Sonic Official Art Archive
From Sonic Retro
Sonic Official Art Archive |
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Current owner(s): Hivebrain, Dioxaz |
URL: http://art.sonicresearch.org/ |
Type of site: Art |
Created on: Mid-2003 |
Current status: Offline |
The Sonic Official Art Archive was created by Hivebrain in mid-2003. Previously, the only source of high-quality artwork was the Sega PR FTP site, which intentionally limits bandwidth to around 21kb/s to discourage "ordinary" people downloading them. Other websites offered only low-quality JPEGs or GIFs. So, Hivebrain decided to gather all the artwork he could find, convert it to 32-bit PNG format, and collate it in a single definitive website.
History of the Site
At first, the site was hosted on Hivebrain's university webspace. However, the webspace was quickly filled and consumed far too much bandwidth. This forced him to close the site. At this point, Dioxaz stepped in and offered to maintain the site on Lycos.fr. Hivebrain's university firewall prevented him from accessing the Lycos FTP and updating the site, so he contributed while Dioxaz maintained the site by himself. A year later, the site was moved to the new SSRG, where it was free of annoying banner ads and popups, and was upgraded with PHP scripts.