Pixel (webcomic)

Pixel
Author(s)	Chris Dlugosz
Website	http://pixelcomic.net/
Current status / schedule	Not updating
Launch date	June 14, 2002

Last updated May 02, 2019

Pixel is a webcomic written by Chris Dlugosz, first published on June 14, 2002. It is set in the aptly named "pixel universe", inhabited by pixels, voxels, vectors, plasmas (a satire on the plasma screens used by Apple computers), and polygons. The comic is known for its very literal sense of humor, and its constant breaks of the fourth wall. The text of the comic is written entirely in upper case with very little punctuation other than the occasional hyphen or exclamation point. Each comic comes with a short note, usually split into three lines at seemingly arbitrary points. These are also written in capitals with no punctuation, and usually explain or expand upon the strip.

Webcomics are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or in comic books.

In digital imaging, a pixel, pel, or picture element is a physical point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable element in an all points addressable display device; so it is the smallest controllable element of a picture represented on the screen.

Voxel element representing a value on a grid in three dimensional space

A voxel represents a value on a regular grid in three-dimensional space. As with pixels in a bitmap, voxels themselves do not typically have their position explicitly encoded along with their values. Instead, rendering systems infer the position of a voxel based upon its position relative to other voxels. In contrast to pixels and voxels, points and polygons are often explicitly represented by the coordinates of their vertices. A direct consequence of this difference is that polygons can efficiently represent simple 3D structures with lots of empty or homogeneously filled space, while voxels excel at representing regularly sampled spaces that are non-homogeneously filled.

The Attitude series of books is a series of anthologies of alternative comics, photos and artists' interviews edited by Universal Press Syndicate editorial cartoonist Ted Rall. The books were designed by J. P. Trostle, news editor of EditorialCartoonists.com. Two sequels and three spin-off titles have been published to date. A group of cartoonists featured in the Attitude series formed the organization Cartoonists With Attitude in June 2006; the group hosts slideshow and panel events around the country to promote the series and alternative political cartooning. Ted Rall created the compilation with the intention of publishing artists who were hard-up for work or otherwise had difficulties relating to the public.

Development

Chris Dlugosz initially started Pixel in 2002 as a response to sprite comics, which were proliferating at the time. In an interview in 2006, Dlugosz stated that he began posting Pixel as a "casual gag" to make fun of the sprite comic genre, and that the logistics of his Pixel universe expanded over time. Dlugosz was primarily inspired by Calvin and Hobbes , which he described as "the sole reason [he] was not afraid to occasionally get rhetorical or philosophical in some of [his] own strips." Dlugosz was introduced to the webcomic format by Penny Arcade , which he also listed as an influence. His visual style, however, is entirely different, as the world of Pixel is populated with anthropomorphic geometric shapes.^[1]

<i>Calvin and Hobbes</i> comic strip by Bill Watterson

Calvin and Hobbes is a daily comic strip by American cartoonist Bill Watterson that was syndicated from November 18, 1985 to December 31, 1995. Commonly cited as "the last great newspaper comic", Calvin and Hobbes has enjoyed broad and enduring popularity, influence, and academic interest.

Penny Arcade is a webcomic focused on video games and video game culture, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. The comic debuted in 1998 on the website loonygames.com. Since then, Holkins and Krahulik have established their own site, which is typically updated with a new comic strip each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The comics are accompanied by regular updates on the site's blog.

When creating a Pixel strip, Dlugosz always starts with the script, as he finds that text has "the annoying tendency to cover up much of your art." Meanwhile, he describes "interesting visual effects" as a "side hobby" of his. Dlugosz has a text file on his computer in which he keeps a list of ideas for new strips, though he noted that jokes that hit him spontaneously often make for better strips than those he thought about for longer periods of time. Dlugosz uses a template file, consisting of a blue block and a red block (pixels) standing in front of a green horizon and blue sky. He then uses a random number generator in order to produce two web colors with which to color in the two pixels, before entering the text and other effects.^[1]

Web colors are colors used in displaying web pages on the World Wide Web, and the methods for describing and specifying those colors. Colors may be specified as an RGB triplet or in hexadecimal format or according to their common English names in some cases. A color tool or other graphics software is often used to generate color values. In some uses, hexadecimal color codes are specified with notation using a leading number sign (#). A color is specified according to the intensity of its red, green and blue components, each represented by eight bits. Thus, there are 24 bits used to specify a web color within the sRGB gamut, and 16,777,216 colors that may be so specified.

