Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Tsugumo on August 10, 2005, 01:28:21 pm
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http://tsugumo.swoo.net/tutorial/
I'll be working on new chapters when I get some free time. Good to see the pixel art community is still alive...If we ever happen to meet up, drinks are on me, Pep.
- Tsugumo
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Hah, sure! Thanks Tsu. If you're interested, we have a wiki set up for tutorial/terminology material. http://pixipedia.pixel-arts.org
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Finally, I always loved this Tutorial. Thank you.
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Wonderful! Hi Tsugumo, hope everything's ok.
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Hey, very nice collection. And congrats on getting hired, Tsug. Did you work on Betty GBA at all?
- Adam
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wow, those are all really great tutorials. you must have been pixeling for a long time...wow
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Pumpkin, Tsu created the Pixelation forum...
I really disagree with a lot that was written about selout, and in fact back in the day I thought blu was overdoing it and hurting his spriteart a lot with it. I distinctively remember a grayscale sprite from the girl from Blade of the Immortal on which the selout was MURDER. If anyone has it, please repost. It's the 'cardboard cutout' effect, basically. I can see the benefits from controlled use, especially if you want to do fighter sprites that are all over the screen in seconds, but even then, selout should adhere to lightsources more. Tsu, you say 'what if the character walks over a pure white wall'. This doesn't happen. Sprites always have more saturation than backgrounds, and backgrounds always have controlled colour scemes exactly for that. Good graphic design solves this problem before it even manifests. You can have perfectly visible sprites on various backgrounds, just as long as you colour sprites differently from backgrounds.
But anyway, regardless of all that, in my mind, using dark pixels around edges that would otherwise be hit by light directly is just wrong. I go by selselout (I know, silly, heh) where if I want to bring an edge out where it's hit by light, I do selout with a BRIGHTER pixel than the contour I'm outlining, not darker.
Edit: also heh I don't know but I totally love this sprite:
(http://www.locustleaves.com/160.gif)
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Did you work on Betty GBA at all?
Nope. I did all the art for the Three Stooges cell phone game though. It's not amazing, but we crammed a lot in for a cell phone game, heh.
Tsu, you say 'what if the character walks over a pure white wall'. This doesn't happen.
Black ninja character. Night-time background. Gone. White ninja character. Looks great in every level except the snow level. Gone. A single sprite, or pic, on a single background or two is fine, you can plan around it...but when you have a full project where you've got say, 6 or 7 different background titlesets (forest level (greens), water level (blues), snow level (whites), lava level (reds/yellows), etc.), and you've got more than one character, and you've got another artist working on backgrounds at the same time you're working on characters (so you can't even guess what the lava level will look like, let alone adjust your colors for it, until it's made...same thing with the background artist not being able to adjust his tile colors to your characters you haven't done yet), selout will save your ass. In an ideal world, you can take a month and adjust the colors of every single sprite/tile to every single tile/sprite, but working on an actual project, it's inefficient. In a world with firey backgrounds, your fire spell will vanish. If you can just cut out the fire level entirely, great, but generally you can't. If you can just cut out the fire spell, great, but generally you can't.
Sprites always have more saturation than backgrounds
Generally true, but remember the platform you're viewing on. It's not always going to be a nice pretty super-bright/intense PC screen where you make your sprites. The GBA screen dulls all of your colors (a screen that's "pure white" will look greyish-blue to the eye). There almost ISN'T "saturation" on that damn thing, heh. The DS is much better, but it still messes with the intensity and colors get tinted to blue. Subtleties that show up on a PC screen don't translate over. Selout works around that.
You can have perfectly visible sprites on various backgrounds, just as long as you colour sprites differently from backgrounds.
Again, great in an ideal world...but if a publisher says "Here's our White Ninja. We want him to run around 12 snow levels.", you have to come up with some way to solve that and please the publisher. :)
in my mind, using dark pixels around edges that would otherwise be hit by light directly is just wrong.
I think there are other possible techniques a person can use, but I find that selout is extremely versatile, whereas other techniques tend to be more based around "well if we just make our game in this unique style, we can use this method".
Anything I say is purely my opinion though. :)
- Tsugumo
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Black ninja character. Night-time background.
Explain to me how a black ninja on a black background is saved by selout. Selout, as to your tutorial uses darker shades than the contours of the body of colour it's selouting to make it stand out. Black on black with.... black selout? I suggested selselout and it helps in this case also, with bright outlines from above where the lightsource is. It might look kinda mmody and neat also, to only see your character's highlights when he's in a dark spot. But gameplay wise, maybe not the best idea.
The best idea in this case would be for the 'black' ninja to not be fully black, but his darkest shade about 30 lightness, VERY saturated type of purple or deep blue... but selout wouldn't help such a colour either.
White ninja on snow levels yeah though, selout. Probably a full black outline in this case anyway, but I understand what you're saying.
Anything I say is purely my opinion though.
Indeed, and an opinion way more qualified than mine, on that matter. Just discussing, hope you didn't see this as some sort of 'attitude' from me. Your tutorials have been awesome help to me as much as I sometimes disagree.
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Explain to me how a black ninja on a black background is saved by selout.
He's not, really, heh, but that was more a response to saying a character wouldn't run into the white on white type situation. Black on black, white on white, blue on blue, it happens all the time. Not in single pieces where you can control most or all of the elements, but in larger projects it's pretty much guaranteed your jean-jacket wearing character is going to end up in front of a blue sky, and the sprite that works against that background has to also work against every other background.
