hammed up the attention while attempting not to attract the notice of the hall monitors in the audience who might demerit me for disruption. "I'm ahead of my time! Just you wait and see!"
Fast-forward fifteen years. Right now I'm sitting at NOTACON watching the Blockparty Demo competition with a few hundred appreciative hackers and artists. The objective of a Demo is to get something artistically and technically impressive out of the smallest amount of computing resources. The master of ceremonies is pointing out, to general admiration, that the tune we just heard only occupied 4k of disk space.
When one of the Demos displeases us, we hurl grip-exerciser squishy squeeze balls at the stage.
So fifteen years later, hand-crafted pixelart animations with 8-bit chip music are still enjoyable and desired for their own sake. It's like I told Keith 15 years ago: I was ahead of my time.
