fandemonium

A moment of calm ...

Home, Sweet Home 🏡

Some alts of the Somsnosa I recently posted. I wanted to talk a bit about image sizes, and how I'm a little flabbergasted at how small the latest drawings have been, file weight wise. The original drawing of Som weighed 326 KB as a PNG, and even less as an Aseprite file, 244 KB. These alts have less colors, so they also weigh less: 286 KB, 156 KB, 151 KB, 165 KB, respectively. The Wayne picture is minuscule, weighing 67,6 KB as a PNG and 50,2 KB as an Aseprite file. The group picture is 120 KB and 114 KB. But anyway, why is this relevant? I think it's relevant because my more painterly drawings weigh a hundred times more than one of these drawings, with the .clip file weighing 10,5 MB and the PNG weighing 5,56 MB. I tend to stick to one layer with most of my drawings, so that probably helps reduce file size for both cases.

I just feel there's something kind of nice about how small the Aseprite drawings are without losing in detail in comparison to other things I've drawn. In a time where we waste a lot of memory and computing power (not just AI) very sloppily, I think it's easy to forget that this stuff is somewhat finite, or at least there's an invisible cost we are happy to miss. I guess what I'm getting at is that even if it all goes to shit, we will figure out new ways to draw again, and how to get the most out of the medium. There's elegance in restrictions!

Now, does this mean I just want to do detailed background blocks with two tone dithering (though it is really fun)... no... not really... While I have the resources I'd like to explore both forms of drawing. But it definitely has affected me knowing I can do similar things for much less file space. Like I've taken too many things for granted.

first step✒️🌟