Algumas imagens meio realistas de personagens de videogames andaram assustando jogadores há não muito tempo atrás, mas desta vez a coisa é mais light.

O artista Jimi Benedict, mais conhecido como Jimiyo, criou imagens de Mario e de Link em formato 8 bit, mas que são preenchidas com texturas mais realistas dos personagens e são, ainda, acompanhadas por um fundo com arte clássica. O resultado ficou, no mínimo, diferente.

Jimiyo fez também uma versão do presidente americano, Barack Obama, em estilo 8 bit.

Outras ilustrações do artista, que já trabalhou até para a NASCAR, podem ser vistas no seu site oficial.

Usando la moda retro de los pixelart y la música en 8 bit, alguien decidió rendirle tributo a Wacko Jacko (Q.E.P.D)

(Véanlo fullscreen)

La canción la hizo Saitone, un japonés que hace música con un Gameboy y una cónsola Roland y “probablemente es el artista más famoso del 8bit en Japón” (según su myspace). Acá el myspace de la disquera, donde pueden escuchar los temas y ver varios videos de japoneses quemados (y la web porsia, capaz saben japonés).

El video lo hizo una chica llamada Raquel Meyers, que forma parte de Lightrhythmvisuals, un “colectivo” o “trabuco” de artistas visuales.

Acá les dejo un video del pana en vivo tocando Thriller y Smooth Criminal. Tripead!

I was first introduced (not in person) to Boy 8-Bit a couple of months ago on Annie Mac’s Mashup. his remix of Drumming – Florence and the Machine was playing, and in all honesty it didn’t jump right out at me straight away. But I decided to buy it anyway. I popped up a couple of times when my ipod was on shuffle and it grew on me quickly.

Drumming (Boy 8-Bit Remix) – Florence and the Machine

However, the next song by him topped it. His Mars – Fake Blood remix is definitely a better song. I was surprised because there are so many Mars remixes out there, I think I preferred this one to his drumming remix because I love the original drumming, it was very difficult to top, and it didn’t quite make. What I really liked about his mars remix was that he focused the whole song around the awesome sounding chordy bit before the main catch. Then he made that bit his own.

Mars (Boy 8-Bit Remix) – Fake Blood

Then his remixes hit the big time. Even though this next song was one of his earlier remixes (2007), it is the most recent one I have heard. This one sticks to his name the most out of all of the ones on show today, being the most 8 bit, a very enjoyable song indeed.

Innaday (Boy8-Bit Remix) – Eames

The next song is his best remix to date (in my opinion), therefore receives the ‘coveted’ γ song award. Again I heard this on Annie Mac’s Mashup, great radio show, and bought it as soon as it was released, earlier this month. It is of course his remix of Quicksand – La Roux. I love the use of odd instrumentation, such as the steel drums, and the slow attack synths. I liked the original, but I love this.

Quicksand (Boy 8-Bit Remix) – La Roux γ song

And just to finish the post with some originality, here is one of his own songs from my collection.

The Suspense Is Killing Me – Boy 8-Bit

einfach großartig. des werde ich mir sowas von als poster ausdrucken

(via retro thing)

So wrong it’s right. Jérémie Périn’s video for Flairs’ “Truckers Delight” manages to pull of being radiant in its vulgarity and basically just awesomely fucked up. I’m not sure what else to say but: a) it’s 8-bit, it’s my kyrptonite, I can’t not blog it, and b) totally NSFW. Unless you work in porn.

fizzy dino pop – hello party!.mp3

Vergangenes Wochenende hatte ich das Vergnügen, die Live-Performance von Mini Roc in der Reihe “Tunes!” im Kulturcafé der Ruhr-Uni Bochum zu bestaunen. Mini Roc macht 8-Bit-Gameboy-Geklöppel allererster Sahne. In Europa ist er mit seinen beiden Gameboys schon recht viel rumgekommen, am Samstag hatte er in Bochum wiedermal ein Heimspiel.

