Did you love that epic Indiana Jones GIF? Want more where that came from?
You got it.
Recently, the Daily Dot ferreted out the origins of a popular 8-bit pixel version of Raiders of the Lost Ark—the whole movie in GIF format. The creator, a pixel artist called Folds Five, had done even more as part of a collection known as Pixelmash Theater, including the original Star Wars trilogy, which he’d archived on his blog.
But the other intricate, scene-by-scene renditions of famous films were scattered. Some were archived on a Tripod memorial site, not exactly the most permanent location. And some of his GIFS appeared to be vanished from the Internet.
“Intriguingly,” we wrote, “there may be more GIFs lost to the deletions of time—Collider speaks of a missing Flash Gordon GIF, and Folds Five was working on a Matrix GIF at one point. Will this new viral round be enough to call him back to the challenge?”
The answer is yes, sort of.
Yesterday, Folds Five—better known as David Court—discovered our previous articles on Pixelmash and left us a lovely comment:
“Thanks for the kind words :) I am indeed FoldsFive and married life and an increasingly difficult job means I can’t spend the time on them like i used [to]. There is indeed a Flash Gordon out there—I’ll try and dig the remaining ones out and stick them on my blog at www.foldsfive.co.uk.”
True to his word, Court updated his blog yesterday with the other nine Pixelmash film retellings—including three that were previously unarchived: Alien, Flash Gordon, and Jaws. And they’re totally worth the wait. Check out the 8-bit versions of the Hawkmen in Flash Gordon or the two famous close-ups of Jonesy the cat in Alien and Roy Scheider’s face in Jaws.
On his blog, Court talked about the making of each GIF, relating his fondness for the earlier GIFs for the Purgatory film series and noting details from each GIF:
“I am particularly fond of the close up on Roy’s face and the fact I managed to get the head floating in the boat – the one bit of Jaws that still scares me to this date.”
Though Court may not have time to do more 8-bit films in the future, the older stuff currently has us too mesmerized for regrets.
After all, it’s hard to feel bereft when you’ve just been GIF-ted a pixel army of flying hawkmen.
Photo via FoldsFive/Blogspot
