{"id":181544,"date":"2025-04-11T23:15:04","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T23:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/entertainment\/art\/back-to-the-eighties-pushing-pixels\/"},"modified":"2025-04-11T23:15:04","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T23:15:04","slug":"back-to-the-eighties-pushing-pixels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=181544","title":{"rendered":"Back to the Eighties Pushing Pixels"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

Back to the Eighties \u2013 Pushing
\nPixels<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Back<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Back to the Eighties – Pushing Pixels<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n



<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

This time, we take a step back
\nin time to the 1980s, the decade that provides the subject matter of many of my
\nown artworks. It was also the decade where my life as a professional digital
\nartist began, one pixel at a time. In my latest discussion we take a deep-dive
\ninto what it was really like creating digital art in the 1980s and why todays image
\nediting tools and modern equipment can never quite achieve truly authentic
\nretro recreations. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Being what some would call, a
\ndinosaur of the 8-bit era, I tend to get asked more and more of late what it
\nwas like creating digital art in the early days of home computers and whether
\nor not it\u2019s easier today with all this new-fangled technology. I\u2019ve been
\nsurprised at just how many people are now taking an interest in a decade that
\nmany of them were born way after, but it\u2019s easy to figure out why, for a new
\ngeneration it\u2019s just like a previous generations fascination for the 1960s.<\/span><\/p>\n

So to answer that question
\nabout whether things have become any easier with all of this brand new
\ntechnology that can seemingly be made to do anything, in short, it is massively
\neasier to create anything today and do so with so much more precision but it\u2019s
\nalso massively more difficult to create digital art if you want to create a
\nspecific or authentic vintage look. Sure, you can make a facsimile but that\u2019s
\nnot quite the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

So this time we will be going
\non a journey through time. We will take a look at the early home microcomputer
\nmarket and how it gradually began to influence how the production of art would
\nmake the transition from canvas to screen. We\u2019ll also take a look at just how
\nmuch digital art technology has changed since the early 1980s. It\u2019s a deep dive
\nfor sure, but one that merits the three months or so that this article has
\ntaken me to write because those early moments in tech-history are worthy of
\npreservation. <\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ll also take a look at how
\nearly digital art was created and why recreating authentic vintage style art
\ntoday for retro and vintage collectors is massively more complicated with
\nmodern tools than it was back in the decade that also gave us Rick Astley and
\nMadonna. To top it all off, we\u2019ll also be exploring the very reasons why so
\nmany people are suddenly finding comfort in collecting pixelated memories from
\ntheir childhoods, a trend that continues to keep us original pixel artists busy.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Eighties<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Eighties Toy Keyboard by Mark Taylor – I think every kid had one of these, this one doesn’t make any noise!<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Everyone who knows me will
\nknow how much I love the 80s. It was a decade that presented me with career opportunities
\nthat would last a lifetime, or at least a lifetime up until now and I hope it
\nwill continue for many years to come. The 80s was also the decade that handed
\nme a collecting\/hoarding habit that makes my studio and office feel more like a
\nmuseum at times. <\/span><\/p>\n

I collect everything from 1980s
\nvideo games to the ephemera that came alongside them, right the way through to
\nearly editions of some of the most iconic early computer magazines and of
\ncourse, I collect the artwork from the period. Much of that artwork from the
\n80s was inspired by The Memphis Movement, a style which defined the eighties
\nand is still used today. The eighties gave us a lot of history that we don\u2019t
\nalways necessarily or immediately associate with the decade and its importance
\nin society, art and design and popular culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

I probably need to be clear
\nhere, I don\u2019t view everything 80s through a rose-tinted lens. The modern age
\nhas a couple of positives over the 80s, I was younger for a start. We did have
\nbleak times, plenty of them, and to an extent, we\u2019re seeing some of the same
\nthings happen again today that we witnessed happening back then. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the 80s we had stock market
\ncrashes, the threat of extinction from a Cold War, general strikes and workers
\njust like today, were mostly disgruntled with the rising cost of inflation. So
\nI think there\u2019s more than a direct comparison you can make with many of the events
\ntaking place today. The world might feel different than it did a couple of
\nyears ago for those who weren\u2019t around in the eighties, but for those of us who
\nwere around, I think we\u2019re once again in familiar territory. Maybe the 2020s is
\nthe 80s part two? Life was hard in the 80s but hey, at least we had great
\nmusic.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"History<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
History Repeating by Mark Taylor – kids were oblivious to the political turmoil and stock market crashes of the 80s, but it could be bleak!<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

The decade wasn\u2019t all about
\nshell suits and pop music, technology was being rapidly miniaturised and we
\nwould witness a technological revolution just as important as the industrial
\nrevolution that took place between 1760 and 1840. The 1980s were pivotal in the
\nevolution of technology as the decade would go on to shape the technology we have
\ncome to now rely on every day. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Dialling<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Dialling for Dollars by Mark Taylor – Innovation and turmoil, oh, and answering machines were a thing…<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

We have to understand the past
\nto recreate it\u2026<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019m all about preservation. My
\nretro collecting habit is borne out of a personal need to preserve historic
\nmoments that were mostly never documented at the time. The only experience we really
\nhave of the decade today is the experience that was around at the time, and a
\nlot of that experience is fading away year after year. <\/span><\/p>\n

This need to preserve the 80\u2019s
\nand especially the technical revolution is partly what has driven me to focus
\nmore and more on my 80\u2019s inspired works recently, although they have been a
\nstaple of my creative output since the late 1980s when I would create commissioned
\ncharacters and supporting artwork often for fans of computer games. <\/span><\/p>\n

My landscapes and abstracts
\ncontinue but what many people probably never realise when they view the work
\nthat most people know me for, is that whilst I\u2019ve managed to scrape a living
\ncreating abstracts and landscapes, my bread and butter has always been rooted
\nin my work in pixel art, retro-inspired collections and commissions from a
\ngroup of tech fans who have never lost their enthusiasm for the period since
\nthe golden age of the eighties and the decades either side.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Kinetic<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Kinetic Fields by Mark Taylor – my landscape and abstract works continue. We didn’t have wind power in the 80s, at least not like this, but many of us had bicycles with lights powered by a dynamo!<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

My retro artworks all depict a
\nperiod of time through the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, and this pictorial
\npreservation and celebration of history and innovation is becoming more
\nimportant too. The internet has grown exponentially and it has paradoxically
\nbecome smaller at the same time. We would once browse the web and explore the
\nnew frontiers of the digital age, we could explore historic moments through the
\nlens of all those people who had set up their first websites using sites like GeoCities
\nand we were asking Jeeves for advice. <\/span><\/p>\n

Today we visit virtual shop
\nwindows that have had their displays dressed specifically for each of us
\nthrough the use of tracking cookies and everything else that didn\u2019t exist even
\nin the days of bulletin boards, ARPANET and a hundred free hours of AOL. Early
\nsearch engines searched through content rather than adverts, and the results
\nwould often be returned in all of their neon glory.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, the first pages, let
\nalone the first page of any search engine has become an advert. It\u2019s next to
\nimpossible to find useful information because we are now only served what the
\ntech giants think we want to see and we\u2019re now at that place where they only
\nthink we want to see adverts. <\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe this website is too
\nold-school to be cool, I never ask anyone to sign up for anything, I self-fund
\nthe whole shebang, I don\u2019t run adverts and I try to provide useful information
\nwhich is rapidly eroding from our searches and to an extent our first thoughts,
\nand when you do find anything that is, you know, actually relevant, it usually
\nexists only on the outer reaches of internet servers and no one has any time to
\nfind it because we expect immediacy today. Hey, you know the cloud is just
\nsomeone else\u2019s computer right?<\/span><\/p>\n

The subject matter during the
\nthree decades that much of my work represents is broad, I paint everything from
\nskateboards (because they were cool yet dangerous) to the earliest electronic
\ngadgets, and for anyone else who lived their formative years during this time
\nor even younger fans of that time period in general, many of us remember exactly
\nhow we felt when we picked up say an electronic game for the very first time. <\/span><\/p>\n

Hopefully my vintage-inspired art
\ntriggers a memory or two for many who view it, but that\u2019s not necessarily the only
\npoint of it. I really wouldn\u2019t want such an important period of our technological
\nhistory to be lost because someone couldn\u2019t be bothered to document it!<\/span><\/p>\n

For those of us of a certain
\nvintage, we remember the emotions we displayed and the feelings we had at the
\ntime and we even remember the distinct smell of ozone from new electronics, a
\nsmell I never come across today but one I wish I could find again and bottle. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"80s<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Eighties Entertainment by Mark Taylor – every new device had a great smell of ozone. I think it was great, I remember it well, I think I liked it, maybe my memory is filling in the blanks?<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

We remember how the device
\nfelt, how heavy it was, and how it made us feel. It was magical because no one
\nhad ever seen anything quite like it before and there has never been a time
\nsince when the same feelings have ever been replicated with new technology in
\nquite the same way. Today, we have come to expect innovation and I think we
\ntake it for granted a bit too much.<\/span><\/p>\n

I even remember visiting a
\nstore with my parents and seeing a home computer for the first time as if it
\nwere only yesterday. The smell, the display, the excitement, the shelves and
\nshelves of games, and the ring bound manuals that would teach you how to write
\nsimple code. Those memories were made at the same time I was in school so
\nsubconsciously even that triggers further memories of friendships and times
\nwhen the responsibility monster wasn\u2019t lurking around every corner. <\/span><\/p>\n

The rabbit hole of nostalgia
\nruns deep in many of us, but this wonderfully complex paradoxical experience
\ndoesn\u2019t affect all of us, at least in the same way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nostalgia is a powerful form
\nof reminiscence that often takes the form of a first-person memory reminding us
\nof something, usually an event or experience when we were surrounded by friends
\nor family or we experienced moments of personal happiness. These moments can
\nbecome our anchors to happier times that can give us hope for the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nostalgia wasn\u2019t always seen
\nso positively though. More than 300-years ago it was commonly seen as a
\ndisorder of the mind that had potentially damaging consequences. It was seen as
\na form of depression where the person experiencing it would be unable to live
\nin the present. A Swiss medical student coined the term after observing the low
\nmorale and spirits of mercenaries fighting overseas. The word itself originates
\nfrom Nostos, which is Greek for homecoming and algos, which translates to ache.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

When we experience nostalgic
\nrecall, not everything we remember is a perfect replica of the time, the
\nmoment, the thing, or the event. Our minds do a very good job of adding mental
\nedits that make the memory more appealing which is why sometimes we feel
\nslightly disappointed when we find out that something from our childhood either
\nhasn\u2019t aged too well or isn\u2019t quite how we remembered it.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As time passed, the negative
\nconnotations of nostalgia were replaced as numerous studies eventually linked nostalgia
\nwith the human desire to reflect on happy memories of the past and some of
\nthese studies have found that nostalgia is more akin to a coping mechanism,
\noften finding that \u00a0<\/span>this mechanism works
\nto counteract any feelings of depression. Rather than being a negative, today
\nnostalgia is seen as a positive.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"artwork<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Did you know when you order directly from me, each print is signed, has an holograph applied, and comes with a printable version of the file on a USB memory stick. Some of my editions also come complete with collectible art cards, certificates of authenticity, and all prints are expertly printed by Master Printers on archival quality materials.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Many modern studies describe
\nnostalgia as something that helps us to reflect on better times rather than
\nspecific things, and many of these studies have identified nostalgia as being
\nsomething that can help lift our moods and reduce stress and it is able to
\nboost feelings of hope and optimism and provide us with memories that provide
\nhope that better times can be repeated again. \u00a0<\/span>I think that is exactly the reason why we are
\nseeing such a surge in popularity around collecting retro right now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of these studies suggest
\nthat it can even come to the fore as a defence mechanism but for many, nostalgia
\nI think, is mostly a force that provides us with an emotional experience that
\ncan unify and unite. Certainly for me, collecting 80s memorabilia, culture and period
\nspecific technologies, is as much about the surrounding community of
\nlike-minded people who are collecting the 80s as well. <\/span><\/p>\n