Besonders beeindruckt hat mich nicht etwa die Performance an sich sondern vielmehr der Sound. Sicherlich kamen nicht alle Sounds von seinen “Hauptinstrumenten”, den zwei Gameboys. Vor Allem die Bassdrums waren alles andere als 8-Bit. Ich nehme an, dass sie von der PSP kamen, die meiner Vermutung nach durch die Gameboys – mit Hilfe des Link-Kabels und einem “Data-Sync-Kasten” – getriggert wurde. Ausserdem wurden einige Sounds von einem Minidisc-Player abgespielt.

Das macht aber garnichts. Im Gegenteil: Gerade bei einem Lo-Fi Ansatz, der den Anspruch hat tanzbar zu sein ist es wichtig, bestimmte Soundstandards beizubehalten um das zum Teil ungewohnte Gehör des Publikums nicht überzustrapazieren. Ausserem soll es ja fett klingen: 8-Bit-Nostalgie schön und gut, aber dafür braucht man nicht dogmatisch auf die elektro-akkustischen Errungenschaften des 21ten Jahrhunderts verzichten. Lo-Fi im Hi-Fi Gewand sozusagen. Das schafft Mini Roc in jedem Fall.

Und das beste zum Schluss: Sein Debut-Album “Littleland” (erschienen bei da! heard it records) steht auf der Label-Homepage kostenlos als Download zur Verfügung!

Als einziges Video einer Live-Performance ist folgendes auffindbar, das Mini Roc bei einem Gig 2005 in London zeigt:

Mini Roc’s “Miniland” als kostenloses Download | via da! head it records

Da har jeg bestemt meg hvordan mitt eventuelle jule tre skal se ut i år, og det blir definitivt KULERE ENN DITT!

Each set comes with 7 ornaments, including 2-dimensional cutout versions of Wii, N64, Xbox 360, Dreamcast, NES, PS2 and Sega Genesis controllers. The ornaments each measure between 3 and 4 inches wide, so they’re a bit smaller than the real deals.

They’re available in 6 colors, including red, white, yellow, black, clear, and red-tinted acrylic, and can be found over at Digits’ Ponoko or Etsy shops for just $20 bucks a set.

Kult eller total nerdete det feteste som noengang har blitt laget innen julepynt? I’m in!
Noen burde lage slike av konsoller, med mulighet for lys inni, så kan man freshe opp julebordet med en “Candellight 360″ eller evt. “Wii Christmas” (gud jeg håper det spillet ikke kommer ut!)

[etsy]

Via

[Geekologie]

Kaizer

Eccoci di nuovo qui!

Questa volta abbiamo voluto sperimentare un modo nuovo di fare podcasting. Per meglio venire incontro alle esigenze di internet, dei social network, per rendire più fruibile gli episodi senza farli troppo lunghi e per renderli ancora più “on demand”, abbiamo spearato l’episodio 2 in tanti mini-episodi che usciranno regolarmente durante le prossime settimane.

In questo primo mini-episdio abbiamo parlato di una band tedesca, davvero forte! Fanno musica con una chitarra, un Commodore 64 e la scheda audio di un Game-Boy; brani semplici, orecchiabili, molto ben prodotti… Ricordano il krautrock di gruppi più famosi come i Kraftwerk… Il gusto delle loro melodie è molto “vintage”, che riporta la mente a quelle bellissime musichette tipiche dei videogiochi degli anni ‘80 e ‘90.

Trovate maggiori informazioni sulla band in questi siti:

PORNOPHONIQUE – Sito Ufficiale

Melodicamente.com – Recensione da un blog italiano

Jamendo – Pagina della Band

Oggi abbiamo ascoltiamo:

Sad Robot

Lemmings in Love

Rock’n'roll hall of fame

>>SCARICA L’EPISODIO 2-1<<

Das ist doch mal eine Innovation: weg von High-End-Grafik, Spieltiefe und Gameplay – hin zur guten alten Zeit!

