2D Overview

DEFINITION

Two Dimensional Art - possessing the dimensions of height and width, especially when considering the flat surface, or picture plane.

Two-dimensional art consists of paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs, which differ from each other primarily in the technique of their execution. Probably, our initial response to all four is a response to subject matter--that is, we first notice what the painting, drawing, print, or photograph is about. Such recognition leads us into the work's meaning and begins to shape our response to it. Beyond the recognition of subject, however, lie the technical elements chosen by artists to make their vision appear the way they wish it to appear, and these include MEDIA and COMPOSITION. The media of the two-dimensional arts are paintings, drawings, prints, and photography. Paintings and drawings can be executed with oils, watercolours, tempera, acrylics, ink, and pencils, to name a few of the more obvious. Each physical medium has its own characteristics. As an example, let us look at oils. Composition The second area we can isolate and respond to involves artists' use of the elements and principles of composition. These are the building blocks of two-dimensional works of art. Among others, these elements and principles include LINE, FORM, COLOR, REPETITION, and BALANCE. The primary element of composition is line. Some of these are like cartoon figures--identifiable because of their outline; but the other shapes also exemplify line, and they do so because they create boundaries between areas of colour and between other shapes or forms. Essentially, line is either curved or straight, and it is used by artists to control our vision and to create unity, emotional value, and, ultimately, meaning. Form and line are closely related. Form as a compositional element is the SHAPE of an object. It is the space described by line. A building is a form. So is a tree. We perceive them as buildings or trees, and we perceive their individual details, because of the line by which they are composed. Colour is a somewhat complex compositional element. The word HUES is used to describe the basic colours of the spectrum. The apparent whiteness or greyness of a colour is its VALUE). When we observe a work of art, we can, among other aspects of colour, identify, respond to, and describe the breadth of the palette--how many different hues and values the artist has used--and the way the artist has used those hues and values. Principles The principles of composition include repetition (how the elements of the picture are repeated or alternated) and balance (how the picture stands on its axes). When identical shapes and colours appear on either side of the axis, it creates a condition called SYMMETRY. Ralph Baer, Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch of Sanders Associates, a military electronics firm in 1966-67, designed Balance achieved by using unequal shapes.2d Gaming Magnavox Odyssey. It was introduced in 1972 at a price of $100. Because microchips were so expensive at that time, the Odyssey was designed using only 40 transistors and 40 diodes. Odyssey was able to generate only very simple on-screen effects and the players had to keep score by themselves, because the machine was incapable of doing so. Odyssey was packaged with screen overlays (to be placed on the TV screen to simulate complex graphics), two controllers, six game cards, play money, playing cards, a roulette and football playfield, a fold-out scoreboard, poker chips and a pair of dice. It wasn't a successful game. Joe Decure, Harold Lee, and Steve Meyer designed Atari 2600, also known as Atari Video Computer System (VCS). It was released in 1977 at introductory price of $199.95. It was the most popular videogame console of its day and it was available until 1990, being on the market longer than any other system in history. Several hundred games were developed for it. It featured an 8-bit CPU, MOS 6507 @ 1.19 MHz, 16 colour graphics, 2 channel audio (noise and sound). It only had 128 bytes of RAM memory and no video memory (CPU had control the video chip with screen refresh). The games were supplied in ROM cartridge, with the maximum size of 4 kilobytes. Later on the limit of 4 KB was exceeded with paging ROM pages. Atari 5200 Super system released the 5200 Super System in 1982. It was basically an Atari 400 home computer without a keyboard. It had 1.78, 8-bit, 6502C CPU and 16 Kbytes of RAM. It was capable of 320x192 resolution with 16 colours from 256 colour palette and it 4-channel sound. It was the first system to come equipped with 4 controller ports for multi-player games. Despite that it had much better hardware than the Atari 2600; it never became the success Atari expected. Cheap home computers started to gain market from video games in the beginning of the 80's and it took too much time before quality game titles were developed to Atari 5200. Nintendo Entertainment System, briefly NES, was designed Masayuki Uemura. It released in 1985. It had an 8-bit CPU (6502 @ 1.79 MHz) and 2 kilobytes of RAM. The Graphics were capable of maximum of 256*224 pixel (NTSC) resolution and 16 simultaneous colours from a palette of 52 colours. It had 2 kilobytes graphics work RAM and 64 simultaneous sprites. Its sound system had 2 square wave channels, 1 triangle wave channel, 1 noise channel and 1 PCM channel. NEC Turbografx was released in Japan in 1988 as the PC Engine, the system was renamed the Turbografx-16 when it reached North America in 1989. Although it was advertised as a 16-bit game machine, it actually had an 8-bit CPU, 65802 @ 16 MHz. It did contain a separate 16-bit graphics chip however. The Turbografx-16 became the first system to have a CD-player attachment. Sega noticed that great games sold systems, so it took elements from its 16-bit arcade machines and produced the Mega-Drive in 1989. In America the machine was called Genesis, and it retailed for $199. It had 16-bit CPU (Motorola 68000 @ 7.6 MHz) and 72 Kilobytes RAM in addition to 64 Kbytes video RAM. The graphics were capable of 320*224 to 320x448 (NTSC) resolution and 61 simultaneous colours from a palette of 512 colours and 80 sprites. It had 10 sound channels and Z80 was used as an audio processor. Super Nintendo, or briefly, SNES, system was introduced in 1990. SNES had 16-bit CPU (65816 @ 3.6 MHz) and 128 Kilobytes RAM and 64 Kbytes of video RAM. Its graphics were capable of 256*224 to 512x448 (NTSC) resolution, 256 simultaneous colours from a palette of 32768 colours and 128 sprites. It had 8 separate 8-bit PCM sound channels