Being a collector of all
\nthings 80s has not only put me in touch with many people from all walks of life
\nwho are doing the same, it has taught me more than I ever learned in art school
\nabout how and why art produces such strong emotions in people. When we create
\nartworks, whatever subject they depict, as an artist, the ultimate wish is to
\nproduce something that resonates with and connects the viewer to the work. It
\ndoesn\u2019t have to be vintage or retro inspired, it just needs to subconsciously
\nspeak to the viewer. <\/span><\/p>\n

The art needs to take them
\nsomewhere, remind them of something, it needs to trigger an emotion and
\nhopefully provide the viewer with a connection either to the artwork or the
\nsubject the art depicts, art is from this perspective, exactly what we are now
\nseeing amongst so many retro collectors, what they are collecting is often a
\nconnection to the past and better times.<\/span><\/p>\n

So alongside the need for
\npreservation, I always hope that someone can find some helpful nostalgic recall
\nand be reminded of the past to provide at least a glimmer of hope for the
\nfuture. Arguably, this should make the creation of art much simpler when
\nrecreating memory invoking images of past times, but in my experience I\u2019ve
\nfound it anything but simple. <\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever work you create has
\nto hit the sweet spot of believability, just enough to trigger a memory so that
\nthe mind can then take over and apply its own set of filters. That\u2019s when it
\nbecomes a little more challenging, if you add into the mix some of the most
\ndiscerning and authenticity seeking collectors that I have ever come across, you
\nwill find that many of these collectors will have an insatiable appetite for
\nauthenticity, so recreating past times on canvas or screen isn\u2019t quite as easy
\nas you would think.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"80s<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Eighties Rock Guitar by Mark Taylor – This is the guitar I really wanted back in the 1980s!<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

With the 1980s pixel art style
\nbecoming an increasingly-popular artistic trend, if not close to being seen in
\nthe mainstream as a movement, the use of modern technologies to recreate
\nvintage graphics leaves those of us who lived through the 8-bit era a little
\nempty. Sure, the work is often a nod to the formative years for those of us of
\na certain age, but for a real nostalgia hit I always find myself looking for
\nsomething well, a little more authentic than most of the recreated memories I
\nsee hawked as being retro on marketplaces such as Amazon. <\/span><\/p>\n

When I say that pixel art and
\nretro more generally is becoming a trend, the reality is that in some circles
\npixel art and that vintage aesthetic have been an artistic staple for as long
\nas I can remember, it\u2019s certainly nothing new. <\/span><\/p>\n

Pixel art is now becoming more
\npopular in the media and certainly, the style is being increasingly used in
\ngraphic design partly because the world loves nostalgia and it\u2019s a great way for
\na marketing team to build a connection, but looking back through the history of
\ndigital art over the past four decades, I would say that pixel art has been a
\nlegitimate artistic movement for a while, some of my own collectors have been with
\nme since the 80s. <\/span><\/p>\n

So why is it suddenly so popular,\u00a0 <\/span>I think mostly that it\u2019s just that the press
\ndidn\u2019t cover it quite like they do today, and some consumer products from the
\ndecade are beginning to turn up in auction houses and fetching eye-watering prices
\nfor stuff we often think we still have somewhere in the attic before realising
\nwe threw it away when we last had a clear out. 80s prices can be a media frenzy
\nof shock and awe.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many of us original pixel
\npushers have already made decades long careers out of creating this style of
\nart and many of the processes I use today are no different to the processes I
\nused back in the 1980s and 90s. Indeed, many of the commissions I get today are
\ncommissions to do the same things I was doing in the 80s and 90s. To some, that
\nmight sound as if my career has never moved on to doing something new, but that
\ncouldn\u2019t be further from the reality, there is always something new to do and
\nsomething new to learn about the three decades I cover.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s the side art for
\na video game cabinet or pixelated assets used in a retro-inspired video game,
\nor even recreating the ephemeral content that was packaged with 1980s products
\nand games, I can\u2019t really think of anything that I do today that is all that
\ndifferent to when I first started out, except I\u2019m now doing more of it, with a
\nfar greater appreciation and understanding, especially now there are an
\nincreasing number of people looking to collect everything 80s and 90s. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Geometric<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Geometric Emotion by Mark Taylor – an 80s colour pallet and he mainstream introduction of Polygons at the back end of the 80s and early 90s was the inspiration for this piece.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

If you are serious about
\ncreating retro\/vintage-inspired works, you really do have to convey a sense of believability
\nfor the work to resonate with the viewer. I\u2019ve been painting 80s life and have been
\ninvolved with 80s technology since the 80s and I have to say, creating vintage
\nstyle art with any level of authenticity with modern tools can be challenging
\nbecause the tools we have today are simply, too good. We didn\u2019t have the
\ndistraction of 8K BS, we had fuzzy and noise and overheating power supplies.<\/span><\/p>\n

The equipment used to create
\nthis type of art and graphic design in the 80s was minimalist compared to
\ntodays technology, and by minimalist, that\u2019s a massive understatement I think. This
\ncreates a challenge for any artist who wants to create truly authentic looking
\nwork with modern technology, it\u2019s not even on the same level. Nowhere even
\nclose.<\/span><\/p>\n

So much of the pixel art that
\nis created today looks brilliant, it\u2019s clean and crisp, usually very colourful,
\nand it mostly has a very distinct look and feel. But what it doesn\u2019t have is
\nany authenticity at all. This is fine for many casual fans of the 80\u2019s genre,
\nit nods back to a period in time, but if your collector base is built from
\nvintage, rather than retro collectors, (there\u2019s a difference we\u2019ll touch on
\nlater), this modern approach and the look of modern day 8-bit graphics feels
\ntoo much like an abstraction and it can fail to connect those harder-core
\nvintage buyers who are looking for authenticity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just to clarify and recap very
\nquickly from one of my earlier retro articles, and I will paraphrase here for
\nbrevity, retro is a modern interpretation or recreation of something of
\nvintage, though the terms are often used interchangeably. Collectors of retro
\ncomputer games for example are really collecting vintage games if they are the
\noriginals, they would be collecting retro games if they were made more recently
\nto look or act like the originals. Generally, in the collector world,
\neverything comes under a retro heading just to confuse and bemuse!<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s one thing I have had
\nto learn over the years and that is, to persuade buyers of retro and vintage
\ninspired works to choose one work over another, is that you have to add that
\nbelievable layer of authenticity to the work. What I\u2019ve generally found is that
\nbuyers are usually buying it to add to a collection of similar works from the
\nperiod they\u2019re collecting, or they\u2019re buying to provide a period specific
\naesthetic alongside a retro or vintage collection. <\/span><\/p>\n

Something else I have learned
\nis that dedicated vintage collectors are willing to pay more for authenticity
\nwhich is pretty awesome as an artist, but that does bring a level of complexity
\nthat might make it more challenging for some artists to serve that particular
\nmarket.<\/span><\/p>\n

Vintage, as opposed to retro
\ncollectors are also a very vocal bunch when it comes to this ask for authenticity.
\nIdeally they would be buying genuine work from the period in time but that\u2019s
\nnot always possible. That might in some cases be down to the often
\nover-inflated expense of buying almost anything vintage, or down to scarcity. <\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that most
\nthings from the 80s are in short supply these days, you can easily find almost
\nany technology from the era, but finding mint condition examples is difficult
\nand when you do find a good example, there are plenty of people willing to sell
\nso long as you also pay what has become known as the retro tax.<\/span><\/p>\n

The media hype around retro
\nhas made collecting anything vintage, trendy. What you will see as a collector
\ntoday is that there will be many people scouring their garages and attics to
\ndig out items from the 70s, 80s and 90s, and then they will promptly upload
\nphotos of those items to eBay and describe them as super-rare. Honestly, there
\nis very little from any of those decades that is super-rare when it comes to
\ntechnology. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"high<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
High Density by Mark Taylor – The floppy disc evolved and became less floppy by the end of the 80s. They were inexpensive but just how much plastic did they use to create them? The 80s was a very disposable era.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Those same people then apply
\nwhat we hardened collectors call the retro tax, a premium that doesn\u2019t always
\ncome out of demand and supply, but out of media reports telling everyone that
\neverything is more valuable than it is. There is then the media hype when
\nsomething seemingly once popular but is actually an especially rare example
\nsuch as a prototype or something that is factory sealed in original condition
\nsells for an eye-watering amount at auction. Made in the eighties isn\u2019t a label
\nthat also says it\u2019s automatically rare or valuable.<\/span><\/p>\n

Case in point, I continue to
\nuse cathode ray tube TVs and monitors to create some of my retro and vintage
\nwork on and I still use them whenever I exhibit my retro\/vintage works as part
\nof my display. I can buy a good quality, working CRT TV for less than twenty
\nbucks quite easily, Facebook Marketplace is full of them, but as soon as the
\nseller calls it a retro CRT and maybe adds a line that suggests the TV is ideal
\nfor use with old computers, the price can jump ten-fold, and there will be some
\nunwitting individuals who will buy into the hype. <\/span><\/p>\n

If you are recreating vintage
\nwork for collectors who are collecting an aesthetic trend rather than anything
\nmore authentic, the modern-day abstraction\/representation created with modern
\nequipment is usually going to be fine. If you want your work to appeal to a
\nmuch more niche collector base, and a collector base that will happily pay more
\nfor that added authenticity, you need to be firstly become much more creative
\nin how you produce the work, and secondly, you often have to think beyond the
\nuse of modern-day equipment to achieve results that the more niche collectors
\nwill be happy to take over an original item.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had the same conversation
\nwith many artists over the years about collectors of period specific work. From
\nexperience, buyers of this work can usually be split into two very distinct
\ncamps. The first camp is made from collectors who, like I said earlier, are
\nlooking for the 8-bit retro aesthetic, it\u2019s a trend, a nod to an age, it
\nprovides a flavour of the past, and the second camp is looking for an exact \u00a0<\/span>and authentic look. <\/span><\/p>\n

This is no different to
\ncollectors of other art genres, there will be people who will be happy to own a
\nposter and others who only want the original work and a few who will be happy
\nwith a compromise in between or at least a really good fake, not that I endorse
\nfakes, in my ephemera recreations I state on the images that it is a facsimile
\nof the original or a recreation, but mostly what these collectors are looking
\nfor is an authentic recreation that provides the same kind of detail found in
\nthe original. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"calculator<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Old School Math by Mark Taylor – you might not immediately notice the level of detail in these pieces, below is a close up of the LED matrix on the screen.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Calculator<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
All LED screens will have some level of visible matrix – it was very noticeable on 80s technology.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Electronic<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
This shows another method used in 80s LED screens, this is another artwork asset I created and it appears in a number of 80s works! Gaussian Blur is applied between layers using a luminosity brush and the LEDs are slightly offset from the lines as the artwork nearly always appears at an angle…\u00a0this is what you would see on the original device. There is also a small level of motion blur applied here too.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

The critical difference for
\ncollectors who are interested in the 1980s is that the 1980s, and even the 70s
\nand 90s, were very disposable decades. Sure, you can buy almost any technology
\nfrom the time, as I said, none of it is really super-rare and it might have
\nbeen built at low cost at the time but it was usually built to last, hence I
\nstill use 40-year old computers today. The ephemera on the other hand, the
\nboxes, the stuff that came packaged with the thing you are buying, most of that
\nstuff was thrown away. <\/span><\/p>\n

Another case in point here, if
\nyou take video games from the 80s as an example, most kids would take the game
\ncartridges out the box and throw the box and the instructions away. That\u2019s
\nexactly why there is such a huge market for recreated boxes and packaging these
\ndays. Last week I found an original box for an early home computer without its
\ncontents on sale for \u00a3400 (UK), the computer that went inside was available for
\n\u00a380 (UK) unboxed, and I have little doubt that someone made the purchase of the
\nbox, now whether they will get the whole \u00a3480 back if they were to sell both
\ntogether is another story, collectors of vintage technology tend to hold on to
\nit rather than sell it.<\/span><\/p>\n

