Mistigris computer arts

Showing posts with label cthulu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cthulu. Show all posts

Monday, October 12, 2026

MIST1025/US-SHOEBODY


 Mistigram: this time last year, Cthulu was holed up in an agriturismo in rural Italy on a vacation, explaining to his family that while he had managed to duck responsibility for packaging the annual Mist Hallowe'en artpack for the first time in eleven years, that didn't relieve him of the duty to populate it with submissions... which is why when things got quiet after the magical Tuscan sunset, he could be found drawing colourful variations of the phrase #ShoebodyBop on his laptop. Sometimes you just have to love your family members unconditionally because no explanation will really suffice to understand what the heck they're up to.


The words look gnarly, but the words themselves aren't. WTF is up here? Cth was very taken by #DrueLanglois' 2022 demonic baptismal animation set to the song of the same name by the Minute Hour. He had roughed out a sketch from it depicting a cultist invokation which LDA and Zeus II later fleshed out taken in a very different direction. (Originally he had planned to depict a series of iconic moments from the music video, punctuated with permutations on its strange name, but Italy rudely interrupted this aspiration with a series of historical hilltop distractions.)

Maybe we'll see more Shoebody moments later this month, but this introductory portion was included in the MIST1025 artpack collection released a year ago.

Monday, September 28, 2026

MIST0826/CT-DIGITAL_ORCA


 Mistigram: in last month's unthemed MIST0826 artpack collection, Cthulu was explicitly looking to adapt imagery suggestive of Mist's origins in area code 604 (aka #Vancouver) and one place his search brought him was artist-author #DouglasCoupland's 2009 sculpture #DigitalOrca, installed in #CoalHarbour. In real life the killer whale is composed of black and white blocks, and ironically looks quite a bit more like #ANSIart in person than this rendition indicates.


Though the sculpture is located in the Downtown previously viewed from afar in Nitron's landscape yesterday, you will note that (coincidentally) the specific stretch of North Shore Mountains depicted in the far background is virtually identical in both works and can practically be made to overlap each other.

Wednesday, September 16, 2026

MIST0826/US-WELCOME_TO_THE_NOUSNIVERSE


 Mistigram: this pseudoreflective logo was submitted as monochrome #pixelart by @nouscentric, but Cthulu thought it could be easily adapted to textmode and given a #LiteBrite colour treatment for extra punch, so we ran it like this in last month's unthemed MIST0826 artpack collection.

Wednesday, August 5, 2026

MIST0823/MIST0823.NFO-5


 Mistirgam: our unthemed MIST0823 artpack collection, released three years ago this month, was assembled in the immediate wake of the death of #PaulReubens aka #PeeWeeHerman, and we scrambled to cobble together a small tribute to his #PeeWeesPlayhouse oeuvre. Cthulu dashed off this super smallscale #ANSIart rendition of #Jambi the genie (RIP #JohnParagon also!) turning his wish-endowing chant into a Mistigris (well... Histigris) promo of sorts.

Wednesday, July 22, 2026

MIST0526/US-GO_STICK_YOUR_HEAD_IN_A_PIG


 Mistigram: @zeusii drew this stone cold #ANSIart silhouette of an alien city skyline beneath a gas giant and a tear in the sky... the suggestion of a logo footer in an extra-terrestrial language was reminiscent of a passage in the #HitchhikersGuide about the Complaints Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation about a large neon sign celebrating their slogan #ShareAndEnjoy degrading into a very different message... well, Cthulu adapted the Narcotix typeface by the Sokratype foundry to give this piece a feeling of illegible alien script. The joint was included in the recent science fiction-themed MIST0526 artpack collection.

Monday, July 20, 2026

MIST0526/CT-MIRRORSHADES


Mistigram: still with the books-themed MIST0426 on the brain, Cthulu recently stumbled across a copy of #BruceSterling's seminal #Mirrorshades #cyberpunk anthology in a used bookstore, and took it as a sign from The Algorithm to adapt its evocative cover artwork to #ANSIart for the recent science fiction-themed MIST0526 artpack collection.

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

MIST0526/CT-IRON_GIANT


 Mistigram: for last month's new science fiction-themed MIST0526 artpack collection, Cthulu drew some #ANSIart in tribute to Brad Bird's 1999 animated film adaptation #TheIronGiant, including a slogan drawn from the movie's script. #YouDontHaveToBeAGun

Wednesday, July 8, 2026

MIST0526/CT-SNOW_CRASH


 Mistigram: sometimes you get far enough into your preliminary layout of an #ANSIart adaptation that you realise, gulp, this is going to be more small-scale than I thought, maybe I should cut and run. Saner artists do, but Cthulu has a "sunk cost fallacy" way of hanging in to the bitter end and seeing it through. Anyway, this is his take on #BruceJensen's iconic cover art to the 1993 paperback edition of #NealStephenson's #cyberpunk novel #SnowCrash, in the background, #TheGrid, in the foreground, the world's tiniest #HiroProtagonist. It was drawn for the new science fiction-themed MIST0526 artpack collection(, though while apparently still in a MIST0426 frame of mind!)

Sunday, July 5, 2026

MIST0526/MIST0526.MEM


 Mistigram: Cthulu dutifully traced the monochrome poster art to Fritz Lang's 1927 German expressionist film #Metropolis as #blockASCII, then hesitated, contemplating its opening logo -- starts with an M... ends with an S... also contains a T, an I, an R... well heck, he thought, there's nearly already everything here needed to make a Mistigris logo out of, and then I could use it as an infofile header! Ultimately it did appear in exactly that way in the new science fiction-themed MIST0526 artpack collection.

