Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: IvanX on August 04, 2010, 06:52:20 am
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(http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/9007/nespor.png)
Hopefully I'm within the nes restrictions.
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Short answer: You are under NES restrictions, but not without sprite overlays on three of them.
Optional long answer:
For backgrounds it's: 4 colors per 16x16 region. 4 palettes of 4 colors, but one of the colors must be used in all 4 palettes.
For sprites, 3 colors per 8x8 sprite. 4 palettes of 3 colors with transparency. Because sprites can be overlaid with transparency, one can get more colors in a region by overlaying sprites, but there are only 64 sprites and usually they're not all used for overlays during gameplay.
Here is how your first portrait would be constructed with sprite overlays:
(http://a.imageshack.us/img213/4851/portrait1.png)
It uses six sprites, one background palette, one sprite palette. The purple represents unused palette colors.
The guy on the pink background would need sprites anywhere there's white.
The dog works on only one background palette since it's only four colors throughout.
The rightmost portrait would need a lot of sprites. If you use sprites to overlay as the hair color, it's a lot. (I don't have time to get out my magnifying glass to see exactly how many at the moment.) For Green it's a lot because it's the color surrounding the head. For the bright skintone, still a lot, etc. The color used for the shirt looks like fewer, but since it's spaced all over it's probably be quite a few. This is the one I'd suggest rethinking if this were for an NES game.
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OK, correct this if I'm wrong.
1. On the first, I'm allowed two extra colors via sprite overlays. Without the overlay, I would have to remove a single color.
2. Not quite getting why sprites are needed for whites.
3. The dog is perfectly within restriction then.
4. He has one too many colors, much like the first girl, right. But I could possibly swap the black with the brown and have him fine then.
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To make your life easier, you could just reference the portraits in MegaMan games, count the colors they use, and use that as a guide.
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2bMBz7adOoQ/SJH3Q028xHI/AAAAAAAAAVQ/1QdVE1Phgwk/s400/mega-man-2.e_01.png)
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2. Not quite getting why sprites are needed for whites.
because the white in the eyes is just one color too much.
you could replace the purple background with a white one and you're safe aswell
Edit: it could be like this... I left the white eyes as they come out the best like that, you still have a sub pallet left for extra color in the surrounding gfx
(http://sorex.is-a-geek.com/temp/nes/nes_stuff.gif)
Edit2: just noticed I screwed up the last picture, it's already 4 colors but it doesn't use the green as in the pallet, but I guess you get the idea
and could setup sub pallet 4 for that one as a duplicate of sub pallet 1 and replace the green with black.
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I'd say for a 32x32 square like this, you could probably use coding tricks so that you actually render what you want as long as you remain below 8 colours per character and that you don't try to put all those characters fully coloured next to each other (as you're only granted 8 sprites per scan line).
I'd say it would be a pitty to turn your lovely portraits into something less colourful as sorex exampled. If you *really* need to show them horizontally (e.g. character select), you can easily keep the selected character with full colours and the other ones in a more "monochrome" (no sprite, all using the same palette, giving you more palettes for the rest).
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I'd say for a 32x32 square like this, you could probably use coding tricks so that you actually render what you want as long as you remain below 8 colours per character and that you don't try to put all those characters fully coloured next to each other (as you're only granted 8 sprites per scan line).
NES can't render whatever with coding tricks. Game viable tricks only work per scanline, and each 16 x 1 pixel area would still be limited to 4 colors. And it's difficult to change the palette between scanlines, it requires extraordinarily well timed code. Sprite overlays require nothing fancy, but it'd be better to remain below 7 colors per portrait (4 of a background palette, 3 for a sprite palette), not eight, and the sprite palette colors would need to be used sparingly.
All four of these could be displayed as is, on screen together, horizontally, using all four background palettes, and one sprite palette, without running into the sprites per scanline issue. The first would use six sprites, the second would use four, the third none, and the fourth would use 12. They are also not 32 x 32, which only means they'd have to be spaced a little different to get them all together.
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So I tried to take into consideration the restrictions and I came up to these, as well as starting on the characters' sprites.
(http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/9007/nespor.png)
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*Kinda update*
(http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/378/mockup01.png)
Worked an a quick, uninspired mockup, mostly to try out tiles for the first time.
The HUD looked ugly to be honest, so I left it out until I revise it.
*Edit*
Starting smexy run cycle
(http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/715/runm.gif)
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Why not just have the characters that aren't selected grayscaled and only the selected portrait has full color. Btw is the girl an old women? Because she looks like one.
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She looks old?
Heh, not nessisarly my intention, I'll lok into that.
Also
(http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/715/runm.gif)
Update on run
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It may be her hair that looks like an old aunt's hairstyle.
And why oh why do I think of Kramer from Seinfeld(Spelled wrong.) when I look at your second char. XD
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The dark line in the running ani kinda reads as a mouth to me, which makes the whole head feel boxy. After looking at it a while, I realized it was the line seperating the head from the neck, but it took me a while to get that.
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(http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/715/runm.gif)
The portrait suggested her hair take quite some volume in front of her forehead, but you rendered the sprite with something much "flatter". I'd get rid of the "non-feature" horizontal and vertical lines of her face, and use some shading to distinguish neck from head. I'm not convinced by the dark brown as an outline colour here, either.
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Her turning her head while the hair keeps still looks weird to me! I can understand how it'd work, but the animation result is weird. I suggest she keeps looking forward while running! Find other things about the head to animate. Maybe a hair bounce?
Oh, also I feel that her feet travel a bit slowly when they're touching the ground. Make sure to try and match her walking tempo with her in-game moving speed.
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haha,
I was just working on a hair bounce, aaaand...
(http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/1097/run2.gif)
...there it is. Honestly, I think its too much bounce for such a calm looking run, So I might need to fix that. >_>
* Quick edit*
(http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/8109/run2x.gif)
I figured out the magic of moving the head a single pixel to the left and speeding the animation up a bit.
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(http://139.165.223.2/~martin/scene/nespor-edit.png)
A small edit, my first try to match NES requirement. I notice that you're using 4 colours for your sprite, which is unfortunately one too much. I split in two palettes, one with shades of "pink" and the other with shades of green+brown with the hope that this allow easier reuse. You'll note that the green eyes are barely noticeable (though the "green layer sprite" can show them anyway).
Note: I haven't checked that dark-green and dark-pink I used exist in the NES palette, though. Total is 3 sprites per scanline unless I'm mistaken.