Electric Turnip
  • Blog
  • Stories
    • Story 000
    • Story 001
    • Story 002
    • Story 004
    • Story 007 - Unfinished
    • Story 008
    • Story 010 - BattleWagon
    • Story 012
  • Images
    • Adventure Caddie concept gallery
    • Page Design Gallery
    • Older Work
  • 5FEAT Video
  • Videos
  • Game Experiments
    • Climb
    • Super Shapetoy
    • TurboGarbageTruck
    • 031 - Best Games - Enchanter
    • 033 - Shader Test
  • Contact

220

1/16/2017

0 Comments

 
I’ve been very slowly working my way through this amazing book, Art of Atari put together by Tim Lapetino. Every single page reveals a new beautiful image that I have to study for a few minutes before moving on. This makes reading the actual text of the book take a lot longer than I would have expected, but I can’t really complain. It’s all just cover to cover gorgeous.
I have read several books on the history of video games and the history of silicon valley. As you might expect, stories about the inner workings of Atari come up fairly often. Tales of the work hard, play hard lifestyle Atari had going are pretty entertaining. Since those histories tend to focus on the games, the game developers, and the fledgling business of games, a lot of this book is pretty new territory for me.
As the title would suggest, the book is mainly focused on the artists and designers that created the Atari look of the late 70s and early 80s. The state of the art in actual on screen graphics at the time consisted mainly of chunky abstract blocks of color. If you were going to suspend disbelief and accept that those few yellow squares are actually a medieval warrior, bridging that gulf had to start somewhere. Playing a video game in the early 80s didn’t start when you put the cartridge in the console.  It started with the box art, and the pictures in the manual. It started with the brief tales of galactic adventure that accompanied them.  the work that went into that art and design are every bit as fascinating as stories about the games they complimented. At least for me.
What I was particularly taken by was how all of the art, all of the design, had to be filtered through the production technology available at the time. When I started creating commercial art, the world was well into the Photoshop era. Getting digital art out of the computer and into the physical world was still a bit janky, but creating in the computer was rapidly becoming the standard. None of these folks had that available to them. Everything had to be hand done and prepped for screen printing. Large format Inkjet printers that spray the images directly onto vinyl just didn’t exist. The had some four colour process printers that could do the smaller stuff, like cartridge decals and product boxes, but even those lacked the fidelity of modern printers. Working to the technology available, the Atari artist and designers created some amazing things.
For several years I worked designing and manufacturing signs. While most of the technology for that industry has advanced significantly since the late 70s, there are still some places where it has lagged behind print production. I have, for example, hand cut a rubylith, which is something only old timers in print and screen printing hipsters will understand. It still comes up from time to time in the sign industry though. Most of it is robots with knives issued marching orders by custom software not too dissimilar from Illustrator. Even with that experience, I have some difficulty wrapping my brain around the hurdles a designer would have to leap to get a six foot tall graphic produced and applied to an arcade cabinet.
Well, I have some more amazing pictures to stare at, so I’m going to go do that.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    June 2012
    October 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    November 2010
    October 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010

    Categories

    All
    Adventure Caddie
    Best Games

    RSS Feed

Owen McManus
  • Blog
  • Stories
    • Story 000
    • Story 001
    • Story 002
    • Story 004
    • Story 007 - Unfinished
    • Story 008
    • Story 010 - BattleWagon
    • Story 012
  • Images
    • Adventure Caddie concept gallery
    • Page Design Gallery
    • Older Work
  • 5FEAT Video
  • Videos
  • Game Experiments
    • Climb
    • Super Shapetoy
    • TurboGarbageTruck
    • 031 - Best Games - Enchanter
    • 033 - Shader Test
  • Contact