Teletext Artist Spotlight: Little Cat

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Tonight on Teletext Artist Spotlight we’ll be highlighting the work of Little Cat, who has recently discovered the vibrant world of teletext art and the Edit-TF editor. Join us on a journey through their experiences of the format as we find out more about those exquisite Pokemon pixel graphics.

Teletextart: Welcome to our little chat show, Cat! So how and where did you first encounter teletext art?

Little Cat: I don’t really remember when I first “encountered” teletext art, but it was probably a year or so ago and I was really fascinated by it. When I first saw this kind of art, I was like: “Wow, this is amazing stuff! How do people even manage to do such a thing with such old and extremely limited technology?”

And whenever I saw new art, the same question always popped back into my head. It’s all just glorious to see.

How would you describe your artistic background?

I don’t really have a background per se, I don’t even know how to draw with pencil and paper! But teletext-wise, I think my background right now is simply just tracing logos, Pokemon and other art that I like to try doing in teletext form.

I’m still familiarising myself with it right now, but maybe I’ll get better over time. Also, I’m thankful they added a tracing option to Edit-TF where you could overlay an image transparently in the background. I wouldn’t know how to start without it!

What do you see as the major challenges of making teletext art?

I think the challenge of making this kind of art (for me anyways) is finding the right artwork to trace on. Most of the art I find will have too many colours, or be just plain complicated to do, for example, finding exactly where to correctly place control codes while trying to maintain a decent quality.

It’s not all that bad though. With teletext art, I could try just about anything before giving up, because it’s a kind of art where you can improvise a bit and fix it. You can experiment with the pixels all you want until you are satisfied with the final result.

It’s kinda like trying to do a painting with Bob Ross, because he has always said: “We don’t make mistakes, we just have happy accidents.” And those words can never get any more true with teletext art. Sometimes, when you make a mistake, you could just, *boop*, fixed. But the complex accidents are where I begin improvising and experimenting.

What other art (teletext or otherwise) has been an influence on your work?

I think my influence is all kinds of teletext art I see. Simon Rawles’ example frames page has been a great help to me. I can inspect exactly how people do that peculiar artwork within the Edit-TF editor.

Otherwise, I think I have to give a certain friend of mine some credit. I’ve seen her (non-teletext) art improve itself as time has gone by, and that has given me inspiration to try doing some form of art as well. I thought that doing teletext art was a good place to start, and now I’m here.

In fact, the first piece of art I ever did was actually a tracing of her own art, and I couldn’t thank her enough for inspiring me to create teletext art. (If you’re reading this, thank you!)

Where can we find your work online? Can people follow you on social media?

You could mostly find my work on Twitter and the Tumblr blog I recently started. Also, I’ve submitted all of my work to Simon’s site that I mentioned earlier, so be on the lookout for that soon!

Thank you so much, Cat, for taking the time to speak to us! Best of fortune with your future teletexting.

Thank you very much for having me featured on your site! It is an honour. 🙂