A recreation of a Colecovision
\nvideo game cartridge box will probably set you back thirty bucks or more in
\nsome cases and that\u2019s without the game cartridge or any manual included, an
\noriginal empty box for the console, and one that\u2019s in nowhere near pristine
\ncondition can set you back at least a hundred bucks, if it\u2019s pristine or a very
\ngood recreation then you can expect to double or even triple the value
\ndepending on your location. <\/span><\/p>\n

As an American console, here
\nin the UK the Colecovision console box could fetch considerably more in mint
\ncondition because the console wasn\u2019t as popular over here, I did own one and
\nregret selling it on every day. A recreated console box with polystyrene
\ninserts can cost just as much as a console, often more, and these things sell. <\/span><\/p>\n

This is the level of
\nauthenticity that the more niche collectors will be looking for. Most artists
\nwho recreate vintage packaging are now having to place customers on wait lists,
\nI\u2019m even having to do this at the moment for some items of my recreated
\nephemera, especially manuals where the wait list can be even longer if I need
\nto track original reference copies down.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you are looking at art as a
\nmeans to provide you with a living wage, there is a living to be made from
\nnostalgia. I know a number of artists who make a healthy living creating the
\naesthetic look and feel of the 80s using modern technologies, but if you are
\nprepared to put the work in and, at this point I have to say you do really have
\nto have a passion for the period, the real living to be made is in the more
\nniche market of vintage collectors who are looking for that certain level of added
\nauthenticity and products that enhance the collectability of products they
\nalready own. <\/span><\/p>\n

This is the retro world\u2019s
\nequivalent of the high-end fine art market, where a pristine and factory sealed
\nexample of a mass produced and hugely popular video game (Super Mario) can set
\nyou back upwards of a million bucks. Although, I\u2019m not convinced that the
\nmarket for that game wasn\u2019t well and truly played a little here. We\u2019re now in a
\ntime when video games can be graded and encapsulated in the same way we might
\ngrade rare coins.<\/span><\/p>\n

I would also probably add that
\nunless you have a real passion for the eighties, you might not ever find any
\nreal level of traction with the high-end 80s collectors unless what you are
\noffering is above and beyond what\u2019s already available. If you are simply
\nlooking to create art that sells in volume, the retro aesthetic might be as
\ngood as it gets, it\u2019s still a tough and crowded market to enter but there are
\nplenty of buyers. If you are looking to engage with more serious collectors, it
\nbecomes less about the money and more about the art and recreations that you
\ncreate and your knowledge and passion of the period they are collecting. <\/span><\/p>\n

It’s also worth bearing in
\nmind that creating 80s vintage works isn\u2019t just about recreating images from
\nvideo games or the technologies of the day. The eighties was responsible for
\nthe Memphis Design movement which continues to be used in many retro-inspired
\ndesigns today, and I suspect in many cases, it is a style that is used without
\nany depth of knowledge about the movement itself. <\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to cast any
\ndispersion on the ability or skill of the artists creating it, it was a look
\nthat defined the 80s as much as anything else and there is nothing that screams
\n1980s louder than the patterns used in the MTV logos used throughout that
\nperiod in time. But, it was a relatively short-lived style that is too often
\nonly remembered for its visuals rather than its origins.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, it\u2019s a design style
\nthat is often used in the wrong way on the wrong products, but understanding
\nhow and when Memphis Design styles were used can make your retro-inspired works
\nand recreations much more appealing to collectors of period works.<\/span><\/p>\n

Memphis Design began with a
\ngathering of architects and industrial designers in Milan, Italy, in 1981. They
\nwere dismayed at how creativity had stagnated and become corporate and uniform.
\nThey looked back to the works of Kadinsky, the abstract shapes and colours of
\ncubism, De Stijl and Harlem renaissance art and the pop-art movement of the
\n1960s, and they then incorporated elements of popular low culture into a very
\ndistinct style which was of liberation and joy, yet today it is often
\nassociated with rebelliousness.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the inception of the
\nstyle there was\u00a0 <\/span>an exposition of these
\ngaudy, outlandish works and in a parody of high class culture it caused massive
\ndisruption in the design community and even its haters found it difficult to
\navoid this new artistic trend of neon pallets and swirly patterns. It was intentionally
\ncreated in bad taste to fit in with a decade that gave birth to glam metal and
\nshoulder pads, and was in sharp contrast to the austerity of the Reagan
\nadministration in the USA. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Memphis group closed its
\ndoors in 1987 after Black Monday but its colourful style persisted well into
\nthe 1990s where it gained even more traction after being integral to TV show
\nsets such as Saved by the Bell<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

As an artist, there\u2019s a fine
\nline in creating anything from the period with any authenticity and creating something
\nthat just looks either dated or too modern. This is why as an artist it is
\nimportant to make sure that you do your homework and pay attention to the
\ndetail. <\/span><\/p>\n

Research is a very useful
\nskill to develop which will help enhance your historic knowledge of whatever
\nperiod your work depicts. Having that knowledge will make your creative process
\nmuch easier and your creative output will stand up better to what I like to
\nterm as, collector scrutiny. The details as I\u2019ve mentioned already really do matter
\nto high-end collectors, I can\u2019t stress that enough. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Life<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Life in Stereo by Mark Taylor\u00a0 – Those headphones were great… at the time. Today, not so much but they are still popular on eBay!<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

When I look at old technology
\nI distinctly remember its subtle nuances, but technology has changed
\nexponentially and many of these nuances have been lost through iterative innovation
\nover the years since. To a collector, it is those tiny details that can make a
\nwealth of difference in triggering memories and evoking any kind of emotion for
\ntimes past. <\/span><\/p>\n

Pay attention to the detail as
\nan artist and this can negate the negative comments on social platforms and it
\ncan be the difference between collectors selecting your vintage-inspired work
\nover someone else\u2019s. Whilst there is a lot of great work already out there,
\nvery little of it drills down into the level of period specific detail that high-end
\ncollectors want. <\/span><\/p>\n

If I could offer one piece of
\nadvice to any artist looking to create retro-inspired works and vintage
\nrecreations beyond creating retro-themed designs that have more of an aesthetic
\nrather than collectible function, that advice would be to get your head
\ncompletely in an eighties (or any other period specific) space. <\/span><\/p>\n

For retro works that depict
\nthe output from old technology, such as recreating those pixelated 8-bit images
\nthat have become so popular, it\u2019s worth understanding how much different the
\ntechnology in the 80s was compared to the technology we use today.
\nUnderstanding the nuances of 8-bit graphics compared to something you could
\nproduce on a modern PC with Photoshop will help you to recreate some of that
\nauthenticity that is often missing and with a little period knowledge, it\u2019s not
\nespecially any more difficult to create a more authentic piece of work. <\/span><\/p>\n

I think to an extent, it\u2019s
\nalso worth understanding how the industry operated too. Many of the graphical
\nstyles came about as a result of how the machines had been built. They were usually
\nto retail at a low price point, and partly, due to the businesses practices of
\nthe day which focussed on pushing product out in the shortest possible time
\nframe. This often had an impact on the quality of the visuals meaning that more
\noften than not, you really don\u2019t have to overthink some of this type of work. The
\ndetail is often more about what\u2019s missing rather than what\u2019s there.<\/span><\/p>\n

Magazines of the period are
\ninteresting in that the screen shots they would print would usually be of
\nmoving images that couldn\u2019t be paused. What the magazine photographer would
\nneed to do is to build a dark housing and use a traditional camera, capturing
\nmultiple shots to hopefully capture the shot they are looking for. <\/span><\/p>\n

In some magazines, they would
\nbuild contraptions where the camera could be operated with the foot as the photographer
\nplayed through the game, so anything published was usually published not as
\nclearly as you would expect from a magazine today, but with added noise, maybe
\na few light trails, and certainly never at the resolution we might expect to
\nsee in a magazine today.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>My professional art story began in the early
\neighties not too long after I received a home computer from my parents as a
\nChristmas gift. The year was 1980 and the home computer I was gifted one
\nChristmas morning arrived under the tree as a kit that needed to be built. Once
\nassembled, it connected to the TV and well, it didn\u2019t do very much. If I had
\nbeen thinking that it would compete with my Atari VCS and allow me to play
\nvideo games and listen to the exciting beeps and well, beeps, I would be
\nmistaken. <\/span><\/p>\n

There was no sound, there was
\nno colour, it displayed text, often not very well, it had way less oomph than
\nthe Atari console which by then was woefully underpowered itself, (it was
\npurposely underpowered on its own release day) but the excitement came from
\nbeing able to do something other than move abstract pixelated representations
\nof stick figures around in a video game. <\/span><\/p>\n

I was finally able to create these
\nabstract representations, well, sort of. I was able to place characters on a
\nscreen and interact with them and as a na\u00efve child, that seemed to me to be the
\nfuture. By now we were still only a few steps beyond the original Pong video game
\nthat made history during the 70s, but it was the control given to the user that
\ntook it to a new level.<\/span><\/p>\n

Exactly a year later I found
\nan upgraded computer under the tree and this time it had been assembled in a
\nfactory, it didn\u2019t flicker on and off each time a key was touched, and I say
\ntouched, this was touch well before we had touch screens. <\/span><\/p>\n

The keyboard was a plastic
\nmembrane with printed keys for the keyboard, just like the last one but with a
\nlittle more added oomph that had been missing a year earlier. It still had no
\nsound and it still only had two colours, either black or white but it had a
\nwhole 1Kilobyte of memory. (Yes, 1024 of those kilobytes are needed for a megabyte,
\nwhich is still not enough to store a music track). Thinking back, I can\u2019t even
\ncontemplate how we even managed to fit so much in so little, an entire game
\ncould run in less than 1 kilobyte, 16 or 48 kilobytes if you were lucky, you
\nhad no choice other than to be efficient at coding and so often that efficiency
\nwouldn\u2019t leave any room for overly complex images to be displayed. There would
\nbe no work for digital artists in this arena for at least another couple of
\nyears but that didn\u2019t stop us from pushing the pixels around.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Sinclair<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Sinclair ZX81 Keyboard – Touch before touch and slightly ahead of the chicklet style keyboards often made from rubber or small plastic keys that hardly moved when pressed. Note the BASIC commands could be entered by pressing a single key rather than typing each command in manually. The endless loop of 20 GOTO 10…<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Not wanting to raise too many
\nexpectations here but that added oomph still seemed to be less than the Atari VCS
\nwhich had been released in around 1976. The earliest home computers by around
\n1980 technically had more power, but they didn\u2019t have cartridge based software
\nwhere the cartridges would often have additional components included that would
\nprovide added functionality and more power to the console. <\/span><\/p>\n

So whilst the early
\nmicrocomputers were technically more advanced they were also often less capable
\nand more limiting, rarely displaying their output in colour and they frequently
\nhad no sound. But they did have a keyboard and a programmable language, and
\nthat was all that was needed back then.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was these limitations that
\ndrove the initial creativity in the home computer industry and those very
\nlimitations taught me and many others some very early lessons in efficiency
\nthat would lead to forming the foundations that would later introduce me to a
\nwide range of programming languages, BASIC, Forth, Fortran, PASCAL, and 6502
\nand 6508 Assembly. Bear in mind that early digital art wasn\u2019t created in
\npackages such as Photoshop, each pixel on screen was programmed in using
\nwhatever code the computer understood. At first this would be something like
\nBASIC, later it would be assembly, today we just fire up Photoshop or we\u2019ll
\nturn to AI.<\/span><\/p>\n

