The Graphics Magician, subtitled Picture Painter, is a utility for drawing bitmapped images and playing them back from user-developed programs. It was written for the Apple II by Penguin Software founder Mark Pelczarski and Jon Niedfeldt,[1] and published by Penguin Software in 1982. It was ported to the Atari 8-bit computers, Commodore 64, and IBM PC. The routines for playing back graphics and animation were written by David Lubar and Chris Jochumson.[2] Graphics Magician doesn't store images in their final form, but records the commands used to create them using a "tiny vector graphics-like language."[2] The software plays them back to re-create the image. Images can be layered based on when each shape is drawn.[1]
The Graphics Magician was used to generate images for some commercial graphic adventures of the 8-bit computer era, including Dragon's Keep from Sierra On-Line,[3] Crypt of Medea from Sir-Tech, and Penguin's own The Quest. The playback routines were free to use in commercial products, but required a license from Penguin Software.[1] The Dragon's Keep manual specifically gives credit to Graphics Magician and the authors of the graphics functions.[3]