The Evolution of 8-bit Art

[music playing] JESPER JUUL: When we talk about 8-bit, today we are probably thinking about a specific kind of style.

DOCTOR OCTOROC: 8-bit was born from video games that came out in the late 70s, early 80s, up to the mid-90s.

MINUSBABY: The basis of true 8-bit is the same process that's used to create music for video games.

ANAMANAGUCHI: I think 8-bit music makes for super fun building blocks of whatever you want to express.

ANTHONY SNEED: The cool thing about 8-bit is that it exists in that world.

And bringing it back out gives a whole new perspective on it.

[music playing] JESPER JUUL: From 1977 to the launch of SNES in 1991, 8-bit is a throwback to the time when computers and video games had a distinct style.

We're probably thinking of early Nintendo culture, but there was another 8-bit which was tied to the early home computers, which was more of a DIY culture.

And so the idea of 8-bit culture today really is a combination of the graphical and visual style from the console games with this idea of the DIY culture as it came from the 8-bit home computer games.

I think 8-bit really has three functions.

One is that it's easy to make.

So if you want to do a pixelated character, almost everybody can do a character that's passable as 8-bit graphics.

The second thing is that if you do 8-bit, you are sort of belonging to a specific group, that you're rejecting something, perhaps like big budget productions.

Thirdly, then, it also makes the creative process more like a game, because you're creating these kind of artificial constraints on what you're doing as a creative person-- like, the pixels being very large, limitations in terms of memory from a programming perspective, limitations in terms of sound.

And so 8-bit is just the alternative option, that there always is a more kind of low-key or lo-fi way of creating the same thing.

DOCTOR OCTOROC: The interest in 8-bit now is not only in the technical limitations, but also there's a nostalgic factor.

A lot of people grew up with it, and it kind of reminds them of a time when they would come home from school and start playing video games.

For someone in my shoes, it's definitely a combination of both the nostalgia, but it's also about finding an artistic value in it that isn't nostalgic.

The "Dr. Horrible" project came about making the soundtrack in an 8-bit format.

And they got a good deal of attention.

And some of the cast members actually were talking about it on Twitter.

So I said, OK, maybe I'm on to something.

So I decided just to create an animation to go along with it.

A lot of people talked about it.

And it definitely helped the exposure.

CollegeHumor contacted me about doing "Jersey Shore."

Other ones I've done for CollegeHumor were "Man vs. Wild," "Game of Thrones," "Breaking Bad," "Battlestar Galactica," "Doctor Who," "Saved by the Bell," and the "Mad Men" one.

There's just such a broad age range of people that both watch these shows and have any kind of an interest in old video games.

It is becoming its own respected art form.

And some people use it just for fun.

Other people use it to create works of art.

MINUSBABY: I love being able to communicate in a really simple way.

And to me, pixel art is like the simplest way to communicate.

You can throw up four colors and it can mean something.

It's able to whittle down complexity to its simplest form.

And I lay every dot perfectly.

The visuals and the music are always connected because we're using the same tools.

Usually it's just done on the console, like a Gameboy.

I was really excited about making music with gear that sounded like my childhood.

[music playing] It's just frequencies moving at different rates.

So there's a triangle, which is nice and bass-y.

It just moves in a way that rumbles a speaker.

There's a square wave, which is kind of harsh, but it has a wider range than the triangle.

And the pulse wave is the tweeter.

And then there's noise, which is awesome because you can make hi-hats and symbols and explosions with that sort of stuff.

It's kind of debatable, like, if it should stay true to itself and become its own style.

Or, like me, I think that in order for me to grow as a musician, it needs to go beyond just sounding like video game music.

And I think, you know, like, these things are just gonna become instruments, just like Casio keyboards are a part of music.

I think a Gameboy will just be another tool that people can use.

Experimentation will just keep going and just become part of music in general.

[music playing] PETER BERKMAN: Most of my nostalgia for 8-bit music is not the 8-bit music of the 80s.

Any nostalgia that I have for 8-bit music is the 8-bit music I was making in high school with my friends.

ARY WARNAAR: I didn't really grow up with these sounds, but I know where they're from.

PETER BERKMAN: When we make music, we aren't trying to make technical demos of, like, what the Nintendo can do so much.

I began approaching this in the middle ground of programming and music.

ARY WARNAAR: It's funny to, like, take these cutesy, rough sounds and put them, like, in a venue where people are, like, crowd-surfing.

It's definitely an instrument.

PETER BERKMAN: There are people that use, like, the ZX Spectrum, Amiga, NES, Gameboy-- ARY WARNAAR: Atari ST. PETER BERKMAN: Atari ST. And I think every one of those-- except for the Gameboy-- predates my life.

ARY WARNAAR: I think I prefer composing on a Gameboy or on a computer.

And I prefer performing with a guitar.

Now the only time I play guitar is on stage.

[music playing] Today why would a child pick up a guitar and not a computer?

Because on a computer you can have a guitar and any other sound that you could possibly imagine.

That said, there's a lot that, like, you miss with current technology stuff-- even, like, the difference between, like, using a laptop versus a drum machine.

They all present different things.

I think what's important is to get that they're on the same playing field.

We're all just trying to, like, communicate.

Music is a language.

Programming is language.

ARY WARNAAR: It's forcing a lot of the artists to almost become better and stronger, because I'm gonna really push what I'm doing to, like, the next level.

[music playing] ANTHONY SNEED: I think there's something really attractive about taking a digital image and making it analog.

I had all these great video game ideas that I thought were just funny, but also had a real social commentary going on.

One of the first ones that got really serious was "JFK The Game."

Once I put it through this 8-bit filter, there's a whole new medium that gives it a whole new meaning.

When I started getting these ideas, it kind of started snowballing into all these other things.

And 9/11 is one of the most important things that have happened and changed our culture.

So I wanted to put that through the filter just to see what happened.

The problem is is that people associate video games with something cute and almost lighthearted.

And people automatically just assume that you're making fun of something, and that's not necessarily the case.

That juxtaposition is exactly what gave the piece its strength and its power.

I saw the opportunity-- once I was making the video games-- to really push forward in a new genre.

And I discovered that I have a real love for minimalism.

I love stripping everything down and coming to the basis of the art and having just color fields, straight lines, hard edges, and making things that are very pleasing to the eye.

You have people that might not be into art, will just say, oh, I like that because it reminds me of the video games I used to play.

There's definitely a nostalgia to it.

We live in a digital world now.

And this is kind of a byproduct of that.

JESPER JUUL: I think 8-bit will probably always be around as a kind of option.

DOCTOR OCTOROC: It's a very unique style born from limitation and it stood the test of time.

MINUSBABY: Maybe in, like, 25 years, the Atari 2600 and all that will be so far away from our memory that it'll sound like the future.

ANAMANAGUCHI: And it definitely makes you approach writing music very differently.

There's a lot of, like, backwards thinking that's really refreshing.

ANTHONY SNEED: I think 8-bit is constantly growing.

And just like video games, it'll get better and better.

[music playing]