Getting to grips with any of
\nthese early and simple programming languages would be useful to understand the
\nlanguages in use today. When coding in HTML or C or any other modern day
\nprogramming language, having a grasp of those early languages has been
\nmassively useful as it is those old languages that underpin pretty much every modern
\nprogramming language of today. If you are about to learn C or anything else,
\ngrab an emulator and learn BASIC or Assembly, the modern language will be way
\neasier to get to grips with!<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe what\u2019s more remarkable
\nis just how much you could do with 1kilobyte of memory. Today, modern coders
\nare nowhere near as efficient in their programming because they have the luxury
\nof almost exponential power. If more RAM is needed then it\u2019s a simple upgrade
\nusing relatively cheap components, back in the 80s, we would have no option
\nother than to become really creative in how we got the machines to carry out
\ninstructions so that the need for additional and expensive RAM would be
\nnegated. Contentiously, I\u2019m going to go there, modern programmers have it
\nalmost too good and that makes modern code generally pretty sloppy and
\ninefficient.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, my process frequently involves
\nsetting limitations and working within them. Of course, it\u2019s not always
\npossible to do, we have higher resolutions, different display technologies and
\nwe don\u2019t all have access to working vintage technology on which to create new
\nvintage works, neither would that be entirely practical for most artists to do.
\nBut setting limitations around colour pallets, resolution, and even brush sizes
\nwill bring you closer to achieving a more authentic look.<\/span><\/p>\n

By 1982, things had changed
\nand technology was in comparison to at any time before, almost abundant in
\nsupply, massively more inexpensive than ever, and the missing oomph had by now
\nbeen included. The game (literally) began to change in every conceivable way,
\nespecially when it came to pushing pixels around the screen. The beeps had
\nmatured to beeps that could vary in pitch and duration, and by the end of 1982,
\nwe had powerful on-board sound chips that would sound almost orchestral. <\/span><\/p>\n

Today there is an entire
\ndemographic who buy chip tune music tracks, tunes created on an early computer,
\nmostly the Commodore 64 with its phenomenal SID chip and the Commodore Amiga.
\nThe US really missed out on the Amiga through some bad business practices made
\nby Commodore at the time, yet it is a machine still used by many DJs and digital
\nartists even today, not least in part due to Andy Warhol\u2019s mid-eighties works
\ncreated on the Amiga 1000. <\/span><\/p>\n

This leap in technology wasn\u2019t
\nthe same story everywhere though. Small home microcomputers that were wallet,
\nand relatively user friendly might have been popular here in the UK where
\nalmost every week a new model would come to market, but elsewhere and
\nespecially in the US, Atari still dominated alongside Apple. <\/span><\/p>\n

Despite new home micro\u2019s being
\nintroduced the same kind of buzz for microcomputers across the pond was
\nsomewhat different to the buzz for home micro\u2019s here in the UK. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Coco<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Hot CoCo by Mark Taylor – broadly compatible with the UKs Dragon 32, which was built in Wales. The CoCo was pretty epic for its time and available from Tandy\/Radio Shack – the artwork was inspired by the CoCo!<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Apple and a few others such as
\nTandy\u2019s Color Computer (CoCo) were steadily making inroads into the market. We
\ndid get the CoCo here in the UK alongside the Dragon 32, a Welsh computer
\nbroadly compatible with the CoCo, at least until Dragon was acquired by a
\nSpanish company. Apple with the original Apple and later the Apple II were
\nmainly focussed on the US markets.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>The Apple II was a powerhouse in comparison to
\nmost other machines, as was Commodore\u2019s effort with the Commodore 64 a little
\nwhile later, and even its predecessor, the VIC-20 and Commodore PET, but then
\nthe gloss fell away from a saturated US video game market and the industry
\nseemed to flounder for a while between 1983 and 1984. Business computers didn\u2019t
\nhave quite the same fate, but those marketed for the home became less popular
\nfor a while.<\/span><\/p>\n

Video games suddenly lost
\ntheir cool factor in the USA between 1983 and 1984, but we limped along quite
\nwell in the UK and Europe, in part because the market was awash with affordable
\nhome micro\u2019s and there was a relatively strong academic program supporting the
\nuse of computers in schools here in the UK. We also had an abundance of budget
\nvideo games available from the likes of Mastertronic, everything remained affordable.<\/span><\/p>\n

When we talk about the great
\nvideo game crash of 1983, the crash was mostly confined to North America, we
\ncertainly didn\u2019t see it here in the UK or indeed in Europe more widely. It was
\nan especially vibrant time for the industry outside of the USA and much of the
\nretro-influence we see today isn\u2019t always predicated on what would have been
\npopular in the USA, but elsewhere in Europe. Many of today\u2019s retro aesthetic
\nworks are very much of a European influence.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll take a quick opportunity
\nto digress here, just as a point of reference, the UK and Europe influenced
\nmuch of what we see today in part due to video games such as Grand Theft Auto
\nand Tomb Raider being developed originally here in the UK. Even Nintendo would
\nuse a British developer to produce historic classics such as Goldeneye on the
\nNintendo 64. <\/span><\/p>\n

A UK video game company, Rare,
\nwas chosen by Nintendo to work on multiple titles and was based not too far
\naway from where I live today but they would be known before this as Ultimate
\nPlay the Game. They were seen as a leader in developing titles for early
\nBritish home micro\u2019s that are more and more in demand these days in the USA
\nwhere the vintage computer collector base is becoming massively focussed on
\nBritish home microcomputers of late. <\/span><\/p>\n

Digressing over and back to
\nthe 80s when Atari took most of the brunt for what is now known as the great
\nvideo game crash. More specifically, the crash is often wrongly attributed to
\nthe poor job and oversupply Atari had done with the release of their ET game, a
\ngame that became almost folkloric in that twice the number of game cartridges
\nwere produced than the number of consoles owned. Added to that, Atari sent the
\noverstock to a desert landfill, although the real story is a little more
\ncomplicated than that. <\/span><\/p>\n

Here’s the thing. It wasn\u2019t ET
\nbeing labelled as the worst video game in history that paused the market in the
\nUS, neither was it Atari, it was a combination of oversupply from dozens of
\nmanufacturers joining the silicon gold rush alongside some ropey industry
\nmanagement practices and sketchy quality control within the sector as a whole
\nand the emergence of many, many, new platforms, too many that would quickly
\nbecome unsupported or would bankrupt the manufacturers when coupled with all of
\nthe other poor management decisions being made at the time. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The ET game had been developed
\nin five weeks so it was never going to be a triple A title, but hype and Steven
\nSpielberg together sold silicon. As a game, it wasn\u2019t completely terrible and
\nit does retain some fans even today, but let\u2019s be clear, Atari\u2019s ET game was
\nmade into a scapegoat that just so happened to take the focus away from the
\nreal issues in the valley. <\/span><\/p>\n

Today, the Atari ET game
\ncartridge can be picked up for small pocket change, the box on the other hand,
\nthat\u2019s a different story and again this has presented many modern-day artists
\nwith a revenue stream in recreating the ephemera and packaging and much of the
\nretro work that is seen today is often based on the look of the graphics that
\nwere made famous by Atari\u2019s late 70s and early 80s games consoles.<\/span><\/p>\n

That said, there was no
\nindustry blueprint for anyone to follow in the 80s, least of all those at the
\nfront who were introducing new technologies to the world. It was an era of
\ndigital pioneers when no one really understood the market and the market was
\nstruggling to truly understand the technology. People were literally making
\nthings up as they went along.<\/span><\/p>\n

Consoles would eventually revive
\nthe US industry with Nintendo\u2019s introduction of the N.E.S (Nintendo
\nEntertainment System). Every American friend I had at the time and have spoken
\nto since seemed to own the N.E.S, to the extent that I did ponder for a while
\nif it was part of some government program that gave them away.<\/span><\/p>\n

But these consoles were not
\nuser programmable computers which had remained popular in the UK and Europe. We
\ndidn\u2019t get sight of the N.E.S here in the UK until a while later which gave British
\nand European brands such as the likes of Commodore, Sinclair, Acorn, Oric, and
\nlater, Amstrad, some room to breathe. <\/span><\/p>\n

The US did get to see at least
\na couple of these brands but in the case of Sinclair, it would have been known
\nin the States as Timex following a deal that had been done with the UK brand
\nowned by Sir Clive Sinclair. This didn\u2019t change the fact that home micro\u2019s were
\nnowhere near as prevalent in the States as they were in the UK and Europe
\nduring that time and as a result, pixel art in the States was a little more
\ncomplex and somewhat less accessible and massively more unaffordable to create than
\nit was in the UK and Europe where affordability played a major role in selling
\nhome computers and encouraging users to become creative.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"3.5<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Three Point Five by Mark Taylor – another work featuring the 80s calculator – the detail here includes detail on the page, my signature appears in the text on the page!<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

When I say that in the UK
\nthings were vastly different in the home computer industry, that doesn\u2019t mean
\nthat things were necessarily always better. We struggled in the UK and Europe with
\noversupply, poor quality, and bad business practices within the industry just
\nas much as anywhere else. Possibly more so as everyone was suddenly in the
\nbusiness of supplying software that was often rushed and publishers desperate
\nfor new IP would lap it up and pay for almost anything so long as you could
\nkeep supplying them with code.<\/span><\/p>\n

In truth, they would take
\npretty much anything and place it on a store shelf safely in the knowledge that
\nsomeone would buy it. I know because even I created a game for one of the Atari
\n8-bit micro\u2019s that never really went anywhere commercially, hey, I was about 14
\nwhen I wrote it. It wasn\u2019t a great game even for the time on reflection, it was
\nrushed, it took me around a week in the evenings and it didn\u2019t particularly
\nsell very well even though publishers never shared sales numbers with the
\ncreators. <\/span><\/p>\n

Yet the game I created, along
\nwith a rudimentary image editor, a basic inventory tool which had originally
\nbeen created for my father\u2019s business and another small game written entirely
\nin BASIC had all ironically sold a little better than the game written in a
\nmuch faster assembly language. <\/span><\/p>\n

Some people were earning some
\nsignificant sums of money from generating some pretty rubbish code, others were
\nearning slightly less for better quality, but what I had produced at the time
\nstill gave me enough to pay for a car in cash when I was 18 years old. Financially
\nthe rest of the world was in turmoil but in the 8-bit world of microcomputers,
\nI\u2019ve never seen anything like it before or since. If anything from the 80s
\ncould magically happen again, I would have to say I would hope it would be the
\n8-bit gold rush because plenty of us were making bank for creating small 8-bit
\nimages and coding very simple games!<\/span><\/p>\n

What seemed to happen in the
\nUK and Europe was that a different direction had been taken than the one being
\ntaken everywhere else. Very few of the home micro\u2019s were being marketed as
\ngames machines instead they would be targeted towards an education market, and
\nmuch of that was simply down to the government recognising that computer science
\nshould become more established in early years schools. Yet those schools never
\ntaught people how to create digital art, that was just a side-benefit that
\nhappened out of necessity, games needed graphics, and programmers slowly
\nlearned that they weren\u2019t artists.<\/span><\/p>\n

There seemed to be a different
\nview in the UK around how computers could be used for creativity. That\u2019s not to
\nsay that the value of the computer was not recognised elsewhere, MIT for
\nexample gave birth to some of the most prolific coders of any generation before
\nor since. US developers were prolific in their support for the early Apple,
\nAtari and Commodore computers as well as the huge arcade industry born in the
\nUSA.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inadvertently, the arcade
\nindustry helped to shape the creative industry by bringing art and technology
\neven closer together. That multi-million dollar industry that would be fed on
\nquarters spawned a whole generation of artists who would mostly remain
\nanonymous for many years. In the background they would work on graphics for the
\narcade games in an ultra-competitive space, but they would also be instrumental
\nin designing the arcade cabinets and side art, most of which would be silk
\nscreen printed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here in the UK, I was
\nbeginning to establish myself as a creator of digital images, but for the most
\npart, artists were never really an absolute requirement in the home computer or
\nvideo games industry. Coders tended to create their own art, usually badly, and
\nit wouldn\u2019t be until the 90s that digital artists would really begin to come to
\nthe fore and at least occasionally get some kind of mention in the credits. <\/span><\/p>\n

My entry to the art world has
\nbeen documented before so I won\u2019t reexplore it fully here, but suffice to say
\nthat during the 80s I had begun the transition from creating art on traditional
\nmediums to pushing pixels around on a screen, and with the innovation we
\nstarted to see in printing technologies, having the ability to sell prints of
\nthat work meant that I was able to turn what was once a mere childhood hobby
\ninto a fully fledged business. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Remember, this was the very
\nearly eighties and even way before Warhol had touched the Commodore Amiga home
\ncomputer and recreated the Campbell\u2019s Soup Can in a digital form. Yes, people
\ndid create digital art before Warhol, he was simply way better than anyone else
\nat grabbing peoples attention. <\/span><\/p>\n

