Many artists set daily creative quotas for themselves in order to stretch the limits of their imaginations. Italy-born, Shanghai-based illustrator Ailadi’s PETSCII series—named for the character set used in Commodore’s 8-bit computers from the late 1970s—is another manifestation of this exercise. Since last November, she’s been making an 8-bit GIF every single day. "I mostly draw at night, just before going to sleep, and the subject of it represents something about the day that just passed: something I did, I saw, that happened around me or in the news,” she tells The Creators Project. "I like the combination of PETSCII 8-bit, game aesthetic with subjects of common daily life.”
Perhaps it's the 8-bit medium stirring nostalgia, but Ailadi's often whimsical GIFs seem to take place in a slightly different world—a gentler, more amusing one, where a girl can pet an alligator seemingly without fear. Ailadi isn’t sure just how long she’ll continue making a GIF a day, but expect to see the series evolve. "The PETSCII series is born from a collaboration with Jambonbill that’s behind the program I’m using both to draw and animate,” she writes. "The software is continuously getting better and it’s exciting to keep evolving and imagining new way of ‘petsciing’. Stay tuned!"
Follow Ailadi’s daily GIFs on her Instagram.
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