Mac Calligraphy

Here’s a quick sketch inspired by a cave painting.

Mac Calligraphy is one of my favourite software on classic Macs. It is basically a Japanese version of MacPaint that allows you to modulate the “ink quantity” in an ingenious way. Drag you mouse fast enough and the brush will release just a little bit of ink. Go with slower movements and the stroke will be thicker. A very detail review by James Wages can be found at this link. Take your time and visit his channel!

To enjoy the full Mac Calligraphy experience boot your 68 Mac directly from the floppy disk, you will be welcomed with a custom System, with themed icons and desktop background. So far tested on a Mac SE. Something newer like a Classic or Classic II won’t boot from the disk.

3D Solids

Yes. Just a couple of spinning 3d objects. Rendered with Swivel 3D on a 1987 Mac. The software is quite convoluted but it was one of the first tools for the non professional market. Odd coordinates system, worse keyframe editor, can’t rotate something more than 180 degrees without messing up the axis order… But still, quite fun : )

MacPaint

“Lighthouse” inspired by the game “World of horror”. Slowly painted with the mouse on a Macintosh Classic with MacPaint. Such a simple software but a real joy to use. I work at the very top of the visual effects industry and it’s so fascinating going back to something so essential. Black and white, 512 pixels on your screen, 4Mb of memory if lucky.

The great wave. Mouse only on a Macintosh SE.

Experimenting with some pattern. Since the only possible interpolation is “near” pixel, using the rotation tool it is possible to degrade the image and achieving interesting, organic results.