Monday, June 29, 2026

MIST0526 FILE_ID.DIZ


 Mistigram: since 2018, we have released a science fiction-themed artpack every year in the month of May.  We weren't going to make it this year, so we simply broke the laws of space and time in order to allow us sufficient opportunity to complete the collection.  You can download the new SF-themed MIST0526 artpack collection from mistigris.org or enjoy browsing it via the @sixteen_colors web gallery at  https://16colo.rs/pack/mist0526/

Circuitry FILE_ID art by Cthulu.

Sunday, June 7, 2026

MIST0426/CT-JOSEPH_HELLER-CATCH-22


 Mistigram: #PaulBacon's famous "Big Book Look" cover art design to #JosephHeller's 1961 satirical anti-war novel #Catch22, featuring "the little guy that I tore out of a piece of paper, representing #Yossarian in full flight from everything", was adapted to #ANSIart by Cthulu for the recent books-themed MIST026 artpack collection.

Thursday, June 4, 2026

MIST0426/CT-CHRISTIAN_BOK-EUNOIA


 Mistigram: "Awkward grammar appals a craftsman." Cthulu made an #ANSIart adaptation of the cover design to experimental writer #ChristianBök's unforgettable 2001 univocal lipogram anthology #Eunoia, whose colours are informed by Arthur Rimbaud's 1871 poem "Voyelles". Look on hotbot dot com to know who's who or wot's wot. How now brown cow. This piece was included in the recent books-themed MIST0426 artpack collection.

Wednesday, June 3, 2026

MIST0426/CT-LAWRENCE_DURRELL-JUSTINE


 Mistigram: for the recent books-themed MIST0426 artpack collection, Cthulu made this #ANSIart adaptation of #BertholdWolpe's cover design for the 1957 novel #Justine, the first volume in #LawrenceDurrell's Alexandria Quartet, featuring a #hamsa handprint to ward off evil spirits.

Monday, June 1, 2026

MIST0426/CT-EUGENE_IONESCO-RHINOCEROS


 Mistigram: because 'books' doesn't just mean 'fiction' and 'non-fiction', here's Cthulu's #ANSIart adaptation of #RoyKuhlman's 1960 cover design to #EugeneIonesco's allegorical play #Rhinoceros.  This piece was included in the recent books-themed MIST0426 artpack collection.

Sunday, May 31, 2026

MIST0426/CT-JOHN_KENNEDY_TOOLE-A_CONFEDERACY_OF_DUNCES


 Mistigram: #MyronGrossman and #MichaelTedesco's cover illustration to #JohnKennedyToole's postumous 1980 New Orleans novel #AConfederacyOfDunces, depicting antihero #IgnatiusJReilly getting his earring unexpectedly removed by a trained cockatoo, was here adapted to #ANSIart by Cthulu. It was included in last month's books-themed MIST0426 artpack collection.

Thursday, May 28, 2026

MIST0426/CT-THOMAS_PYNCHON-GRAVITY'S_RAINBOW


 Mistigram: If you haven't had the strange pleasure of reading #ThomasPynchon's 1973 magnum opus #GravitysRainbow, "ostensibly about an American G.I. who seems to have a psychosexual connection to Nazi Germany's V-2 rockets", no gloss will really suffice. But because a picture says a thousand words, we here post Cthulu's adaptation of #MarcGetter's cover art to the postmodern novel, included in last month's books-themed MIST0426 artpack collection.

Sunday, May 24, 2026

MIST0426/CT-D'AULAIRES_BOOK_OF_GREEK_MYTHS


 Mistigram: perhaps Cthulu was overcome with hubris, his tragic flaw, attempting to depict everything in the heavens and on the earth using only 80 columns, but nevertheless he attemped to adapt the cover to #DAulaires 1962 Book of Greek Myths, a formative collection, to #ANSIart, and managed to cram in, if not exactly exalt, all of the subjects. This depiction of #Helios' solar chariot was included in last month's books-themed MIST0426 artpack collection.

Thursday, May 21, 2026

MIST0426/CT-RC


 Mistigram: trotting an old joke around the track once again, in last month's new books-themed MIST0426 artpack collection Cthulu made a batch file DOSbox adaptation of George Nachman's #RichardCory Interactive Adventure from 1998, a joke about #EdwinArlingtonRobinson's 1897 poem from over a hundred years earlier. This is its splash screen, with its weird Braille-like low-#ASCIIart logo to accommodate the dictates of the MS-DOS command line. You can play it via https://16colo.rs/pack/mist0426/CT-RC.BAT or see the original at https://www.llamas.org/corey.html

Monday, May 18, 2026

MIST0426/CT-ALLEN_GINSBERG-HOWL


 Mistigram: OK, we shared Burroughs and Kerouac, so let's wrap it up and complete the Beat set. 'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked', but Cthulu couldn't draw all that in #ANSIart, so instead he just adapted #Howl's 1956 #CityLights cover design. This piece was included in last month's books-themed MIST0426 artpack collection.

Sunday, May 17, 2026

MIST0426/CT-JACK_KEROUAC-ON_THE_ROAD


 Mistigram: from one celebrated '50s typewritten manuscript to another, today we look at Cthulu's attempt to adapt #BillEnglish's abstract cover art illustration to #JackKerouac's influential 1957 Beat novel #OnTheRoad.  This screen was included in last month's books-themed MIST0426 artpack collection.