1-Bit Hokusai's "The Great Wave" (2023)

(hypertalking.com)

170 points | by stephen-hill 3 days ago

12 comments

  • KaiserPro 1 hour ago
    I really like the layout and style of the site. I never had a mac growing up so its not a nostalgia thing, I just appreciate the compactness with contrast

    The art is also very good. Its hard to get that level of "colour" with limited resolution

  • srean 20 minutes ago
    I am having a surprisingly hard time finding Hokusai's exercises on tesselations.

    Has search become really this bad !

    Anyway wanted to show his sketch of a bird behind chicken wire fence/cage. Similar birds here

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47901702

  • SomeHacker44 25 minutes ago
    Curious about the "no derivatives" license. Surely anything derivative would be of the original now public domain art and not this. I do not see how this could as a practical matter be enforced. IANAL though.
    • teraflop 17 minutes ago
      Public domain isn't "viral" like copyleft.

      If I take something in the public domain and make a derivative work, the original remains in the public domain, and I retain ownership of whatever additions or modifications I created. So I can attach whatever conditions I want to the copying of those additions.

      For instance, Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" was protected by copyright when it was released, even though it was based on a centuries-old fairy tale that was in the public domain.

    • jszymborski 24 minutes ago
      Well not if I take this 1 bit image and add my logo or remove his...
  • usrnm 1 hour ago
    It's insane, how far our industry has come in less than a single human lifetime. I wish I could see what will become of it in a few centuries.
  • srean 33 minutes ago
    Previously discussed here

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35866283

    72 comments

  • cubefox 22 minutes ago
    More 1-bit pixel art:

    > MacPaint Art From The Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today - https://blog.decryption.net.au/posts/macpaint.html

    Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44540402

    This masterpiece by an unknown artist might be the best work of hi-res pixel art I have ever seen: https://blog.decryption.net.au/images/macpaint/lesson3d.png

  • the_af 1 hour ago
    I love pixel art and specifically monochrome pixel art like this.

    It's a pity this blog was so short lived, I can only see 7 entries and only 2 Hokusai prints. Oh well, my own blogs usually don't fare much better.

  • itsthecourier 1 hour ago
    somebody explained me that the correct way to appreciate this painting is to invert it on horizontal axis.

    the reason is, japanese is read from right to left.

    once you invert it you can appreciate it better

    • srean 45 minutes ago
      You mean like this

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa_-...

      His "Big Wave" has that right left position

      https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Th...

      Love the birds in this one, especially the way it mirrors the wave crest fingers. Hokusai seems to have lunch ved these birds. They figure in his caged Bird pieces.

    • andsoitis 1 hour ago
    • pavel_lishin 1 hour ago
      Doesn't this assume that people (in the west, at least) "perceive" paintings from left to right? That doesn't strike me as particularly true.
      • ggsp 57 minutes ago
        Look up “spatial agency bias” and “glance curve”
      • recj 1 hour ago
        Doesn't strike me as particularly true either.
    • hnfong 1 hour ago
      ... specifically, Japanese is traditionally written top to bottom, then right to left. (In contrast, English is written left to right, then top to bottom.)

      So, armed with that knowledge, are you going to rotate it as well?

      • filoleg 32 minutes ago
        If you are talking about page order or panel order (in something like manga), those go right to left. More specifically, manga panels follow the usual western comic book panel order, except with left and right flipped.

        However, when it comes to the actual text (regardless of the medium), it is always written either top to bottom or left to right. There is no right to left text writing in japanese. This isn't arabic, where text is indeed written right to left.

    • recj 1 hour ago
      [dead]
      • Isamu 31 minutes ago
        When written horizontally it is now left to right but earlier you would see horizontal right to left. But vertical was preferred especially in the past.

        You can see horizontal train stop signs written right to left in “In This Corner of the World” anime. Today all signage seems to be left to right.

        [edit] The history section in Wikipedia explains that this was a postwar script reform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system

      • kdheiwns 25 minutes ago
        In the time this art was made, top to bottom, right to left was the standard. It's pretty apparent when looking at any document from the Edo era. It's all top to bottom, right to left. Remnants of it are also clear in temples where the signs above doorways are written right to left, not even top to bottom. Plus every Japanese novel and manga today is still written top to bottom right to left.
      • hnfong 59 minutes ago
        You are right, but it can be argued that during the time the painting was made, vertical writing was the predominant form, and I don't know whether horizontal writing was a thing at the time in Japan...

        That said, as I implied in my other reply, the whole idea is a bit silly...

  • redsocksfan45 52 minutes ago
    Very nice work. I've always loved the aesthetic of hand crafted monochrome pixel art.
  • amelius 40 minutes ago
    [flagged]
  • joe_mamba 1 hour ago
    FYI, Hokusai also drew Hentai.
    • tecleandor 41 minutes ago
      Sorry for the "actually", but Hentai didn't exist yet as a genre. It was "shunga", that is, erotic "ukiyo-e", a popular style at that time.

      Popular shunga works by Hokusai are "Two lovers" or the wrongly translated "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife" (the original Japanese title is "female diver and octopus")