Wed 25 Jul 2007
When I saw the title of this clip on Youtube I thought the result was going to be something pretty abysmal.
But I was wrong, it’s absolutely amazing - especially when you think it only took 2 and a half hours in realtime.
Much quicker than da Vinci did it no doubt…
July 26th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
It’s amazing for two reasons: firstly, because the person doing it is a gifted artist who can use any tool to produce the effect wanted (who would even want to copy the Mona Lisa in MS Paint?) and, secondly, because the amount of work done before the 2½ hours is phenomenal. Those triangles drawn at the start - you can’t put those in where required without a lot of calculation beforehand. But essentially, they’re just place markers anyway; the artist soon gets into filling in details and that is where his/her skill really shows. That understanding of light and shadow, colour and shading only comes from years of learning.
So you could say the final result took several years of practice.
July 27th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Yeah he has obviously done a lot of work on trial and error before he has gone for this version!
Still amazing considering it’s MS Paint - most pictures from it turn out like the 2012 Olympic logo!
July 28th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Agreed absolutely, Craig - to produce such work in as basic a program as Paint shows real skill that is great to watch.
I can understand the artist’s motivation, however. Years ago I became obsessed with the creation of icons for MS Windows and it was the limitations that really grabbed me. To have only 16 colours to work with and 32×32 pixels in which to make a recognisable picture was a challenge.
Long experience gave me the ability to fool the eye into seeing many more than those sixteen colours and I did produce a few icons that I a still proud of. But then I discovered a guy in the Netherlands who was an even worse icon addict than myself and I realised that it was perhaps the most pointless obsession I’d ever picked up. Not only is it like flying up your own backside, the products were hardly ever used!
I gave up on icons and now make comments on blogs instead…
July 29th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Not only that, but you run your own very good blog as well!
July 29th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Thanks, Craig, kind of you to say so. And you have a great blog here yourself!