Hier seht ihr den Ego-Shooter “Left4Dead” in einer coolen 8-Bit-Retro-Konvertierung fürs NES

If you’re a fan of video game music, or music that sounds video game-y, you simply MUST check out this site, if you have not already: 8-Bit Peoples

An artists’ collective of chip music makers, they offer mp3 format copies of all their releases for free, with some additional stuff and higher-quality format recordings in their store.

I haven’t even begun to plumb the depths of what’s available on there, but I’m excited to. What I’ve heard so far sounds awesome! So check ‘em out, these fine folks definitely deserve a good look and listen.

DisturbingAmusing 8-bit animated music video!

Flairs – Trucker’s Delight NSFW « Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog.

Qué puedo decir de éste video, la verdad es de mi total agrado, para comenzar tengo que decir que es totalmente NSFW y seguramente a muchos no les va a gustar, sin embargo por varias cosas está buenisimo, el arte que semeja una animación de 8 bit es fenomenal, lo enfermo del corto también lo hace muy atrayente, es dirigido por el señor Jérémie Perin.

No mucho sé acerca de éste animador, sin embargo el resultado fue fenomenal sinceramente a mi me agradó en demasía.

Se los dejo para que lo chequen y lo disfruten.

Abur!!!

Visto en Catsuka

Jeg har vurdert meg en bil faktisk, og ikke en kjerringbil hvilken som helst bil!
Jeg satt faktisk å tenkte på en el-bil her om dagen, noe som egentlig er det eneste fornuftige her i Oslo.

I det jeg kom på tanken fant jeg jo SELVFØLGELIG ut at den måtte lakkeres på en snodig måte, sånn som bildet over

They see me rollin, im gamin’ patrollin and tryin’ to catch space invader…
Thats how we roll bitches!
[Kotaku]
Kaizer

This very well-known British duo has created some eclectic crazy fun music that has pretty much shot them up in their underground alternative/8-bit music scene. As said in the interview- they had a very progressive rise in popularity which was helped by their Live Bristol show being featured in Skins (all you skins fan would definitely know about this)! Enjoy their very informative and interesting interview:

How did you come up with the name?
YOU LOVE HER COZ SHE’S DEAD was just a random name given to the project when it was just a one man project in 2005/2006, when I was still mainly concentrating on hardcore, but until the end of 2007 when there were other people involved the idea to gig anything hadn’t really been considered but the name just stuck when we did. YOU LOVE HER COZ SHE’S DEAD sort of (i admit, awkwardly) suggests the idea of loving people more while they’re still around, and prods the concept that people are idolized in death more than in life, usually because of death. Thats the bullshit explanation, but really it doesn’t mean a thing.

Tell me a little about yourselves?
Elle (Vocals/Synth) is 22 and I, Jay (Programming/Sampling/Bass/Synth) am 27. We’re both from the UK, Bristol/London/Brighton.

What did you guys do before the group started?
I’m not sure what Elle did before the band, I just met her through a friend in a bar and her past is all a bit hazy. I put out a couple of records out 2006/2007 with my old hardcore band which I started back in 2002 in London, which is also when my dabbling in electronic music started, because i used to demo everything for the band using some programs on my PC, which were more suited to electronic music anyway.

How did you start out/ was it hard?
Well to be dead honest the things that have happened for YLHCSD have happened very naturally & easily since we put out our first ‘official’ record with Kitsune, which was the ‘Inner City Angst’ EP. Being invited to appear in SKINS is a good example of what I mean when I say things went smoothly for a debut release. We had been in Paris with Gildas, Jean & Constance from the label at the time when that happened, spending some time in the city, just after a German stint, before playing the Kitsune Maison 6 release party at ‘The Maroquinerie’ with autoKratz and Cazals, so it all felt like things were happening very fast for YLHCSD, and we filmed for SKINS just a week later (episode7/series3). I had a fever, it was not fun. The road crew and our manager we have worked with since the very start have all become close friends and that makes everything more enjoyable from the get-go, especially when you’re in a foreign country a long way from home – it’s relaxing to be with folks you can trust.

