

Show HN: Drawbang - Instagram for pixel art - potomak
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/drawbang/id578228937

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highace
Oh come on. "Instagram for pixel art"? When will the baity associations end.

The description on the app store sums it up perfectly - "Draw! is a pixel art
editor. Draw 16 x 16 animated pictures and share them with your friends."

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jgv
I agree. I'm not sure how this is at all like Instagram. Is it because there
is a feed? Then why not the Twitter for pixel art?

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potomak
Because I keep it for the next post!

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jQueryIsAwesome
That kind of honesty my friend, will gain you enemies.

In other news I think it is missing features to be a commercial product; I
don't know too much about iOS but if maybe you can convert it to emoticons
that can be used in chat, or being a being able to customize size instead of
the forced 16*16 would be nice, or a public gallery and being able to edit
other people animations.

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monatron
I really like this idea! However, I think the value of this really lies in
building a community of users that share their drawings. That's what makes
instagram really great and "sticky". I think putting a $1.99 barrier to entry
into the ecosystem could be detrimental to the growth you would need for this
to take off.

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fufulabs
Hi, we made an app called Tinygram (<http://tiny.by>) that I think is more
Instagramm-y (uggh!) than this.

Its not done yet (missing a few big features) but it has a smaller canvas
10x10 and a unique way of choosing color shades and doing animation. It
already has a sizeable community and sputtering of new content (pixel art is
hard for most people we discovered.)

It is an interesting community building experience so far.

Anyhow in case you are curious on how closer it is to Insatgram, its free at
<http://bit.ly/tinygramming> .

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TheZenPsycho
clearly it's an idea whose time has come since i had almost exactly the same
idea last saturday

<https://twitter.com/zenpsycho/status/269678506475151362>

and then followed through a day later

<https://twitter.com/zenpsycho/status/269942225394348033>

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justjimmy
Nice idea! What are other similar apps that did this? (Assuming you did
research). I see bsaul did something similar but he used geolocation as
sharing platform…interesting…

And why the restrictive color palette? To create the nostalgic effect of old
video games?

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evincarofautumn
A limited palette is traditional, and pixel art is very traditionalist, as
both an art form and a community of artists. That’s not to say there’s no
innovation—plenty of—but it’s always with the same body of techniques: palette
minimisation, antialiasing, dithering, hardware restrictions, and a large dose
of colour theory.

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unalone
Neat. Your challenge here will be finding a large enough community of people
who want to put the time and effort into illustrating and animating this –
enough to create a stream of new content for users.

Instagram caught on in part because taking a photo is so easy. None of the
composition involved in writing even a 140-character tweet: you just hold up
the camera and snap. (Yes, photography involves composition, but pretty
filters aid even the worst photographers there.) Do you have any idea of how
you'll encourage enough content to create a meaningful feed?

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potomak
I have one, it's called "forking" and it'll be ready soon.

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unalone
Forking's always fun. When I interned at Aviary the forked content was
sometimes the most interesting.

A word of warning, gleaned from Aviary's eventual failure in that market:
forking has a tendency to reduce somebody's feed to a bunch of images that
look almost exactly the same. The difference being, lots of the forks will be
shoddier and lower-quality than the original. It can make a feed far less
engaging in far less time. You can fix that by attaching all forked projects
together in a feed, but then you're back to square one: not enough original
content hitting a user's feed.

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sgdesign
Very cool. I've had the idea of transforming <http://www.patternify.com/> into
something like this for a long time, but I'm glad somebody else did it :)

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dcaranda
Awesome. I think the format (picture feed) has the potential to work across a
bunch of verticals - movie posters (to get movie recommendations), art (to get
gallery recommendations), food, etc.

Pixel art is a great choice. The emphasis is on creation and expression - and
maybe it hits a sweet spot - it requires more work than instagram (making it
more legitimate as an art/craft) but less than creating the mona lisa...

You should get eBoy to use it: <http://hello.eboy.com/eboy/>

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bsaul
Hey, i did [https://itunes.apple.com/app/world-of-pictos-by-simple-
app/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/app/world-of-pictos-by-simple-
app/id473964357) , please contact me using the "contact" if interested...

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t_hozumi
Very nice! I can imagine this app will get many users and create interesting
community. And I think that initial paying model unnecessarily limits
potential users since there will be many way to monetize.

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olgeni
Cute, but the square pixels actually look like small rectangles to me. How did
it get past legal?

BTW, we really need an 8-bit GarageBand with sharing features.

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dkurth
I don't know if you're joking, but I would love an app like Garage Band for
making 8-bit/chiptune music!

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olgeni
Seriously - and you should be able to choose AY-8192, SID or whatever. It
could also listen to a tune and render it back as 8-bit sound :)

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gfalcao
Looks nice but started too expensive. Why don't you put it free to get user
acquisition and then you raise the price ?

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dcaranda
I think pixel art appeals sufficiently enough to a niche audience that it can
demand the fee.

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ArekDymalski
Sweet. Any chance for Android version?

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potomak
Not in the near future.

