Art made on a Sega Mega Drive
Sega's Art Alive! has a lot of limitations. 16 colours, a control pad for input and no way to save your work, but I wanted to create something beautiful. 'As Seen on TV' is a collection of art made using a Sega Mega Drive, a control pad and a copy of Art Alive!. I recorded the screen to capture the process knowing the original drawing would be lost as I turned the system off.
Own something unique
Rock something unique made using a Sega Mega Drive. Pick up a framed copy of Killer TV, a dead rodent puzzle, fish bones on a baseball cap or an angry fly across your bed. These pieces have been made available on Redbubble to own.
Each piece was designed in about an hour using nothing but the Sega Mega Drive, a control pad and a copy of Art Alive!
Fish Bones is a much more detailed piece that uses black to try and create space around the images found in the trash can.
While designing each piece, I used the thickest line weight possible. I felt images with thick, bold lines and bright colours would work best with Art Alive!
Art Alive!
Produced in 1991 for the Sega Mega Drive (Sega Genesis in the United States), Art Alive! is a program that lets you create your own artwork on the system. Art Alive! is limited by the hardware only allowing you to use a palette of 16 colours, there's no layers, no pen-tool for creating bezier lines and it only supports the Sega Control Pad. There's no support for additional accessories, such as the Sega Mouse (which was released in 1993).
The artwork cannot be saved either. The instruction manual recommends using a VCR to record your work. This limitation in particular meant that each artwork I produced was done alla prima (completed in one session) and took about an hour. Once you turn off the system, the piece is deleted.
Art Alive! comes bundled with a selection of templates so you can start painting straight away as well as a range of stickers you can paste into your scenes. There's also an animation tool that lets you draw frame-by-frame or paint on an existing animation.
The software was developed by Jay Obernolte from Farsight Technologies and Chris Ziomkowski. The game credits state it was developed by Western Technologies.
A spiritual successor , Wacky Worlds, was developed in 1994 by Head Games with more resources. Instead of focusing on a painting tool, Wacky World embraced the ability to place stickers to create scenes.
Own something unique
Rock something unique made using a Sega Mega Drive. Pick up a framed copy of Killer TV, a dead rodent puzzle, fish bones on a baseball cap or an angry fly across your bed. These pieces have been made available on Redbubble to own.