So long, Big Yellow Man

Sad news. I learned yesterday that ANSI artist Fredrik Olsson aka Big Yellow Man, who did the rad artwork for my 2008 album Out of It, passed away in October.

I really wanted to use ANSI artwork for Out of It because BBS’s and ANSI were a huge part of my teenage life. (I was in iCE and ACiD at various points.) I also thought it might be the first time it was done? I found Fredrik’s work on Deviant Art. Pieces of his like “television” and snowy street really stood out to me from other ANSI artwork, which tends to be a bit juvenile and cleavage-heavy. “television” is the back cover of the Out of It CD and I still love looking at it.

Fredrik was a loved and respected member of the Blocktronics ANSI art community. They’ve paid tribute to him with their latest Artpack. (I used PabloDraw to view it.)

I didn’t know Fredrik well, but he was great to work with. Not only did he design the artwork for the package but he handled all the fiddly print stuff to make sure all the colors and pixels came out perfect. He seemed proud of how it turned out.

Check out some of Fredrik’s artwork. You can also watch a captured session of him drawing an ANSI piece if you want to see what it was like to paint with your keyboard and ANSI text characters in the old MS-DOS days.

Thanks and so long, Fredrik. You’ll be missed.