It would be another three
\nyears beyond 1982 and another couple of microcomputers before I took on my
\nfirst paid commission to produce digital art, a genre so new that we had really
\nonly just started to call it digital art in a mainstream sense, although
\nearlier digital art goes back to the early 1960s and even a little before.
\nNeither did we call it pixel art as it is sometimes referred to as today. <\/span><\/p>\n

Looking back, even though the
\nterm digital art was being loosely used what we were doing with computers
\nwasn\u2019t really recognised as artistic, certainly not in any meaningful way or
\neven close to being recognised in the same way that digital art is recognised today.
\nVery few people understood what digital art was and others would dismiss it as
\nnon-art. <\/span><\/p>\n

Only recently, and maybe even
\nin the past five or six years has digital art become more ingrained and
\naccepted as art in the mainstream and there are still those who continue to
\nhold out that digital works cannot be art. This might surprise many people but
\ndespite digital art\u2019s long history even before the birth of the 80s home
\ncomputer market which would make it more accessible to artists, it\u2019s often seen
\nas something new that requires little to no skill to achieve, which couldn\u2019t be
\nfurther from the truth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Commercial digital art was by
\nand large, even in the mid to late 80s still very much a traditional and mostly
\nmanual process of laying things out on paper. Image editors were still few and
\nfar between and professional publishing applications were rare and expensive, and
\nthey weren\u2019t that great compared to todays applications, they would only really
\nbe used in the high end media industries and the press until we started to see
\nreleases such as Delux Paint on the Commodore Amiga.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Atari<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Atari Box Art 1980s – Copyright Atari – These boxes are in demand today and recreations are available! Amazing artwork on every one!<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Before the digital art
\napplication, if you needed an image to appear on screen, you mostly had to
\nlearn how to program it either through early programming languages such as
\nBASIC or you would need to learn assembly language which was specific to each microprocessor.
\nFew programmers would take their work to the next level and design their own
\nimage and sound editors but by the mid-80s, I had fallen in love with Delux
\nPaint on the Commodore Amiga, a machine that was completely misunderstood
\noutside of the UK and Europe, but one which now has thousands of users and fans
\naround the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mostly, pre-Commodore Amiga, we
\nwere dealing with 8×8 blocks of pixels and trying our very best to make that
\nsmall area pop with colour, mostly the same colour, and we were also trying to
\nbe as photorealistic as possible which was impossible with the technology we
\nhad, but like I always say, eighties kids had the best imaginations. <\/span><\/p>\n

Nothing we could do with the
\ntechnology we had was even close to being photorealistic back then, all we had
\nwere pixelated structures with jagged edges, it was a look that defined the
\nvideo games scene of the eighties and well into the nineties, but still a step
\nbeyond the earlier consoles such as the Intellivision and Atari Video Computer
\nSystem, and with this new-found power, digital art was beginning to emerge in
\nits pixelated glory. <\/span><\/p>\n

Chunky pixels were the only
\noption and would be until much later when we saw the introduction of 16-Bit
\ncomputers and later PCs, but it was never the intent of any of the original
\npixel artists to be pixel artists, we were just creating pictures and artworks
\nwith a purpose, the purpose usually being to convey a message to the viewer or to
\nprovide a playfield or character whilst all of the time trying to make the
\nimages not look like they had been created on a computer.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was a graphical leap
\nforward in the 90s and this made things easier and graphically, closer to
\nphotorealism. For a while developers had been stitching together four unique sprites
\nto create bigger animated characters and manufacturers had begun to turn to new
\ntechnologies such as graphic cards for the PC and alternative graphic modes
\nsuch as mode 7 on the Super Nintendo. <\/span><\/p>\n

In most cases where cartridges
\nwould be used, additional chips would be included \u2013 pushing the price of the
\ncartridges up in price, but by the end of the 90s consoles began to utilise CDs
\nwhich saw the introduction of 3D environments, probably way too early for most
\ndevelopers who found it a real struggle with some of the hardware to produce
\nanything convincing in 3D, but that\u2019s what the paymasters in the industry
\nthought the world wanted. <\/span><\/p>\n

64-bit technologies would
\nbecome the game changer that 3D needed but the underpinning CD technology was
\nstill considerably more expensive than the floppy disc or even the compact
\naudio cassette that had been used for much of the 8-bit, 16-bit and in the
\nearly days of the 32-bit era. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the 90s, 128-bit
\ntechnologies were being explored by some manufacturers but this would put the
\ntechnologies that took advantage of it out of reach for many and when higher
\nbitrate technology was introduced in the popular hand held devices of the time,
\nit would come at the cost of battery life making them less portable because you
\nneeded to remain tethered to a power supply. <\/span><\/p>\n

Graphically at the time,
\n128-bit wasn\u2019t always as good as the earlier and lower bitrates for graphics. Developers
\nreally struggled with the complexity of the systems and creating 128-bit
\ngraphics would need even higher end development systems putting them out of
\nreach of most developers. As a graphic artist, I certainly couldn\u2019t afford to
\nmake the move to 128-bit systems on my own, so larger teams would be parachuted
\ninto development houses and development costs became eye watering.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

By this time we were beginning
\nto see advances in rudimentary graphic tablets that had been used before,
\nalthough for 8-bit artists, the TV screen would become the tablet for a while
\nas a light pen could be hooked up with the aid of an expansion card plugged
\ninto the computer in most cases. Graphically, I never gelled with the light
\npen, TVs were always upright meaning that they were just not conducive to
\ncreating art. So what we did see at the time was that most programmers and by
\nnow, a handful of dedicated digital artists who would continue to create art
\nusing either a joystick or later in the 80s, a mouse. Still on 8-bit, 16-bit or
\noccasionally 32-bit systems.<\/span><\/p>\n

The introduction of graphics
\ncards pushed the boundaries of creating digital art, but the downside was that
\nthere were really no agreed standards. Game developers had a difficult time
\noptimising their code to work with the literally dozens of differing
\ntechnologies available, but we were by now beginning to see digital art that
\nwas far beyond the limits placed on earlier work by the technology.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, retro art is a movement
\nbut it\u2019s not really vintage\u2026<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

There\u2019s some level of irony in
\nthat modern digital artists strive to recreate that 8-bit, retro, vintage,
\npixel style. In the eighties it was a style we couldn\u2019t wait to move away from,
\nyet today I see so many artists painstakingly setting up grids in Photoshop or
\nIllustrator in an attempt to achieve the same kind of look that we once had no
\nchoice other than to use. <\/span><\/p>\n

The challenge we have today is
\nthat the modern way of creating pixelated images in a retro\/vintage style
\ndoesn\u2019t quite achieve any level of authenticity when directly compared to
\nvintage pixel art that runs natively on an original 8-bit or even 16-bit
\nmicrocomputer. To start with, there was little use of dithers that would allow any
\nkind of gradation of colour until a much later period in time. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the eighties, any gradation
\nbetween colours firstly had to be done with a very small colour pallet, usually
\neither 8 or 16 colours and mostly if 16 colours were available it would really
\nonly ever be an 8 colour pallet with dimming turned on or off to give the same
\nhue a brighter appearance.\u00a0 <\/span>Now that\u2019s
\nhow you market the same thing twice. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"ZX<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ZX Spectrum Colour Pallet – that was all we had!<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

For those unfamiliar with
\ndithering, in short, it means that an applied form of noise is introduced to
\nthe image to approximate a colour that is not available from a mixture of the colours
\nthat are available. By the time that the early home microcomputers of the 1980s
\ncame out, dithering was already being used, it was even used during World War
\nII for bomb trajectories and navigation, and also in comic books and colour
\nprinting which overcame the limited pallets available on earlier printing
\npresses. <\/span><\/p>\n

Dithering really came into its
\nown on the early home micro\u2019s but to create\u00a0
\n<\/span>any form of dithering was often a manual process as opposed to using an
\nalgorithm to apply noise as we would do today. <\/span><\/p>\n

Today, dithering is an
\nessential tool in the creation of many digital works, it\u2019s also used in many
\nprinter models to reduce the cost of printing. The inkjets spray microscopic
\ndots on the paper or print surface and even monochrome printers use the
\ntechnique to overcome the limitations of using only black ink. Dithering is
\nalso the reason why you can still make out the detail of a colour photograph
\nwhen printing in monochrome.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dithering is also massively
\nuseful on the web even though most of us will have vastly more bandwidth today
\nthan at any time in the past, the technique means that fewer pixels are needed
\nto build up the image so there is a reduction in the bandwidth used which means
\nthat images can load much faster from a much smaller file size.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even if you are taking
\nadvantage of modern tools, what makes a lot of modern pixel art look too modern
\nto be totally convincing is in the simple things such as restricting the colour
\npalette. On vintage 8-bit computers and even early consoles, pallets were
\nlimited as I intimated earlier, and it also depended on whether those pallets
\nwere being displayed in a PAL or NTSC format so whatever format was in your
\nregion would determine the output and the colour that you would see. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Monochrome<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Monochrome Pallet ZX Spectrum – Also demonstrate how dithering would work.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Bright and dim colours on a
\nmachine such as the Sinclair ZX Spectrum (Timex in the USA) and other micro\u2019s
\nwith limited palettes would be achieved by altering the voltage input of the
\nvideo display. On an NTSC video output you would also find that some machines
\nwould display black only as a dark grey. Another factor that would change how
\ncolours were output would be the actual display screen the image was being
\noutput on, and the method with which the display screen was connected.<\/span><\/p>\n

Output display resolutions and
\ntechnologies were vastly different too. There is simply no way that an original
\neight by eight pixel character would have any impact today on modern 4K or even
\n8K displays, each pixel would be far too tiny to see and it would look like a
\nspeck of dust on the display, it\u2019s even problematic on a 1080p HD display or
\neven the lower HD resolution of 720p. <\/span><\/p>\n

Today, images have to be
\nupscaled or stretched to fill a high resolution screen and mostly, they look
\npretty horrible unless the effect of a single pixel is recreated with multiple
\npixels and scaling up is quite challenging. Increasing the resolution would,
\nand still does to an extent, produce pixelation that would make the image look
\nterrible. Today, upscaling is possible and there are all sorts of algorithms
\nand techniques that can reduce the pixelation, but in truth, it\u2019s still there.
\nYou are seeing a reproduced copy of the original image even using hardware
\nupscaler\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"ZX<\/span><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ZX Spectrum Colour Pallet Hex Codes<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Mostly during the 1980s we
\nwould rely on graph paper and manually plot out the pixels that would appear in
\nwhatever resolution the output would be displayed, in the case of the Sinclair
\nZX Spectrum, the entire display was just 256 by 192 pixels and this was the sum
\ntotal of screen real estate that you had to play your game, view your art, or
\ntype in a program listing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another issue with vintage
\ncomputers was that there could be what was called colour clash. Mostly, you
\ncould only utilise a single colour in any character block so if the block of
\ncolour moved over another colour, the colour of the block would appear over the
\nbackground colour. It was also known as attribute clash or more commonly today
\nwe would think of it as colour bleed. 8×8 pixel blocks could only ever appears
\nas a single colour.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"ZX<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ZX Spectrum Dithering 8 bit pallet – created manually often with code!<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

This did provide for a unique
\nlook and feel to anything appearing on screen and where modern takes on 8-bit
\npixel art are clean, often with each pixel defined with its own colour, vintage
\n8-bit microcomputers, even the best of them could never achieve that kind of sharp,
\nclean, look. <\/span><\/p>\n

The question for pixel artists
\ntoday is whether they go for a completely authentic look by limiting the colour
\npalette and include the effect of attribute clash, or whether they should
\ncreate a clean, modern representation. The choice is really down to the
\naudience, hardcore collectors are looking for that kind of raw detail,
\ncollectors of fan art or an aesthetic nod to vintage, probably not so much.<\/span><\/p>\n