Any big plans for the near future?
Yeah well we just did a recent limited white vinyl self-release of ‘Me Versus You’ which was something we just wanted to do ourselves (includes CD copy if don’t have a record player, and a few copies still left available from http://www.ylhcsd.bigcartel.com), we’ve decided to do another DIY release for the track ‘Young Tender Hearts Beat Fast’; re-recorded and with a brand new video promo featuring a unicorn – The song is about being young, the innocence of first love, and we like the way the film ‘Legend’ from the 1980’s portrays that, being born in ‘82 that film is engrained into my psyche, so we hope you’ll enjoy the video (Produced by Elliot Dear who also did our ‘Dead End’ video).

Aside from those releases we have been writing new material which may be teamed up with re-masters of older tracks for a mini-album or perhaps even full length. For that we would like to work with a label again, and we’ve been talking to a few.

**Random questions**
What song have you been listening to most in the past few weeks?
Unfortunately the truth is ‘Young Tender Hearts Beat Fast’ on loop as I’ve been remixing it for the release. If it hadn’t been then I think Florence The Machine would be on – Reminds me of Jefferson Airplane. Awesome. Elle’s not stopped listening to Booty Luv’s dubstep remix of ‘Say It’.

What one materialistic thing can you not live without?
Laptop, sadly.

Do you have a secret name for your favourite inanimate object?
My Akai MPC 1000 is ‘The Millennium Falcon’, and the reason I call it that is because to make it work you have to whack it just right.

Does being in a band help in picking up girls/boys?
I’m pretty sure that being in a band isn’t exactly the most attractive thing for a person to do haha. Everyone’s in a fucking band! I’d much rather be able to say I’m a butcher, or an explorer and not be lying – because being good with an axe, or a lot of rope, is surely far sexier.

Has anything crazy or embarrassing ever happened during a live gig?
Apart from the usual equipment getting trashed or tipped over, once there was a random old sofa on the stage at a show we did in Munster (Germany) and someone decided to come and sit on it, facing the crowd, and gaze at people blankly while we were playing.. weirdly, that was surprisingly uncomfortable for everyone involved.

Now if you enjoy the Canadian duo Crystal Castles, enjoy this crazy-melodic music!
Ps- I do love the Star Wars reference to the inanimate object!

Links:
YLHBSD Merch
YLHBSD MySpace
YLHBSD Official Site
YLHBSD Facebook
YLHBSD Twitter
YLHBSD Youtube

Nuovo video per il gruppo Electro-Pop francese Flair:

Ha proprio uno o due tocchi di classe…

Diese Woche steht der zweite Teil der Left 4 Dead Reihe vor dem Release. Passend dazu gibt es ein super witziges 8-Bit Grafik-Spiel des ersten Left 4 Dead. Die 4×2 Bit Version wurde von einem Fan für den NES programmiert. Das ganze erinnert an die guten alten NES Zeiten und zeigt was damals möglich war. Die Version wird alle vier Kampagnen des Originalspiels enthalten. Erhältlich soll das Spiel im Januar 2010 sein. Mal sehen was der Entwickler Valve dazu sagt, Copyright pfeifen die Spatzen.

J’adore! Vous vcroyez que Michael Jackson aurait aimé? Puisqu’il aimait les jeux vidéos, je suis certaine que oui!

(Click on the post title to view the post in full-screen mode.)

You may be shooting in raw rather than jpeg because you know that raw files contain more information and because they are unprocessed, giving you more flexibility.  But how do they contain more information?  Among other things, raw files are captured at a higher bit depth — depending on the camera, 12, 14 or 16 bit, compared to 8 bit for jpegs.   Whether 12, 14 or 16, these higher bit-depth files potentially contain much more information than 8 bit files.

