waltzer design :w: 
The Pixel Episode
week 44 : 30 october 2000

Compilation of pixel site graphics

The Pixel Episode Clockwise: Rocket from Poptics; Whip-It bowling from Netbabyworld; Sissy from Word; Sushi from QuickHoney, Character from Eboy, Face from Captain LowRez; Girl from QuickHoney; Helicopter from E-city; character from E-city; Ninja from NinjaCruise; SissyFight logo from Word; Sushi from QuickHoney; Peecol and Fontshop ads from Eboy. Images are copyright their respective owners.

 :w:

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
Clodagh: On stickers(!)
"I hate stickers, get them off, get them off!"

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The Waltzer Experience is a weekly culture website which is edited and maintained by Alan Wall.

© 2000 Alan Wall

 News

Welcome to the Pixel Episode

The Waltzer Experience presents the Pixel Episode. In these days of vector-based web graphics created with Macromedia's Flash, we often forget our old friend, the humble pixel. And to that end, I have dedicated this week's site to pixels, pixel-based websites and games. With a Top 10 of pixel based websites, a Wrecks Me Buzz about pixels versus vectors, and some background information about the rise and fall and rise of pixels today.

Waltzer Experience 40 weeks old!

The Waltzer Experience has hit it's 40th week. The weekly culture website maintained by charismatic entrepreuneur Alan Wall goes from strength to strength. Originally a DJ site created to promote the DJ talents of the multi-talented young DJ Waltzer, the site went through a redesign, a revision of the content and an email blast to everyone who would be interested in it. Word of mouth quickly spread news the site's existence and soon people from old school friends in Navan, workmates in Dublin, ex-workmates in Australia, England, America and Portugal, friends in Dublin and further afield. People from all corporate levels and all types of business check the site on a weekly basis.

But no matter who is coming to the site or how big the numbers grow, The Waltzer Experience sticks to it's roots and doesn't dilute the content to please the masses. This winning formula is what keeps the crew coming back week after week.

This is a chart of the stats for the website since it was first introduced way back in February. (The hugh jump was the company trip to Galway). Click the chart to see an enlarged version.

 Top 10

Pixel Websites

10 Fake ID

Design company.

9 NinjaCruse

Nice Graphics, Gallery, Links. A drop-in site for pixel pushers everywhere to show off their wares.

8 Captain LowRez

Great animations based on huge clunky pixels. Nice sounds too!

7 QuickHoney

Weird European website. Photographic images converted to pixel-style images, and some dodgy shockwave animations, such as "Suchi". Great, if you're into that sort of thing.

6 Poptics

A gallery where each artist has an "apartment" and clicking on each appartment reveals each artist's works. Nice.

5 Word/SissyFight

Word used to have a great deal of pixel style stuff on their site, but recently it seems confined to their Sissyfight game.

4 Eboy/E-City

Although Eboy is reviewed at number 2, I had to include the e-boy e-city. This is an entire city created out of pixel based D-Paint buildings. When we were creating these buildings for our Business House Blackrock style graphics, we would have been very proud of these buildings for our environments!

3 PixelTime

Draw up a pixel based graphic online for the daily competitions. "A realm of creativity where you can win prises."

2 Netbabyworld

A brilliant collection of Shockwave games all in cute colours and pixels. This is one of my favourite sites on the web as it is an inspiration for cuteness, colours and the powerful graphics you can create while limiting your palette. Highly addictive games!

1 Eboy

Although I love Netbaby, for pixel inspiration Eboy has it all: Fonts, images, cards, links, and naked pixel girls. Check out Peecol, Fontshop, the Robots and the e-city. Absolutely wonderful graphics, if a little aggresive. But difinitly worth checking out if you are intersted in pixel graphics.

 That wrecks me buzz

The Rise and Fall of Pixels

Waltzer writes yet again this week.

Could the humble pixel, the fabric of our visual computer world, be seeing the last of it's glorious days? Are vector graphics are taking over the Internet?

Vectors are graphics that are described mathematicly to the computer and redrawn there and then. Therefore they have smaller file sizes than bitmapped pixel based graphics, which describe each pixel's colour.

Anyway when we worked in Blackrock on the old stuff, we created cool pixel graphics. They were for CD ROM, so there was no need to worry about the file size. (You should see the effort we go to to make these graphics web-deployable). But we had a good time, made good graphics and made joke graphics for fun. Flash is what we use now to create our notorious vector graphics, and it's boring! We don't even make joke graphics any more! Vectors replacing Pixels...

This seems to be the case all across the web. Vector graphics are becoming more and more popular because of of their small file sizes. Traditional pixel images take up far too much file size for the demanding designers and consumers of today. In the old days, they would have been resourceful and creative with their limitations.

Nowadays however, our pixel has found a new place in our life: Mobile technology. Phones, Gameboy and PDAs all use pixels to display their content. Pixel artists are finding work creating games and icons for thes devices.

So while we are seeing less and less pixels on the web, we are bound to see more and more on our hand-held systems now and in the future.

So get a copy of Deluxe Paint and start being creative!

Now that wrecks me buzz.