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Holiday Art Executed In Google Documents

Posted by timothy on from the but-they-offered-it-a-blindfold dept.

CyberKnet writes "Some enterprising folks over at Google have collaborated via Google Documents to create holiday art using cells in a spreadsheet as the pixels. A time delay video was taken and is available over at YouTube and the result is pretty spectacular. More info on how they did this is available behind the scenes. They're inviting people to share their own masterpieces or post a video response over on YouTube."

18 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. Excel can do even more! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    3d Graphics engine in Excel previously on slashdot:
    http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/06/1732220&from=rss

  2. Holiday Art Executed In Google Documents by Kagura · · Score: 3, Funny

    Holiday Art Executed In Google Documents

    Jesus christ, so much for "do no evil"!

    1. Re:Holiday Art Executed In Google Documents by rvw · · Score: 4, Funny

      Holiday Art Executed In Google Documents

      Jesus christ, so much for "do no evil"!

      I believe He was executed as well. I don't know if we can blame Google for it.

    2. Re:Holiday Art Executed In Google Documents by ettlz · · Score: 2

      I believe He was executed as well. I don't know if we can blame Google for it.

      Kinda like this?

    3. Re:Holiday Art Executed In Google Documents by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 3, Funny

      You are thinking of Easter - this is Christmas!

  3. Awesome by metlin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is the sort of coolness that I like about technology - the fact that you can use to create something not quite mainstream, yet very interesting and very cool.

    And these are the moments when I really enjoy reading Slashdot. Reminds me of how back in the day, Slashdot used to post something small but interesting done by a geek in a garage...

  4. Re:Nice, however... by ettlz · · Score: 4, Funny

    Huh, yeah. Let's have some boobs instead. Oh, God, I foresee a wave of Spread-em-sheet porn...

  5. Except... this is clearly a PR piece by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Your comment about "small but interesting done by a geek in a garage" is clearly not true. This was posted by Google PR, an $83bn outfit. That's one heck of a garage.

  6. Anime in Excel by zalas · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Speaking of Excel, I came across a bunch of clips the other day on NicoNico Douga where they used Excel to draw video. Here are some YouTube mirrors of those videos, since the original site is Japanese and registration-only:
    ToraDora! OP in Excel
    Higurashi Kai OP in Excel

  7. Idle? by pjt33 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wow. A grid-based system capable of colouring grids can be used to do pixel art? Clearly the term "enterprising" has changed in meaning, but leaving that aside I have to ask why this is in tech? It quite clearly belongs in idle.

    1. Re:Idle? by Daengbo · · Score: 2, Informative

      The point was to show real-time collaboration as a promo for their service. I would hope that Slashdotters would talk about the collaboration angle in Goole Docs and how it stacks up to other services.

      p.s. I'm using only Google Apps this month as an experiment.

      --
      Put identity in the browser.
  8. How fitting ... by Lazy+Jones · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Using a spreadsheet as a graphics program is about as efficient as using a browser to run office applications ...

    --
    "I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
    1. Re:How fitting ... by LoudMusic · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, because it's so much more efficient for everyone to be using different versions of the software AND the document, unless you want to also deal with setting up a collaborative document system.

      But opening a browser window and clicking a link - that's just too much effort.

      --
      No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
    2. Re:How fitting ... by Lazy+Jones · · Score: 2, Insightful
      That - and it adds a whole layer of instability on top of your OS (browsers/JS need to be stable too).

      All those lemmings who advocate running applications inside a browser (completely ignoring the fact that networking is available outside browsers too and you don't even need to hand over all your data to a 3rd party for groupware applications) should go apologize to Microsoft, who took a lot of flak for considering the browser part of the OS ...

      --
      "I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
  9. [Offtopic] Why is this in tech? by empaler · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not that I dislike the story - I just think it should be in Idle, not in Tech.

  10. Re:Nice, however... by RJFerret · · Score: 5, Funny

    Huh, yeah. Let's have some boobs instead. Oh, God, I foresee a wave of Spread-em-sheet porn...

    Okay, not exactly porn, but you inspired me to produce a nude...

  11. This is NOT Christmas. by Rhodri+Mawr · · Score: 2, Funny

    This is NOT Christmas. It's not even Advent yet. Admit it, you're in Marketing aren't you.

  12. CAD by Excel by FRiC · · Score: 2, Funny

    A few years ago, a newly hired engineer at work complained that he couldn't find any drawings done by the previous engineer that had just quit. I looked and the guy that quit had several thousand Excel files and his drawings were all done using tiny cells and cell borders. They were complex drawings of mechanical parts and some were even done in 3D perspective.

    The new engineer ended up spending the next few months recreating all the drawings from A3-sized printouts using a real CAD program.