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In the BBS world of the late 1980s and early 1990s, one could easily find digital art that celebrated consumer brands, like the image of a Coke can seen here. In fact, I’d say brand art was a particularly distinctive genre of early computer art.

If I had to explain why brand art was so common, I’d first speculate that when people needed something to test out their imaging equipment with — say, a new scanner or a video digitizer card — an advertisement or product package was always at hand to be a guinea pig.

More importantly, consumer brands also inspire loyalty that consumers identify with personally. Think Doritos and Mountain Dew. Fans of those products like to spread their love of them as a cultural identifier, and the same was true in the 1980s and 1990s online space.

[ Continue reading [ Retro GIF of the Week ] Coca-Cola Classic » ]

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Among the few GIF files I saved in the early 1990s (outside of those uploaded to by BBS), this warm, inviting Christmas scene remains one of my favorites.

In the image, we see a living room with a roaring fireplace bedecked with four Christmas stockings, a richly ornamented Christmas tree presiding over a large pile of presents, and a holly wreath over the mantle. Two candles flickering above the fireplace add an extra detail that completes the picture of a perfect holiday scene.

As the years have passed, I have forgotten where I acquired this GIF file, labeled XMASTR.GIF. I revisit this image every now and then, and I always wonder about its origins. Now is as good a time as any to look into them.

[ Continue reading [ Retro GIF of the Week ] Christmas Fireplace » ]

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This eye is more than meets the eye. You probably can’t see it at this size, but click on the “3X Zoom” link above and you might notice a face and what might be a shoulder (or a six-fingered hand) reflected in the pupil of the eyeball. Neat detail.

Unlike many GIFs that circulated back in the day, this one is signed — twice, in fact. In the upper left, we see a small box containing stylized letters spelling “The Mage.” In the lower right, we see “A.H.”

I’ve seen other GIFs with the same resolution and color depth signed “A.H.”, so I assume that is the artist. “The Mage” might have been the name of a BBS that happened to tag the image, or perhaps is was simply an alias of A.H.

When combined with its 320 x 200 dimensions, its odd 5-bit / 32-color color depth reveals that this image was created on an Amiga. That means it is likely that it did not originate as a GIF file, and that it could be older than the 1992 file date. But until I find an older source of the image, I won’t know for sure.

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The Empire Strikes Back is one of my favorite films of all time, so I have always cherished this particular image that someone uploaded to my BBS in the early 1990s. It depicts two AT-ATs walking through the snow in a scene recalling the Battle of Hoth from the 1980 film.

Its 16-color 640×400 format suggests a few possibilities as to its origin platform. IBM’s little-used MCGA standard (introduced in 1987) could do 640×400 at 16 colors, and so could a few “extended EGA” graphics cards on the IBM PC platform.

But so could the Amiga — in fact, 640×400 at 16 colors was its original high-end graphics mode. Since many early GIF files originated in the graphically rich culture of the Amiga (a machine well-known for its graphics capabilities), and since this file is dated 1988, and since MCGA adapters were scarce, I’d say this image most likely originated on the Amiga platform.

[ Update: 11/04/2012 – Since I originally wrote this, I’ve realized that this AT-AT image uses a 12-bit (4096) color palette (from that palette the artist could use 16 colors on screen at a time), which was unique to the Amiga platform. So this image definitely originated on an Amiga. ]

By the way, this image is actually signed by the artist. You can see a small “BMW” in the lower right corner (and we’re not talking about the German car company here). If anyone knows who BMW is, please leave a comment. That would be fascinating to find out.

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Long ago, scanners were rare and expensive. Consumer digital cameras were mostly non-existent — and those that did exist were impractical to use or expensive.

At the same time, many users possessed computers with (relatively speaking) high-resolution bitmapped displays that craved content. In time, those machines gained color capability and could display dazzlingly beautiful works of digital art.

[ Continue reading [ Retro GIF of the Week ] Meryl Streep Stares at You » ]

While browsing through my file archives some years ago, I ran across a few folders of locally cached web pages. Browsers like Netscape and Internet Explorer saved these files in order to speed up load times upon future visits to the same sites. Browsers today do the same thing, but the functionality was far more vital in the days of sluggish dial-up modem connections.

From those folders, I culled a large collection of vintage web banner advertisements from 1996 to 2001. Each one is a bite-sized time capsule of web and Internet history, recalling events and trends of the day. You’re about to see a big ‘ole gallery of these ads with minimal captions that include a month and year they were captured (I got this from the file dates of the images). A few of the ads betray some interesting browsing habits, like the two for online gambling sites. I blame my brother.

If you’re tempted to click on any of these (like I am) then I suppose these ads did their job, but you won’t find anything on the other side. Most of the sites advertised in these banner ads went out of business long ago.

If you have any memories of the products or sites showcased in these ads, please feel free to share them in the comments below.

[ Continue reading 50 Vintage Web Ad Banners » ]

Up now on PCMag is a slideshow I made showcasing freaky-weird 3D amateur computer art of the early 1990s. It’s composed mostly of GIF files from the BBS era that I’ve been collecting for some time now.

Here’s a snippet of the introduction:

Back in the early 1990s, when 3D computer-generated art was still a new thing, a brave new breed of amateur artists emerged. They took up early 3D CGI (computer generated imagery) tools and created graphical works that they then shared on dial-up BBSes and CompuServe.

Over the years, I’ve collected dozens of these now-vintage images, and I recently noticed that many of them are, well, more than a little bizarre.

When you’re done checking out the slideshow, feel free to post your fondest memories of vintage CGI graphics. And if you have any bizarre 3D CGI images of your own to share, please post a link.

I whipped up this Zelda-themed ornament a few days ago out of some leftover polymer clay I had lying around. I thought you might enjoy it.

Have you ever made video game or computer themed ornaments? If so, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

A few days ago, PCMag.com published a slideshow of vintage Christmas graphics files that I put together. Some of those images were stills from animated GIFs. Below, you’ll find the full animated GIF files featured in the article and a whole lot more. Merry Christmas!

Prepare to be besparkled.

[ Continue reading Animated Christmas GIFs of Yore » ]