The High Voltage Graphics Collection

Cross posted from Chrome

The High Voltage SID Collection has been around for some time, collecting every known example of Commodore 64 music and audio regardless of how obscure or uncooperative the original file might be.

A new Facepalm Headesk page, the High Voltage Graphics Collection, has been created to collect some of the more unique and outstanding examples of Commodore 64 graphics – clever coding and design has gone far beyond the hardware limitations of the original system permitting new psuedo-graphics modes such as switching between low resolution colour bitmaps and high resolution on alternate frames, using software manipulation of the colour palette to alter the colour map each display line, theoretically permitting up to four unique colours for every 8 by 1 group of pixels and changing the bitmap pointers on the fly to allow high scrolling bitmaps far beyond what the machine should be able to display.

Technical jiggery-pokery and programming tricks aside, art should always be about the design, passion and creative skills of the artist.

A sore point for many artists and admirers in recent years has been the tendency to rely on the software of more modern systems to create the initial design and that convert the completed image to the C64 afterwards – it is no longer about the artists ability to create fine art in a restricted environment, but more about the technical wizardry that permits the artwork to be adapted. When someone has spent days, weeks and months creating an image pixel by pixel only to be beaten in a competition by someone who has submitted an image that is clearly a photograph or scanned image transferred from another system, one can forgive them for questioning why they continue in their field.

The same could be thought of someone spending ages developing a music player and editor that permits a composer and arranger to painstakingly recreate a complex and detailed melody utilising all the unique characteristics of the Commodore unique sound system only to be outclassed by someone who has simply sampled and looped an existing song.

So have a view of the art on display and support the artist, even if you don’t always like their work or understand what they have endeavoured to achieve.