The old displays that were
\nhistorically used generated a technically compliant NTSC or PAL signal.
\nDepending on your geographic region you would either see 480i or 576i
\nresolutions but the images would only be sent to one field rather than
\nalternate between two fields. This created a 240 or 288 line progressive
\nsignal, which in theory could be decoded on any receiver that could decode
\nnormal interlaced signals. If that sounds technical, I\u2019m not sure any of us
\noriginal pixel pushers understood it either back in the day. <\/span><\/p>\n

We would see horrible
\nhorizontal lines on the display. Today these scan lines are seen as being a
\ncharming and nostalgia inducing necessity in the reproduction of authentic
\npixel art so it\u2019s more likely today that you might utilise a transparent PNG
\nimage of horizontal lines to place in front of the image when you are creating
\nvintage inspired artworks.<\/span><\/p>\n

The scan lines were a result
\nof the shadow mask and beam width of regular cathode ray tube televisions and
\nmonitors having been designed to display interlaced signals so the image would
\nappear to have alternative light and dark lines.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"RF<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
RF Modulator – Now We Can Play by Mark Taylor – We did\u00a0 HD fuzzy. Originally created as a commission for a long-time collector, this RF modulator was the thing to have in the 80s.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

When you need to create more
\nauthentic looking pixel images, you have a choice of either creating a modern
\nrepresentation using modern tools or you go completely down the vintage rabbit
\nhole and begin to use ither original equipment or even emulation. No modern
\ntools can even come close to matching the visual limitations of 80s and even
\n90s technology, it’s simply too good, no matter how skilled you are. It\u2019s not
\nreally about having a high level of competency with modern skills or tools,
\neverything is already stacked against you when you are attempting to recreate
\nany level of genuine authenticity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Any technology today is
\ndesigned to look clean, sharp, and be reproduced in a large format, often that
\nmeans 4K and above and a modern display just cannot get even close to
\nreproducing the phosphorous glow of an old CRT TV or monitor. At best, you can
\nhope for a facsimile of authentic pixel art but it will never be quite the
\nsame. I actually feel a pang of sadness when I see vintage art displayed in art
\nexhibitions on modern displays, it\u2019s not anywhere close to original without all
\nof the original limitations, not forgetting the phosphorous glow of a CRT or
\nthe scanlines.<\/span><\/p>\n

To counter this with my own
\nwork, I tend to use a heap of layers, using gaussian blur tools over luminous
\nbrushes in between layers before applying a scan line filter I created which
\ntook me somewhere in the region of three months to produce. The filter template
\nI created has a slight curvature in the lines and every time it is used, I
\nalpha lock the layer and then apply a blend to provide the darker shadows
\ntowards the edge of the screen before once again applying a luminous brush
\nstroke or three and using gaussian blur again to provide further reflection on
\nany layers above and below the scanlines. <\/span><\/p>\n

You\u2019ll notice this if you look
\nat any of my works that feature a screen, so long as you are looking close
\nup.\u00a0 <\/span>I have licensed that template for
\ncommercial use by other artists in the past, alongside a CRT colour pallet that
\nworks in either Photoshop or Procreate, so again, there are so many potential
\nentrance gates for artists to offer buyers in the retro scene. You can see the level of detail in the LED Matrix on the calculator above. CRTs have similar levels of detail!<\/span><\/p>\n

When there is a need for me to
\ntackle 8-bit art and even 16-bit art, there are some techniques that I always
\nfall back to because I know they will help me to achieve a more authentic feel.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Modern displays also have a
\nvery different aspect ratio making it even more challenging to recreate
\nauthentic images that would have originally been presented in a 4:3 format. The
\ntechnologies are vastly different which makes it a challenge to make a modern
\ndisplay look like it\u2019s an old display and this is why scanline filters are
\noften used to give images a vintage feel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Transparent PNG images of
\nscanlines can be created relatively easily if you have enough time and with
\ntools such as Illustrator or even Photoshop, but these can still give an
\nentirely flat effect to the underlying image. Many of the freely or even
\ncommercially available scanline filters never quite achieve a true
\nrepresentation of the original look of a CRT, simply because CRTs had that
\ncurvature and scanlines if they have no curvature applied will always look
\nflat. <\/span><\/p>\n

I think to an extent, any
\nartist who wants to tackle vintage-inspired work and who wants to maintain an
\nauthentic feel in the modern day with modern tools, will have it way harder
\nthan we dinosaurs had it back in the day. We didn\u2019t know that the future would
\nbe 4K, hey, we were pretty amazed at what we already had. I also think that any
\nartist wanting to produce this style of art needs to work within some very
\nconstrained limitations.<\/span><\/p>\n

A lot of the work I currently create
\ndoesn\u2019t need to have any specific effects applied to it because most of the
\ntime I\u2019m reproducing memories of the eighties as opposed to a replica of pixel
\nimage that would have been presented on screen. Having said that, there are
\nplenty of nods to old technology and in some of my works you will find individual
\nassets within the artwork that have been created on vintage computers, and
\nwhenever I paint a screen, you will always see scanlines or the matrix used
\nwithin an LED display. Most casual users never notice this detail but for me,
\nit\u2019s critical and for collectors who want authenticity, they expect nothing
\nless.<\/span><\/p>\n

For me and my work, scanlines
\nare really as complicated as it gets for representational vintage inspired
\nwork, but if I am working on individual assets that absolutely need to look
\nauthentic, say for a retro-inspired video game that needs to retain an old look,
\nmy process can be very different depending on what the commissioner needs. <\/span><\/p>\n

Surprisingly, the easiest
\ncommissions I tend to get these days are to develop images for homebrew indie
\ngames that continue to be released on 40-year old microcomputers such as the
\nCommodore 64. They\u2019re easy because I literally power up my Commodore 64 and
\ncreate the images on that just as I would have done some 40-years ago either
\nusing a rudimentary image editor or I will program it in BASIC or Assembly
\nlanguage. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"New<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
New Formats by Mark Taylor – the specification for the disc camera was better on paper. They looked really cool, the photographs were very poor compared to earlier formats.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

It becomes significantly more
\ncomplicated when you have to recreate old looks on new technology, I can spend
\nmaybe as much as three or four times longer working in Photoshop than I spend
\non creating the assets on vintage tech and that\u2019s even after I go through the
\nprocess of bringing the final image over to new technologies for use as assets
\nor within an artwork. <\/span><\/p>\n

Whenever I am create authentic
\nlooking vintage-inspired that will be displayed and generated on modern
\nequipment or on canvas, \u00a0<\/span>I tend to apply
\nsome very strict limits to the colour pallet being used. I also reduce the
\nresolution as far as I can to make sure that I can work with at least some of
\nthe limitations from the past. For me, that\u2019s kind of important because it\u2019s
\nthe limitation that drives my creativity, and for the most part I try to avoid
\nusing Photoshop or Illustrator and instead use some fairly basic tools and
\ndedicated pixel editors for this kind of work, and where I can, I will use
\noriginal technologies or even emulation. <\/span><\/p>\n

One of the more complex
\neffects I have to constantly reproduce is dithering. Sure, there are plenty of
\ntools that can dither the image automatically or reduce the colour depth and so
\non, but if I have a commission that needs to be out of the door anytime soon
\nand I need the believability of authentic vintage images, I switch off
\nPhotoshop and its multitude of distractions and fire up an old computer. <\/span><\/p>\n

For all of the beauty that my
\n8K behemoth of a display foists upon my often weary eyes, I have to say that it
\ndoesn\u2019t touch the beauty of a quality CRT TV or monitor. LCD is great for most people,
\nI don\u2019t even disagree that it is the right way to go, but LCDs on modern
\ndisplays just aren\u2019t great at either colour or speed. <\/span><\/p>\n

I recently watched a football
\nmatch (you call it soccer in the US, but this is real football my friends) and
\nI could literally hear my screen screaming for help as the Wrexham FC players
\n(the Wrexham FC owned by Ryan Reynolds of Hollywood fame) ran around the pitch
\nin their battle to escape the National League.<\/span><\/p>\n

LCD displays have three layers
\nof coloured dots that make up a pixel. Electrical current is applied to each
\ncolour layer in order to generate the required intensity that produces the
\nfinal colour. The problem is that this takes time, generally between 8 and 12
\nmilliseconds of time which might not sound like a lot, but in a fast moving
\nscene, it can be headache inducing and jarring. <\/span><\/p>\n

The transition between off and
\non states mean that pixels that should have changed colour lag behind the
\nsignal resulting in motion blurring. To overcome this, manufacturers have
\nreduced the number of levels each coloured pixel can render as a way to reduce
\nthe motion blur, but this reduces the number of colours the pixel can display. <\/span><\/p>\n

You might also come across
\nterms such as bit depth, this is something that quantifies how many unique
\ncolours are available in the images colour pallet but in 0s and 1s, which
\ntranslates to either off or on. The depth doesn\u2019t suggest that the image
\nutilises all of the available colours, but it can specify the level of
\nprecision given to a colour. Generally, the higher the bit rate or depth (audio
\nuses a similar principle of bits), the better the quality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, you might expect to see
\na camera with a colour depth of 8-bits which equates to a total of 8x 0s and
\n1s, which translates to 256 intensity values for each primary colour. If you
\ncombine all three primary colours (red, green, blue as in RGB), this means that
\nonce combined, would provide \u00a0<\/span>16,777,216
\ncolours or what is known as True Colour, 24-bits per pixel since each pixel is
\ncomposed of three 8-bit colour channels.<\/span><\/p>\n

Adding transparency would take
\nthe bit depth to 32 and 48-bit colour depth would give you 281 trillion
\ncolours. That\u2019s nothing like the old days of the early home micros, remember
\nwhen I said earlier about a 16 colour pallet being made up of 8 colours either
\nshowing as bright or dim, that should put all of what I\u2019ve written here today
\ninto some perspective. Modern technology is just too good to feel real if you
\nare looking for an authentic vintage vibe and besides, the human eye can only
\ndiscern around 10 million colours so for viewing purposes anything higher than
\nthis is overkill even for today\u2019s technology. Where higher bit rates become
\ninvaluable is if you are doing any kind of post-processing of the images but
\nmostly, modern technology has already gone beyond human limitations of sight.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Y2K<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Y2K by Mark Taylor – by the end of the 90s we had bugs, and panic had set in around Y2K – The Millennium Bug that wasn’t.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

When it comes to recreating
\ngraphics in the modern day, it has become a lot easier to create images with
\nphotorealism, but due to the excess of power available today, things have
\nequally become much more difficult if the aim is to achieve believable 8-bit
\nimages. <\/span><\/p>\n

There are differences in the
\nway that modern technologies utilise their display output compared to vintage
\ntechnologies which were often output from the computer to the cathode ray tube
\nTV or monitor using a range of technologies such as RF (Radio Frequency) often
\nusing a modulator. Remember those little black and silver steel boxes with a
\ncable that you plugged into the antennae socket on the TV, they would often
\nhave a slider to select between TV and Game. You can see my representation of an RF Modulator above!<\/span><\/p>\n

Those really weren\u2019t ideal,
\nthey gave us a fuzzy picture that would be prone to interference and the TV had
\nto literally be tuned to the correct frequency. If the frequency was even a little
\noff the picture would be distorted and you would see noise. Later, here in the
\nUK, we began to use SCART connections but this was pretty much confined to
\nEurope and the UK on our 50Mhz PAL displays, whilst in the USA the preference
\nwas to utilise RCA phono connections on their 60Mhz NTSC displays. <\/span><\/p>\n

The regional difference
\nbetween PAL at 50Hz and NTSC at 60Hz can be seen if you ever get to play a
\nvintage video game. What you will find is that the game will run markedly
\nfaster on the NTSC version, the PAL version would run slower and sound was also
\ngenerated more slowly creating a further distortion due to the output speed of
\nthe device. However, the opposite can also be true in that a game or program
\ndeveloped in a PAL region would run fine as it would have been optimised for
\nthat region. Hey, the world was smaller back in the 80s right?<\/span><\/p>\n

