The Bandai Luminodot: Lite Brite goes high-def

For me, the Lite Brite was my first exposure to creating pixel art... the medium in which I first understood that images could be conjured not by contours but by a staccato succession of brightly shining lights. The knowledge was revolutionary: all of a sudden, I understood the strange timbre of NES graphics, what separated them as a form from the drawings I crayoned on construction paper, and the specific challenge of extrapolating detail from the broad sequences of color on a 32x32 grid.

Part of me is saddened, then, by the Bandai Luminodot, most succinctly described as Lite Brite gone high-def. Oh, it's natural... one wonders why simply upping the pixel count on a Lite Brite could have taxen so long. But it's the same slippery slope of 2D game art design: in some ways, the limits of a form define it, and while with only 3,500 light pegs, the Luminodot merely steps gingerly into the 16-bit era, there's somehow the saddening feeling that anything created with it would be less artistic for being more detailed.

It's still gorgeous, still lustful. The 12 blinking LEDs still entice. But somehow, the sensation of hampered creativity still prevails, which is always the biggest unseen disappointment of improving tech. Still, for $96, it is going to be worth playing around with.

Luminodot [Official Site via Technabob]

Related • Create Lite Brite-like art in Adobe Illustrator [RWIllustrator]
• Lite Brite "Last Supper" [You Made Me Say It]
• The previous "World's Largest Lite Brite" [KanaryArt.com]
• Giant Lite Brite-like object at 2002 Burning Man [BurningMan.com] (and Theme Camp [LiteBrite.org])
• Official site [Hasbro.com/litebrite]
• Original Lite Brite television commercial [YouTube]