What’s the big deal?   For each pixel in your image, the tonal value or brightness of the scene you are photographing  is stored in the image file on your memory card, along with the color.   Computer files store information in zeros and ones.  Bit depth refers to how many digits  the tonal information for each pixel is stored in.   Imagine if your camera used a bit-depth of one:  you would have one digit to store how dark each piece of the scene was, the only possible values would be 0 and 1, and the only two tones that could be represented are black and white:

Image From File with Bit Depth of One

This image of course has very little detail, since it contains no shades of gray.

If the file had a bit depth of two, there would be two digits, and the four values of 00, 01, 10, and 11 would be possible, so the image could have black, dark gray, light gray, and white:

Image from File with Bit Depth of 2

Notice that we have gained some detail, but that the image is still very choppy.  In the histogram for this image, below, we see huge gaps between the tones, confirming the choppiness or posterization.  (The histogram is a graph of the tones in an image, going from pure black on the left side to pure white on the right side.)

Histogram for File with Bit Depth of 2

Let’s jump to a file with a bit depth of 5, which allows 2 to the 5th, or 32 possible values from 00000 to 11111:

Image from File with Bit Depth of 5

We gain alot of detail, but there is still obvious posterization in the sky (click on the image to see it larger).  The histogram supports this:

Histogram for Image with Bit Depth of 5

Now let’s jump to 8, which allows 2 to the 8th, or 256 values, and is what a jpeg supports:

Image with Bit Depth of 8

Histogram of Image with Bit Depth of 8

This image shows the full detail of the scene with no visible posterization, even when viewed at full size, and the histogram looks much better.  (If you see any posterization, it is not real, but rather just the result of my blog save process.)  So why not stop here, with 8 bits and 256 tones?

The problem is that as soon as you start enhancing your image, you start compressing and expanding the tonal range.  This creates choppiness in the histogram and potentially, visible posterization in your image.  To show this, I took this 8 bit image into Photoshop, and added contrast and darkened it:

Darkened and Added Contrast to 8 Bit Image

Notice how this pulled apart the histogram:

Result of Working 8 Bit Image

The more heavy-handed your adjustments, the more and wider gaps you will end up with in your histogram, and the greater possibility that you will see posterization in your image.  256 tones is often not enough for the fine detail in the image to hold together.

12 bit files have over 4,000 tones, and 14 bit files have over 16,000.  This is vastly better, and with almost any work you could do to an image, it would hold together.  Here is the histogram from the 12 bit version of the above image, with the darkening and increased contrast:

Histogram from 12 Bit Version with Darkening and Contrast Boost

To have this additional “editing headroom”, you have to capture a high bit-depth image, i.e. a raw file, and you have to enhance it as a high-bit depth file.  It does no good to convert a raw file into 8 bit as you move into Photoshop to work it.  While you are working in Lightroom or Camera Raw, your work on your raw file is in 16 bit (standardized to accomodate 12, 14 and 16).  When you move a file from Lightroom or ACR to Photoshop, you need to ensure that the Photoshop file stays in 16 bit.  In Lightroom, go to Edit or Lightroom>Preferences>External Editing, and set your PSD or TIFF preference to 16 bit.  In ACR, click on the workflow options at the bottom of the screen and do the same.

Higher bit depth files also potentially have a much larger number of colors:  an 8-bit  jpeg can represent around 16 million colors, whereas a high bit-depth file can represent over 28 billion.  Perhaps we could make do with 16 million, but if your photography is important to you, why not start out and work with the best quality image possible?

The downside to higher bit-depth is larger image files — all else equal, a 16 bit image file is twice as big as an 8 bit image file.  But large memory cards and hard drives are so much cheaper these days than they used to be.