Video games are one thing, but
\nif you work in animation, this variation in speed can be a huge challenge, as
\ncan the differences in screen resolutions. NTSC and PAL are two types of colour
\nencoding systems that affect the quality of content viewed on analogue
\ntelevisions and monitors. PAL offered automated colour correction and NTSC was
\nmanual. There was also a third contender, SECAM, or, Sequential Couleur Avec
\nMemoire or Sequential Color with Memory, although it was confined to Eastern
\nEurope and France.<\/span><\/p>\n

Again, these are differences
\nthat we don\u2019t really have to think too much about today but all of them would
\ndisplay the same thing differently, imagine if we faced as many of the same
\nconstraints today.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There are a couple of
\ninteresting observations around the connectivity of analogue systems and the
\nquality of display from whichever connection was to be used. SCART was
\nallegedly the more advanced option of many when it came out in 1977, it would
\nlater become a mandated standard for TVs from 1980 but only in France, other European
\ncountries then adopted the connection throughout the 80s and 90s. <\/span><\/p>\n

SCART, in theory, would also
\nallow other devices to be controlled through remote switching. Similar to HDMI
\nCEC today, turn off your VCR and the TV would also turn off, but in practice,
\nno one I ever knew at the time, or since, has ever utilised that functionality.
\nI\u2019ve yet to meet anyone who isn\u2019t seriously into home theatre take full advantage
\nof HDMI CEC today, I\u2019m sure there will be fans of the format, but it\u2019s not
\nsomething everyone uses. <\/span><\/p>\n

Personally, I couldn\u2019t wait to
\nmove away from SCART and its propensity for bent pins and migrate to RCA and
\nlater, composite and S-Video which I always found to give much greater
\nreliability and a way better picture. Thankfully, today we have multi-region
\ncapability in most technologies out of the box and when we don\u2019t, there are
\nplenty of quality suppliers of weird cables that can hook your 8-bit baby up to
\na modern display. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"dot<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Will Work for Ink by Mark Taylor – notice the dot matrix paper and lines. A larger view is available on my store!<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Printing technology was
\ndifferent, even the ink was almost affordable but we didn\u2019t have the complexity
\nbuilt into many of todays ink cartridges which alongside the costs associated
\nwith modern research and development for ink technologies, make them more
\nexpensive than the finest caviar in relation to weight, pricier than a gallon
\nof 1985 vintage Krug Champagne and by weight and volume, modern printer ink is
\nmore expensive than gold. <\/span><\/p>\n

Environmentally, ink
\ncartridges that cannot be refilled and contain microchips to prevent refilling,
\nmake absolutely no ecological sense at all. Things are changing with the likes
\nof Epson providing refillable tanks, but this isn\u2019t anywhere close to a
\nmainstream practice. <\/span><\/p>\n

In reality, there\u2019s not that
\nmuch more you can do with printer ink to make it better than it is today, good
\nquality inks used on a dye-sublimation printer can make prints last for
\ngenerations, many are now waterproof and the vibrancy of ink has never been
\nbetter, assuming you use good quality inks. <\/span><\/p>\n

Printer manufacturers don\u2019t
\nmake money on printers, in my experience, most of them don\u2019t really care about
\noffering customer service on printers beyond 6-months, as I found out when a
\n13-month old dye-sublimation printer I purchased for a significant sum went
\ndown in the middle of a print job. For years the printer manufacturers have
\nbeen pushing the consumer towards ongoing spend and subscription models for ink
\nreplacement and sadly, we\u2019re mostly buying into their model. <\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s partly the reason why so
\nlittle of my work is printed in house, I can source printing more cheaply and
\nnot have the hassle or expense if I use specialist print centres who utilise
\nprinters that wouldn\u2019t even fit through the door of my studio. They also work
\nwith high volumes so the overall costs are massively lower than anything I
\nprint in house.<\/span><\/p>\n

That said, I still do have a
\nneed for printers but I run a mixed eco-system. A dye sublimation wide format
\nprinter and original cartridges for one off print jobs, an inexpensive inkjet with
\nthird party inks for general day to day stuff and proof prints. <\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing, I turn back
\nto retro technologies for my every day printing needs. Mostly, I still use a
\ndot matrix printer, albeit one that has been manufactured in the past two years
\nand is still available and still manufactured, with ink replaced from a bottle
\nfor any day to day text. I really don\u2019t need to spend the cost of a gold nugget
\non printing out an invoice. I also have a thermal printer for labels which is
\nalso handy for printing receipts which never really fade. So the 80s is well
\nand truly ingrained into my process and my costs are lower as a result.<\/span><\/p>\n

Printers were never as fancy
\nback in the eighties, nowhere close. While I had been dabbling with ASCII
\ncharacters and creating passable images for the time, the upgrade in graphics
\ntechnology throughout the 80s made it easier to create an artistic abstraction
\non screen and then print that same abstraction out on a roll of silver thermal
\npaper using a small thermal printer. <\/span><\/p>\n

The world upgraded to dot
\nmatrix printers eventually but these didn\u2019t offer any massive leaps in
\ngraphical output over and above the thermal printers that were much less
\nexpensive. I actually preferred the thermal print rolls to regular paper
\nbecause of the metallic sheen, and because the images didn\u2019t tend to fade when
\nthey were exposed to daylight. I still have some original printouts that have
\noutlasted many inkjet prints I have created since.<\/span><\/p>\n

With the dot matrix printers
\nyou could use larger sheets of paper but the paper was usually perforated and
\nfed through the printer using a daisy wheel which meant that any paper had to
\nbe continuously fed and each piece had a series of holes on each side. This
\nwasn\u2019t exactly the quality you would be able to offer as a commercial grade
\nprint but it was fine for home and business use if you were only printing text.<\/span><\/p>\n

Printers evolved quite
\nquickly, but the underpinning dot matrix technology would still be the most
\ncommon and most affordable for a while. The first consumer grade inkjet printer
\nhad been released back in 1976, although the principles of inkjets had been
\nmuttered about in the 1950s yet it wouldn\u2019t be until 1988 when inkjet
\ntechnology became more readily available as a consumer product. The HP ThinkJet
\nreleased in 1984 was still far too expensive for most consumers and it still
\nwasn\u2019t quite good enough to offer commercial prints, even for the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

I remained with thermal
\nprinters for a while before moving onto near letter quality dot matrix
\ntechnologies and then I remained with those technologies until the late
\neighties before finally making the leap to inkjet technology in the early 90s. <\/span><\/p>\n

Inkjet was by then, a leap
\nforward but it was still limited, and most of my digital output from the
\nCommodore Amiga and by the 90s, the early PC, would still need to be printed by
\na specialist printer with the lead time often measured in multiples of weeks
\neven for a single print. There was no such thing as print on demand, it was
\nmore akin to take your file to a specialist and join a waiting list and it was
\nincredibly expensive for small print runs. It made commercial prints of digital
\nwork prohibitive for most people. When I create work today on vinyl sheets it
\ncosts around a tenth of the price to outsource the work. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

By the time the early PCs hit
\nthe market I now had the ability to shape images on screen and print them out,
\nand this was to be the game changer that meant I no longer had to be creative
\nwith only a box of pencils and a sketchbook. I was able to produce digital art
\nprofessionally on canvas using a combination of the Commodore Amiga and an
\nearly PC. It was at this time that I would be able to take on commissions at a
\ntime when relatively few other people were offering digital art commercially.
\nThis was the closest we ever got to the gold rush during the days of creating
\n8-bit computer games, but the outgoing costs were now much higher.<\/span><\/p>\n

The biggest issue with modern
\nprinters is that for retro aesthetics they can be great but for authenticity,
\nyou still have to look at older technologies, not least because of the expense.
\nA modern printer cartridge contains less ink today than ever before. For example, the Epson T032 colour
\ncartridge (released in 2002) is the same size as the Epson colour T089
\n(released in 2008). But the T032 contains 16ml of ink and the T089 contains
\njust 3.5ml of ink. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Hewlett
\nPackard (HP) cartridges have seen the same diminishing quantities over the
\nyears. A decade ago, the best-selling HP cartridge had 42ml of ink and sold for
\nabout \u00a320 (UK). Today, the standard printer cartridges made by HP may contain
\nas little as 5ml of ink but sell for about \u00a313 (UK). There hasn\u2019t been a
\nmassive leap in yield from ink cartridges either, we\u2019re at this point now paying
\nnot for the ink but the plastic cartridge and a microchip that keeps us within
\na genuine eco-system. <\/span><\/p>\n

I
\nreally don\u2019t buy into the R&D spend any more because they\u2019re just not
\ninnovating like they were in the 80s, all of my modern printers rapidly die
\nsoon after a new model gets released. My original dot matrix from 1988 was
\nstill going strong in 2019, my Sinclair Thermal from around 1982 still works,
\nbut I\u2019m down to my last roll of thermal paper and it is becoming a challenge to
\nfind new old stock.<\/span><\/p>\n

With my retro and vintage
\ninspired work, I now insist on making sure whoever prints it can capture the
\ndetail I put into the artwork, and if needed, some work is recreated on aged
\npaper which I keep supplies of, it\u2019s useful for recreating some of the ephemera
\nthat was originally found in the 80s. <\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the papers I currently
\nhave were genuinely created during the 80s, although it is becoming more of a
\nchallenge to purchase genuine aged paper today, some people do continue to
\ncarry stocks of it which has been properly stored. For more specialist work I
\noften find myself in a conversation with a hand made paper supplier who does a
\nreally good job of recreating the look and feel. Again, it\u2019s about
\nauthenticity, especially when recreating ephemera.\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

If you are looking to produce more
\nauthentic work, there are plenty of sellers on platforms such as Etsy and even
\neBay who can supply home made aged paper stock, it\u2019s never quite like the
\noriginal paper but it\u2019s also a lot less delicate and a lot less expensive.
\nExpect to pay around three or four dollars per sheet and up for really good
\nquality papers, genuine 80s papers can go for triple this and even more so it
\nwill also depend on the price point your audience will pay.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Handheld<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Handheld electronic game art print by Mark Taylor – again the matrix is visible on the print.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Like I mentioned earlier, old
\ntechnology that works is not quite yet in short supply, with a few exceptions.
\nThe downside to using old tech to create authentic period digital art is that
\nit does come with the potential that it will fail at any time and unless you
\nare comfortable with a soldering iron and carry enough spares you might find
\nthat getting older tech repaired can be problematic, no one really understands
\nthis stuff quite like us older dinosaurs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most old technology isn\u2019t
\noverly expensive even now with a growing popularity in collecting it, but I
\nsuspect it won\u2019t remain quite as affordable for much longer. Back in 2012 much
\nof this stuff was being given away or worse, thrown away, but if you are
\nlooking for unboxed working technology, it is still within reach of most
\nbudgets if you are looking to create more authentic looking work. <\/span><\/p>\n

What isn\u2019t quite so affordable
\nwill be the rarer games consoles, or those systems that failed to gain any
\ncommercial traction. A few hundred pounds\/dollars will provide you with a
\n40-year old working Commodore 64 and either a tape or floppy drive, but if you
\nare after console such as a working Vectrex, you will be paying two or three
\ntimes as much.<\/span><\/p>\n

That said, there are
\nalternatives to using older technologies that will still ensure you can provide
\nthat greater level of authenticity, and to an extent, negate at least some of the
\nneed for your workflow to rely on increasingly expensive modern technology, not
\ncompletely maybe but certainly enough for you to be able to minimise your
\noutlay. Every year we see new specifications emerging to run applications such
\nas Photoshop and it\u2019s just not practical or affordable for many working artists
\nto keep on top of the tech. <\/span><\/p>\n

That said, some of the
\nalternatives are not what you might call inexpensive, but they will provide you
\nwith equipment that will get the job done and you will be able to get closer to
\nauthentic looking work than you can with a traditional computer with Photoshop
\nor Illustrator installed.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Raspberry<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
A Raspberry Pi – currently in short supply but I will paint these as retro devices one day!<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

