pouët.net

Thanks, Havoc! I'm really excited (and surprised) this came together. Hoping this pack will help raise the profile of an overlooked format ("Instant Graphics and Sound").

This pack probably needs some context and explanation.

More than anything, it's a love letter to "Instant Graphics and Sound" — an obscure graphics protocol for BBSes on the often-overlooked Atari ST computer platform.

I love telling unknown underdog computer stories, and IGS sucked me in. My beloved Atari ST had a protocol like RIPscrip years before the PC had it? I couldn't believe it.

This fall, after years of research, I published a six-part, 14,000-word history, introducing a cast of characters that included creator Larry Mears, a self-described “working man without a degree” who often downplayed his own coding ability; Kevin Moody and Anthony Rau, two Navy guys in Florida who bonded over their love of Atari and BBSing; Steve Turnbull, an artist and scenic designer working in Hollywood; and many others.

But IGS isn’t just a thing of the past. Two years ago, on New Years Eve 2022, Mears made a surprise announcement on AtariAge — he had released a new version of IGS, thirty years after he originally stopped working on the project.

I felt an obligation to try to make some art using Larry's new tools. I completed my first piece — a drawing of a ship from the sci-fi game FTL — in early 2023. Since then I have created many more fun animations. I’m particularly proud of the animated Guardian of Forever login sequence, and a brand-new Calvin and Hobbes-themed animation I created just for this pack.

After a while, I wanted to find an easier way to draw sprites and art for IGS on a modern machine, so I created my own web-based drawing tool, JoshDraw. It's experimental and supports only a subset of IGS’s features, but it mostly works.

I thought it would be cool to release an IGS-only artpack as a way to honor Mears, highlight IGS, and maybe stir other people’s interest in trying this format. To my surprise, I successfully recruited seven other people who submitted nine static images to include in the pack.