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| pixeljam anything.org |
| splatterlink home | random page |
 pixeljam - a page where the animated gifs are not the irritating part, but the star of the show. splatterlink has interviewed richard grillotti, the creator of pixeljam, about his page and his fondness for big, chunky pixels. (note: if the animations don't show, make your browser window smaller or use this link: pixeljam small version) What is pixeljam? Pixeljam is a series of abstract pixel animations that I set up as a Web site a while ago. I see the work as an extension of abstract expressionism. It also ties into the color field movement to some degree. I suppose it's also somewhat mimimal as well. Pixeljam version 2 is going to be a bit more diverse in it's subject matter and themes. In short, it's artwork that I enjoy creating and displaying. How did you make the individual pixel animations? How long did it take to finish one? There were a variety of techniques used in creating the different individual animations. They usually involve Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Fireworks, but I've tried making some with the help of Macromedia Flash as well. Some of the animations were created pixel by pixel, some were created as larger images shrunk down. Most of the time there's a painstaking, somewhat time consuming process involved. Whenever I try to find a shortcut, there winds up being a loss of quality or control of the final images, which I have to correct for afterwards. The time it takes to make these ranges from a half hour to a few hours, depending on the technique used and the results I'm getting as I go. Here's one that took me about 3 hours, and is not on the site currently. It was used as a coming soon animation before the site launched originally. (sample) How did you originally get the idea for pixelmations? I originally started with the idea of expanding images using HTML image size attributes. I began to play around with 100% image sizes on smaller images, and grew to like the pixellated effect a lot. I then tested it out on a gif animation and it worked! It was love at first sight. This was the very first appearance/test of the pixeljam style animation: original pixeljam (click images to go forward) Anything.org is a site of mine I enjoy adding new series' to from time to time. Here are some more anything.org pixeljam style series: "e-mail", "new", "beanies". I see these as an extension of the Pop-Art movement. Taking pre-existing elements of Web culture and displaying them in a way that they take on a new life and meaning. I've got a few more series like these I still have yet to organize into the site. How many pixelmations are currently available on your site? Only 9 or 10, if you count the core page as one. I've created a few for other sites as a guest artist from time to time. I'm very happy with my latest creations, which I made for a site called pixelmuseum.com and a site called clubsandwich.com. These animations will only be seen on these sites. Some people have troubles viewing the fullsize version of pixeljam. Problems with viewing pixeljam that I've witnessed usually involve image inflation on slower/older machines. If the browser window is open full screen on a slow or old processor, the animations can go very slowly and the screen can refresh each frame way too slowly. I've also heard that some PC users using some of the recent versions of Internet Rxplorer don't even get to see anything. This is one reason why developing pixeljam v.2 in Flash is appealing to me. More accessable, perhaps. Have you seen other people picking up on your idea and making their own pixelmations? Kind of. Someone wrote to me recently that is studying pixels and animations in a different way, but there are definitely similarities. People write from time to time saying that they want to try making animations like these. I usually encourage them and am curious to see what they do. I'm also usually glad when their work doesn't wind up looking like mine. :) I'll probably add a links section to pixeljam v.2 once it's up which will link to anyone doing similar work. Pixeljam v.2 - what will be the things we can expect from the new version? I'm working hard on pixeljam v2 currently. I am hoping to have it up by late October/November. And I am working on possibilities of screensavers. Most of the animation subject matter for v.2 is top secret for now ;-), but I can say that it will be much larger and will be set up for me to add new series periodically, while allowing access to the older series. Maybe I'll do that quarterly or bi-anuually. I've discovered a technique I can use to make Flash files out of these. I've already contacted a good friend of mine about writing some original music for the animations. He seems to be excited about it. His name is Miles Tilmann (webhole.com) & he's an awesome electronic musician. I also hope to create some limited edition print sets of selected (static) pixel art that I can sell on the site. I think stills of some of these frames would look great as a poster on a wall, for instance. If I can afford to print a number of 3 or 4 different posters to start with, I'll see how that goes and if people respond well, I'll make more. (thereby allowing me to put more time into pixeljam and less time into client work).
Any closing words you would like to tell the world? I hope visitors to pixeljam.com enjoy themselves. I also look forward to visitor feedback. It's very interesting to me what people think of the work, and what they read into it. I try to keep the meanings behind the work to myself so people can form their own opinions and conclusions. |