I collect vintage technology
\nbut there is always that risk that it will need some periodic TLC to continue
\nworking. It\u2019s always a good idea to use new power supplies rather than the
\noriginals and it\u2019s also a good idea to find someone who is able to recap old
\ncomputers so that you don\u2019t find yourself with leaking capacitors which can
\ndestroy the printed circuit boards rendering the equipment useless.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a compromise that
\ncomes in two forms, either emulation which can be done either on a Raspberry
\nPie or modern PC and to an extent, even a Mac. The good thing about emulation
\nis that it doesn\u2019t always need overly powerful equipment to work. Emulation is
\njust that, it emulates a past system, and some emulators for some systems work
\nbetter than others.<\/span><\/p>\n

The second method is to utilise
\nan FPGA based device such as the MiSTer FPGA which is based on the DE10 Nano
\ndevelopment board, although you will need other components alongside the DE10
\nto get the most out of recreating vintage graphics.<\/span><\/p>\n

FPGA or Field Programmable
\nGate Array, essentially creates a system on a chip. It\u2019s not really emulation
\nbecause you are loading an original core onto the programmable chip and at this
\npoint you will have access to an exact replica of the original hardware running
\nat a hardware rather than emulated software level. It\u2019s as close as you can get
\nto running the original device but without the headaches and it comes with all
\nthe benefits of using brand new equipment every time you power it on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Various cores are available
\nfor download, you can replicate an arcade video game machine and then switch to
\na Tandy TRS80 Colour Computer from the 1980s, or pretty much any other vintage
\ncomputer or console and run the original software or the modern software
\ncreated today for old systems. It\u2019s a couple of levels above the Raspberry Pie
\nin terms of the learning curve but many levels above a Raspberry Pie in terms
\nof what you will get out of it. <\/span><\/p>\n

The downside with either of
\nthese options at the moment is that the global chip shortage has impacted
\nmanufacturing of both the Raspberry Pie and MiSTer FPGA DE10 Nano boards and
\nfinding them for close to their regular retail value is next to impossible. If
\nyou plan to go down this route and don\u2019t already have the equipment, you will
\nbe paying over the odds, possibly for a little while longer too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Either of these options will
\nallow you to run the older image editors such as Delux Paint for the Commodore
\nAmiga, so you can create original graphics using the original software loaded
\nfrom a ROM and have the benefit of being able to more easily transfer the
\ncreated assets over to your PC. Using emulation or FPGA is hugely beneficial
\nwhen it comes to file transfers back to a modern PC or Mac.<\/span><\/p>\n

A note about ROMs, there is a
\nlegal grey area with the use of ROMs and unless the software is now available
\nthrough open source channels you might need to own the original copy of the
\nsoftware to legally run it. Also bear in mind that in some cases owning the
\noriginal files in order to use the image files with emulators might still be
\noutside of the copyright laws applicable to the software and its use. If you
\ncan satisfy the legality of running ROMs, then the internet is a vast resource
\nfor tracking the ROM images down.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In my humble opinion, the
\nMiSTer is the way to go with vintage technology, but getting one is another ask
\nentirely. If you do get one, you will never need to buy any other vintage
\ntechnologies because it really does do it all and it does everything really
\nwell and you don\u2019t need the space for a lot of vintage kit.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are a handful of vintage
\ncomputers that have been specifically recreated for use in the modern day,
\nnamely the ZX Spectrum Next, but just like other FPGA devices, these things are
\nextremely rare in the wild and the second Kickstarter campaign remains to be
\nfulfilled due to the limited availability of the FPGA chips needed. It is a
\ngreat machine though and it also goes beyond the capabilities of the original
\n8-Bit machine and there is no doubt that the second wave will be fulfilled because
\nthere are some great people behind it who can absolutely be trusted to deliver.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is also another FPGA
\nSinclair Spectrum, the ZX Spectrum Next N-GO, which is a smaller version of the
\nZX Spectrum Next, but again this is FPGA and well, the chip shortage is making
\nlife difficult for those who want to buy one of these too.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"1980s<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Together in Electric Dreams by Mark Taylor – best decade ever!<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

If you are looking to
\nreplicate either the Commodore 64 or Commodore Amiga, which is essential if you
\nare looking to run something like Delux Paint, then you can go with either the
\nC64 (mini without a working keyboard, or Maxi \u2013 with a working keyboard) or the
\nA500 Mini, both from a company called Retro Games, and all of their machines
\nare available pretty much globally. <\/span><\/p>\n

The compromise here is that
\nwhilst the machines look and act just like the originals, they are running
\nsoftware emulation to perform their magic. In the case of the A500 Mini which
\nhas a non working keyboard, (a USB one can be added), you can use WHD Load
\nwhich means that once you have a WHD load ROM file, you can place it on a USB
\nstick and you won\u2019t have to swap the discs or load in multiple ROMs for the
\nmultiple discs that the original application used on the original hardware.<\/span><\/p>\n

For most people, all of these
\ndevices will be mainly be being used to play retro games, but they are all more
\nthan capable of creating original code and graphics. I own the original
\nCommodore machines but now use the recreated versions to create authentic
\nCommodore based artwork, purely because I want to preserve my original 30 and 40-year
\nold computers for as long as I can.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I said earlier, hardly
\nanything was documented back in the 70s, 80s, or 90s. The knowledge we have
\ntoday comes mainly from those who were either involved with the industry or
\nconsumed from the industry and from the publications of the day that did manage
\nto capture a lot of what was going on but by no means everything. Instead, we
\nrely on a dwindling number of people to recall events from 40, 50, and even 60
\nyears ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Of course we have seen this throughout art
\nhistory too, there is very little historic documentation in relation to the
\nnumber of historically important artworks hanging in museums, where it\u2019s often
\nthe case that any provenance or record of the time has to be painstakingly researched.
\nToday we are more inclined to record important moments, historic events, things
\nand places, we live in a slightly less disposable era and we\u2019re less inclined
\nto dispose of history. <\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s also another
\nconsideration in that video games, music, and other digital mediums are finally
\nbeing seen in the mainstream as legitimate art forms and I think that\u2019s the
\nright way to view them. If we look at how traditional art is created, it is by
\nhand, often from the imagination or interpretation of the author and that\u2019s the
\nsame process that creates all of these more non-traditional art forms. 8-bit
\ngraphics are the technical equivalent of hieroglyphs, and maybe people might
\ndisagree that they are nowhere close to being as important, but this was how
\nsociety communicated in the early days of using the technology we know today.<\/span><\/p>\n

The technology we see today
\nand the technology we go on to see in the future and its journey will become
\nhistorically just as important as artwork in time, just as the beginnings of
\nthe industrial revolution have become. I do think that maybe some of the uptick
\nin retro collecting might not only be stemming from the need to feed the
\ncurrent hunger for nostalgia, but for many of us who collect vintage
\ntechnologies and the ephemera that goes with them, it is widely regarded that it
\nis often more about the importance of preservation and being able to make sure
\nthat the technology story isn\u2019t lost.<\/span><\/p>\n

For artists who have an
\ninterest in retro\/vintage (I wish there was a term that could be used to
\ndescribe them better), and for those who have an interest in producing period
\nwork, there is a growing market that consistently devours quality artwork and
\nrecreations that represent the time. <\/span><\/p>\n

Artists do have opportunities
\nin this area, it\u2019s perfectly fine to create work that is a representation and
\nthere is a healthy market to feed and a decent living to be earned from
\nproviding an aesthetic reference to the time. If you are looking to engage in
\nthe higher value collector market, there are plenty of options here too but the
\ndifference is night and day in terms of what those collectors expect. <\/span><\/p>\n

With that expectation comes a
\nrevenue stream that is significantly higher than the retro aesthetic market and
\nthe initial outlay to create the expected level of detail both in terms of
\nfinance and knowledge of the period is relative to that. In terms of finding
\nthose collectors, it can be a completely different social circle that you might
\nneed to engage with. You might want to test the waters by joining retro
\nenthusiast communities and visiting some of the many retro events that now take
\nplace across the globe to see what the more serious collectors collect. Think
\nhigh quality art prints, reproductions of ephemera alongside the originals. <\/span><\/p>\n

I remember visiting some of
\nthese events five or six years ago and less than a hundred people and often way
\nfewer would turn up. Today the events are usually packed to the rafters with
\ntickets selling out weeks and sometimes months in advance. <\/span><\/p>\n

For those interested in how
\nthe technology in the digital art space has changed in the past forty years,
\nanything produced using the technology we have today is incomparable to what could
\nbe achieved in the past, yet many of the principles and techniques we use today
\nwere invented in the 1980s and even before. <\/span><\/p>\n

Today we automate many of
\nthose techniques which arguably could be seen as a method of deskilling a
\nworkforce but if we are to preserve a practice just as we strive to do with
\nother historic artistic practices, then it becomes critical that more artists
\ntake a look at the retro and vintage scene for digital art and embrace the old
\nway of doing things. Not because we can, not because it\u2019s not as easy, but
\nbecause it is a craft and a history we are in danger of losing and that will
\nmake it challenging to evolve even further. More than that, hey, it can only
\nmake you a better artist right!<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"Betamax<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Underdog By Mark Taylor – Betamax was superior to VHS but the length of tape was shorter. By the end of the 80s, Blockbuster had become the church of many people.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Hopefully you will have found
\nthis one an interesting glimpse into the early days of microcomputers, the
\ncurrent retro collecting trend, and the real dawn of digital art becoming more
\naccessible to more people. It\u2019s hard to comprehend sometimes that digital art
\nhasn\u2019t been around even longer, though there were examples of digital art going
\nway back well before the eighties, it was the 1980s that truly set it on a path
\nto what we have today.<\/span><\/p>\n

The eighties is a fascinating
\ndecade even beyond the technology it gave us. Steven Spielberg said when his
\nReady Player One film was released that the 80s was a stress free decade, I
\nthink if you sugar coat it, it very well might have been but there was a lot
\ngoing on. \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The age of MTV, a time-travelling
\nDeLorean, and synth, also oversaw Cold War escalation, the Iran-Contra affair,
\nthe crack epidemic, and the AIDS crisis.\u00a0The decade\u2019s televisual and
\ncomputational innovations alongside cable television, VCRs and game consoles,
\nit wasn\u2019t entirely stress free and less so for those who were involved in the
\npolitics and the innovation, there were plenty more casualties for every good
\nnews story. <\/span><\/p>\n

More than this, the 80s was a
\ndefining era for the art world more generally, there was a blur between art,
\nadvertising and entertainment and a question as to whether artists could simultaneously
\ncommodify themselves and critique consumer culture? We\u2019ll be exploring more of
\nthe 80s as I create even more new vintage inspired works, and the hope is that
\nmy own works will provide a pictorial backdrop to what has to be the decade
\nthat really did have it all. Until next time, stay safe, stay well, and always
\nbe creative!<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark x <\/span><\/p>\n

I am an artist and blogger and live in
\nStaffordshire, England. You can purchase my art through my Fine Art America
\nstore or my Pixels site here: <\/span>https:\/\/10-mark-taylor.pixels.com<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Any art sold through Fine Art America and Pixels
\ncontributes towards to the ongoing costs of running and developing this
\nwebsite. You can also view my portfolio website at <\/span>https:\/\/beechhousemedia.com<\/span><\/a> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

You can also follow me on Facebook at: <\/span>https:\/\/facebook.com\/beechhousemedia<\/span><\/a> where you will
\nalso find regular free reference photos of interesting subjects and places I
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Back to the Eighties \u2013 Pushing Pixels Back to the Eighties – Pushing Pixels This time, we take a step back in time to the 1980s, the decade that provides the subject matter of many of my own artworks. It was also the decade where my life as a professional digital artist began, one pixel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":181545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[71815,42391,14796],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-181544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-eighties","tag-pixels","tag-pushing"],"yoast_head":"\nBack to the Eighties Pushing Pixels - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=181544\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Back to the Eighties Pushing Pixels - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Back to the Eighties \u2013 Pushing Pixels Back to the Eighties – Pushing Pixels This time, we take a step back in time to the 1980s, the decade that provides the subject matter of many of my own artworks. 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