*Slides right into your forums*

[CytricAcid]

HELLO! I am Cytric "Cy" Acid aka you can just call me Cy. :)
I'm a 27 year old artist who misses the old web and is tired of jumping ship from platform to platform just to share my work. I also miss forum culture and especially oekakis lol

I've been on and off trying to make my own website, though I'm stuck on certain parts that require javascript and I don't really feel like learning it right now. My original goal was to create my own art community complete with forum and oekaki, but that might be something I'm not ready for, web domain ownership is complicated and I've never touched a database in my life. Maybe in the future... with some help >w>

anyway, hi! I love 70s progressive rock, Todd Rundgren, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, dragons, and the video game series Monster Hunter. I also am an admin of Glitch City Research Institute, a successor community to the old Glitch City Laboratories community. I do a lot of stuff that interests me in general. Hi!

You can find my art tumblr here.

[manrevisited]

Hi Cy!

That all sounds super cool! I think I'd heard of oekakis before, a long time ago, but I was never that consistent of a visual artist. Funnily enough, I just started coding up a little Javascript pixel art tool recently for my neocities because I like doing that sort of thing and because I've been trying to get back into pixel art but none of the programs I've tried really jive with my brain. Pretty feature-poor at the moment, but I'm having a lot of fun!

I like the idea of small art forums like that, and simple art software with limitations. I'd love to hear more about what you miss from the cultural part of it.

[CytricAcid]

Hi Cy!

That all sounds super cool! I think I'd heard of oekakis before, a long time ago, but I was never that consistent of a visual artist. Funnily enough, I just started coding up a little Javascript pixel art tool recently for my neocities because I like doing that sort of thing and because I've been trying to get back into pixel art but none of the programs I've tried really jive with my brain. Pretty feature-poor at the moment, but I'm having a lot of fun!

I like the idea of small art forums like that, and simple art software with limitations. I'd love to hear more about what you miss from the cultural part of it.

Oh I'd love to gush about oekaki forever! Partially because it existed at a time where professional art programs were completely out of reach of beginner/novice artists, oekakis were a step above MS Paint as well as being browser-based, so you could start a drawing on one computer and finish it on another. As well, as a bulletin board, it was very community oriented with every image posted chronologically and anyone could comment on it. Uploading art from other mediums was discouraged -- though later on that became more lax on the oekakis I used to frequent, and with people moving on to newer and more affordable art programs (like pirating paint tool SAI) the allure of a browser based art applet lost its appeal. As well, DeviantART became a more suitable place for community. The oekaki I frequented, Pichu's World Oekaki, was all but dead by the 2010s, the only real activity taking place on an RP board I wasn't interested in.
 

(this is an image of the GUI of PaintBBS Neo, a 1:1 recreation of the original PaintBBS in HTML5. Aside from fixing one bug, it otherwise functions identically to the original java applet version.)

To this day, though, I still like the java applets of oekaki better than all the other browser art websites available now. My applet of choice, PaintBBS, was simple enough, with a gorgeous old-web aesthetic, but had so much hidden depth and techniques that were born out of its limitations. There were other applets, like ShiPainter, which was kind of like an upgraded PaintBBS, and later on ChickenPaint, but PaintBBS was always my favorite because of it's "animation" feature.

This feature worked as a kind of playback function that would show the process of you drawing an image as long as you checked it's option before drawing. (And most of us did, because this came with the benefit of saving layer data that saving an image without it did not.) This was so cool to me as a kid, because it made it easy to see how all my favorite artists drew, stroke by stroke. We would also insert jokes in our drawings too, erased in the final image, just to amuse someone who was watching the animation, or use this feature to teach others how to use a certain feature.

Above all, I just liked how the format of an image board BBS where we all worked off the same program and same limitations begat such art communities. I actually help run a blog on tumblr dedicated to archiving sparkledog art drawn on oekaki boards, since that is where the trend originally began (!) As well, I like returning to drawing in PaintBBS because it feels like MS Paint +, while not being buggy on firefox like other HTML5 drawing applets tend to be. My friend runs an oekaki board right now actually, but I can't really use it at the moment because Paint BBS Neo isn't installed and the extensions to run old java applets only work on Chrome and Edge... and I'm not doing that. LOL

[Ninaiso]

Hello and welcome!!

Oh man!!! Your art is absolutely gorgeous!! I love love love it! The sparkledog one most especially!!

I too miss oekakis so much, and if you get that community up and running I'd absolutely love to join! I spent a lot of my early internet years having tons of fun drawing on them!

I'm also a huge fan of dragons! Which type is your favorite?

Also I hope you enjoy the forums!

[manrevisited]

This feature worked as a kind of playback function that would show the process of you drawing an image as long as you checked it's option before drawing. (And most of us did, because this came with the benefit of saving layer data that saving an image without it did not.) This was so cool to me as a kid, because it made it easy to see how all my favorite artists drew, stroke by stroke. We would also insert jokes in our drawings too, erased in the final image, just to amuse someone who was watching the animation, or use this feature to teach others how to use a certain feature.

Wow, that is SO COOL. What a fun use of a log of undo-data, as well. I always love seeing the fun art and culture borne out of limitations, so what you're talking about is super appealing to me.

Thanks so much for the little history lesson, and the link with all the fun sparkledogs. :)

[Melooon]

Hi Cy, welcome to the forum 

Oh this art us super accomplished, ooph there are so many talented artists here now  Also I looked up Glitch City Research Institute and it looks intriguing; I remember all the mysterious stories about glitch city in pokemon that people used to tell around the school yard. I love those mysterious semi-real-semi-technological-semi-folk legend spaces 

I hope you enjoy ur time here!

☀︎☁︎☻→ You've Received Melon's Welcome Pack! ←☻✌︎☀︎

• If you haven't already check out the forum welcome post, and forum usage guide!
• New to website making? Here is a complete(ish) guide!
• Visit your look/layout to pick a theme and set a default colour/font for your messages!
• Feeling shy and unsure what to do? Maybe post a song you like here!
• Finally don't forget to share the forum and invite friends! We have some way cool graphics over here!

[CytricAcid]

Also I looked up Glitch City Research Institute and it looks intriguing; I remember all the mysterious stories about glitch city in pokemon that people used to tell around the school yard. I love those mysterious semi-real-semi-technological-semi-folk legend spaces 

thank you and thank you for the welcome!! :D I've loved the legends of the glitches in Pokemon games since I was a child, it's really honestly amazing to me how much was actually true and how weird the game really got if you broke it in specific ways. My favorite "actually true" glitch is the ZZAZZ glitch, where upon battling a certain glitch trainer, your entire team would be turned into level 153 Bulbasaurs that only know Explosion. (this is a bit of a simplification, bear with me) The trainer itself had immensely powerful pokemon, and even a 7th invincible one, so it was eerie to be forced into battle against a corrupted version of yourself while your team was turned into exploding Bulbasaurs. It sounds exactly like something out of a creepypasta but it's completely real!