Cast

Pixels

Pixels are the main focus of the strip. They're square, genderless and monochromatic. Every pixel is of a different 24-bit colour, and there is a pixel of every colour, so there are exactly 16,777,216 of them at any given time. A pixel's first name is his colour value in hexadecimal (e.g. 0000FF), and his second name is this same value in binary (e.g.. 000000000000000011111111). Although pixels can die, they are instantly reborn as infants, usually to a parent of a similar colour. There is no pregnancy, and any pixel can give birth at any moment. Birth is painless, and merely involves an infant appearing near his parent. Infants are smaller than adult pixels, with rounded corners which quickly sharpen.

In computer architecture, 24-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 24 bits wide. Also, 24-bit CPU and ALU architectures are those that are based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size.

Pixels do not have limbs or faces, but they can manipulate objects by mild telekinesis. Some of them wear clothes, but usually this is limited to a tie, collar and shirt pocket (without a shirt).

Although there are only 2²⁴ of them, pixels can create composite images by screencapping themselves (that is, creating non-living temporary duplicates).

In one minor story arc, some pixels managed to achieve transparency (became 32-bit). As of strip No. 265, this ability still exists.

A story arc is an extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media such as television, comic books, comic strips, boardgames, video games, and films with each episode following a dramatic arc. On a television program, for example, the story would unfold over many episodes. In television, the use of the story arc is much more common in comedies, especially in soap operas. In a traditional Hollywood film, the story arc usually follows a three-act format. Webcomics are more likely to use story arcs than newspaper comics, as most web comics have readable archives online that a newcomer to the strip can read in order to understand what is going on. Although story arcs have existed for decades, the term "story arc" was coined in 1988 in relation to the television series Wiseguy, and was quickly adapted for other uses.

In computer architecture, 32-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 32 bits wide. Also, 32-bit CPU and ALU architectures are those that are based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. 32-bit microcomputers are computers in which 32-bit microprocessors are the norm.

Voxels

A voxel is the three-dimensional equivalent of a pixel, being cubic and able to move in the Z-axis. Their births differ from those of the pixels in that the child grows inside the parent until they are of equal size, at which point the parent dies and another voxel becomes pregnant with the recently deceased.

Polygons

Polygons are uniformly triangular, and although they are two-dimensional, they have the ability to rotate in three dimensions. They are constantly taking part in jousting matches, in which two polygons attempt to bisect each other. This is also their means of procreation, as the two parts of the loser each become an infant polygon. Unlike the other races, they are silent. Their means of communication is via "saying" images to one another. Unlike the images "said" by voxels, their word-images are well-drawn and well-defined.

Vectors

Vectors in the pixel universe aren't vectors per se; they are quadrilaterals described by vectors. Like pixels, they are limited to two dimensions. In the comic, vectors are displayed with control boxes and a central anchor point similar to those used in graphics editors such as Photoshop. Each one is capable of changing these vectors at whim, allowing them to shape-shift and fly. They are belligerent and not very bright. Vectors do not have a known means of procreation, aside from Vectorball, which appears similar to basketball. They have also been noted to have the ability to shrink to microscopic size. It is not known what consequences this development will bring.

Plasmas

Plasmas are similar to pixels in size, shape, and reproductivity, although their corners are rounded like those of an infant. Actual infants are spherical. They use blank DVDs for many things, including coffee mugs. They represent the Mac user from the perspective of the PC user.

History

Pixel went on hiatus in 2007 from May 13 until November 9, when he altered the design and layout of the website itself. A second hiatus began in February 2008, with one last strip having been posted in September 2012.

Related Research Articles

Raster graphics dot matrix data structure, representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium

In computer graphics, a raster graphics or bitmap image is a dot matrix data structure that represents a generally rectangular grid of pixels, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium. Raster images are stored in image files with varying formats.

In HTML and XHTML, an image map is a list of coordinates relating to a specific image, created in order to hyperlink areas of the image to different destinations. For example, a map of the world may have each country hyperlinked to further information about that country. The intention of an image map is to provide an easy way of linking various parts of an image without dividing the image into separate image files.

Sprite comics are webcomics that consist primarily of computer sprites from video games. Popularized by Bob and George, the style is considered relatively easy for amateur cartoonists to get involved in, but sprite comics are generally looked down upon for being of low quality.

Cartoonist visual artist who makes cartoons

A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is often created for entertainment, political commentary, or advertising. Cartoonists may work in many formats, such as booklets, comic strips, comic books, editorial cartoons, graphic novels, manuals, gag cartoons, graphic design, illustrations, storyboards, posters, shirts, books, advertisements, greeting cards, magazines, newspapers, and video game packaging.

