Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Pixels and Chips!

Before continuing to read on please load this chip tune to get the full effect of this blog post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lb9Fy2H96k



Recently I have come across an amazing culture that I must share with you. Chip culture.

A couple weeks ago when I was reading though my EGM, I came across an article about film makers that relate to gaming. Reformat the Planet was a documentary film listed about the underground chip music scene. Chip music is remeniciant of NES and Gameboy music and is apparently coming back in a big way. Wikipedia's description of chip music:

"A chiptune (or chip music) is music written in sound formats where many of the sound textures are synthesized or sequenced in real time by a computer or video game console sound chip, sometimes including sample-based synthesis and low bit sample playback."

 After a quick swing by www.ChipMusic.org I learn that there are not only plenty of chip music makers but also pixel artists as well. Pixel art as described by Wiki is:  

"Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old (or relatively limited) computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobile phone games are mostly pixel art."


Maybe it's because I'm a huge fan of old console games music and art that this medium hits so close to home. It's also the fact that back in the day when music and games had to be created this way due to technological limitations. I enjoy that people are revisiting this dated way of creating music and art and really making beautiful pieces of work. 

If you are becoming interested in chip music and pixel art I highly recommend visiting www.chipmusic.org for a good foothold into the chip culture. All three pictures here were taken from an art thread off the site. 


12 comments:

  1. I used to love some of the Pokemon Songs in the Game Boy, I guess that's an example of Chip tunes, doesn't. Pixel art it's cool, you don't need nothing else besides MS Paint and creativity. Good post‼ +10

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  2. pixel art amazes me. would like it if there would be some type of pixel neon light art \ good post.

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  3. Pixel sound it´s kinda catchy!

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  4. love the tunes but the art isn't rly my style somehow =)

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  5. Thats pretty cool stuff man, following this blog for sure.

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  6. hahaha the last one is awesome xD

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  7. very cool post buddy. stalin ftw.
    Following & Supporting

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