Alfheim, formerly known as Elf Life, is a fantasy webcomic by Carson Fire that is hosted on Keenspot. It debuted on 14 June 1999 and ran until 21 December 2004. Three spin-offs followed the original series: Elf Life: Babes in the Woods, Elf Life: Wedding Night and Sprite Life. In December 2005, the author put all of his Elf Life universe strips on hiatus to work on Winger, a webcomic with a political focus. The main Elf Life storyline, renamed Alfheim, resumed in late 2007.

Bob and George was a sprite-based webcomic which parodied the fictional universe of Mega Man. It is written by David Anez, who at the time was a physics instructor living in the American Midwest. The comic first appeared on April 1, 2000 and ran until July 28, 2007. It was updated daily, with there being only 29 days without a comic in its seven years of production and with 2568 comics being made altogether.

Shape tables are a feature of the Apple II ROMs which allows for manipulation of small images encoded as a series of vectors. An image can be drawn in the high-resolution graphics mode—with scaling and rotation—via software routines in the ROM. Shape tables were supported via Applesoft BASIC and from machine code in the "Programmer's Aid" package that was bundled with the original Integer BASIC ROMs for that computer.

Attribute clash display artefact caused by limits in the graphics circuitry of a some colour 8-bit home computers, most notably the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where it meant that only two colours could be used in any 8×8 tile of pixels

Attribute clash is a display artifact caused by limits in the graphics circuitry of some colour 8-bit home computers, most notably the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where it meant that only two colours could be used in any 8×8 tile of pixels. The effect was also noticeable on MSX software and in some Commodore 64 titles. Workarounds to prevent this limit from becoming apparent have since been considered an element of Spectrum programmer culture.

Graphics BASIC is a third-party extension to the Commodore BASIC V2.0 programming language of the Commodore 64 computer. It was originally written in 1983 by Ron Gilbert and Tom McFarlane. The program was licensed to Hesware, who briefly sold the program in 1984 as part of their product line before going out of business. The program was later extended by Ken Rose and Jack Thornton, and repackaged and sold in 1985 by Epyx under the title Programmers BASIC Toolkit.

A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible (ALILBTDII) was a webcomic drawn by David Hellman and written by Dale Beran. Ted Rall describes the comic as "explor[ing] the limits of pessimism and fatal consequence in a universe that would be difficult to imagine on the printed page." The comic was officially "on hiatus" from September 2006 to December 10, 2012, with the comic "I Name Thee Annihilator" ending the hiatus but ultimately being the penultimate entry in the series

A region of interest, are samples within a data set identified for a particular purpose. The concept of a ROI is commonly used in many application areas. For example, in medical imaging, the boundaries of a tumor may be defined on an image or in a volume, for the purpose of measuring its size. The endocardial border may be defined on an image, perhaps during different phases of the cardiac cycle, for example, end-systole and end-diastole, for the purpose of assessing cardiac function. In geographical information systems (GIS), a ROI can be taken literally as a polygonal selection from a 2D map. In computer vision and optical character recognition, the ROI defines the borders of an object under consideration. In many applications, symbolic (textual) labels are added to a ROI, to describe its content in a compact manner. Within a ROI may lie individual points of interest (POIs).

Demo effects are computer-based real-time visual effects found in demos created by the demoscene.

Astounding Space Thrills is a webcomic by Steve Conley that ran from 1998 until 2001. Consisting of around 500 pages, Conley made use of GIF images and an early precursor to a "share" button while creating Astounding Space Thrills. The series have been remastered into a comic book series published by Image Comics and it was remastered again in 2016 as a webcomic.

A variety of computer graphic techniques have been used to display video game content throughout the history of video games. The predominance of individual techniques have evolved over time, primarily due to hardware advances and restrictions such as the processing power of central or graphics processing units.

The history of webcomics follows the advances of technology, art, and business of comics on the Internet. The first comics were shared through the Internet in the mid-1980s. Some early webcomics were derivatives from print comics, but when the World Wide Web became widely popular in the mid-1990s, more people started creating comics exclusively for this medium. By the year 2000, various webcomic creators were financially successful and webcomics became more artistically recognized.

This is a glossary of terms relating to computer graphics.

"Loss", sometimes referred to as "Loss.jpg", is a webcomic strip created in June 2, 2008 by Tim Buckley for his gaming-related webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del. During a storyline where the main character Ethan and his fiancée Lilah are expecting their first child, the strip—presented as a four-panel comic with no dialogue—has Ethan entering a hospital, asking a receptionist for directions, talking to a doctor, and finding Lilah crying on her side in a hospital bed, implying that she had suffered a miscarriage. Buckley cited personal events in his life as inspiration for the comic.

References

1 2 Rall, Ted (June 2006). Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists . Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing. ISBN 1-56163-465-4.

External links

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[Attitude-1] 1 2 Rall, Ted (June 2006). Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists . Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing. ISBN 1-56163-465-4.