Black on black with.... black selout?
Yeah, this was a bad example for me to use. A black ninja in a nightime scene is basically not do-able, except via "artsy" solutions (like you say, with just seeing outlines or something stylish).
White ninja on snow levels yeah though, selout. Probably a full black outline in this case anyway, but I understand what you're saying.
The thing about selout is that it's supposed to save you from having to use a black outline. If you have a white ninja, you can selout him with light blue/grey and his white parts will stand out, without having to resort to really gross black lines. So I guess selout helps more against light than dark. Problem with most games is that you're going to end up running into both.
Just discussing, hope you didn't see this as some sort of 'attitude' from me.
Hell no. Questioning and discussing methods and reasons is how we discover new techniques and refine or explain old ones. :) I admit my ideas and views are all going to be biased in a certain direction now that I'm in the industry...I'm picturing things from a "could I use this in an actual full-out project?" perspective now. By no means do I LIKE the look of selout'ed sprites (I'd prefer a game designed around not needing it...like Out of This World or Flashback did), but I find it's a useful solution to a common problem (ie - a person will probably run into more "white ninja in a snow level" situations than they'll run into projects where they can dictate the graphic style to an extent where a solid outline method isn't needed).
Debate is ALWAYS welcome. It shows people are thinking objectively. :)
- Tsugumo
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wow, it's Tsugumo..!?
and he's creating more tutorials? o_o
I just woke up a few moments ago.. perhaps I'm still dreaming?..
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(I'd prefer a game designed around not needing it...like Out of This World or Flashback did)
I love you.
Plus, flashback is a good example of ALL types of tilesets (from alien planet to jungle to futuristic city) where no selout was necessary and yet everything is crisp and excellent. Of course the 'fixed' platformer gameplay mechanic always makes stuff orderly if you think about it, but still. It's the same Conrad in the bright green jungle level that he is on the almost-full-black-and-neon death tower level. Selout? Nope. You don't always have to 'sacrifice' important aspects to avoid selout. In fact, the only thing you'd be sacrificing is Capcom tradition most of all (SNK doesn't selout. When it looks like selout, it's basically subpixel outlining. They're breaking up the lines because the 'volume' of the line they're trying to portray would be too 'fat' if it were a full line. The end result looks similar, but it's done for a completely different reason. Camus would back me up on this! In fact, SNK sprites are so contrasty and saturated, they can work on the 12 or so backgrounds of their games without much problem) if you do so.
On an semirelated note (haven't had such a good debate about pixels in ages), Tsu, would you consider sticking around in this forum, and pixelation, when it comes back?
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<grabs some popcorn> ;D
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Any time you apply an effect mechanically, you run the risk of having unnatural results. Pillow shading is the most basic comparison I can make here. Helm's bringing up a good point about selout, and the fact that he mentions selective selout shows that he's matured on the subject of how to implement it.
Even so, I don't think there's only one way to skin a cat either, and depending on your intent, you'll need to use different tools to get the job done. The ideal is that we can develop the custom formula for every job we have. Pixel art has so many different styles and applications, outlines, no outlines, soft outlines... selout to darks, selout to black, selout light.. edge enhancing AA/contour beveling....
But anyway, regardless of all that, in my mind, using dark pixels around edges that would otherwise be hit by light directly is just wrong. I go by selselout (I know, silly, heh) where if I want to bring an edge out where it's hit by light, I do selout with a BRIGHTER pixel than the contour I'm outlining, not darker.
I mostly agree here. The point of selout should be to make the sprite look more natural in its surroundings, and not apply uniform selout. Selout is most functional in middle colors. In dark colors, the emulation of shadow should include reduced detail, so selout becomes unecessary unless you find that you're using pitch black and you need some form of dark gray to ease things up, which I would generally avoid (thank goodness for alpha). It would be much better to use a semi saturant dark color for shadows with a comparable luminosity to your darkest background colors. For light colors, both selout and outlines should respect this rule about highlights: use less contrast for selout than you would on middle colors, but preferrably don't use it at all. Assuming your backgrounds have some dark and light spots that equal or surpass the contrast of your sprite (why??), you may want to avoid selout in the brightest areas, else you get jaggies when, say, your fireball effect goes across a lighter colored sky.
Black ninja character. Night-time background. Gone. White ninja character. Looks great in every level except the snow level. Gone. A single sprite, or pic, on a single background or two is fine, you can plan around it...but when you have a full project where you've got say, 6 or 7 different background titlesets (forest level (greens), water level (blues), snow level (whites), lava level (reds/yellows), etc.), and you've got more than one character, and you've got another artist working on backgrounds at the same time you're working on characters (so you can't even guess what the lava level will look like, let alone adjust your colors for it, until it's made...same thing with the background artist not being able to adjust his tile colors to your characters you haven't done yet), selout will save your ass. In an ideal world, you can take a month and adjust the colors of every single sprite/tile to every single tile/sprite, but working on an actual project, it's inefficient. In a world with firey backgrounds, your fire spell will vanish. If you can just cut out the fire level entirely, great, but generally you can't. If you can just cut out the fire spell, great, but generally you can't.
At least use temporary selout colors. After you get a look at the background artists tiles, collect the tiles that you think your sprite will be set against, then use a filter to average-blur the tiles to get a middle color. Then pick a color slightly darker than the 'mud' you've just created to selout your middle and lighter colors towards, and avoid selout on any colors darker than the mud. Multiple palettes are great too! The aim of good sprites and backgrounds is to base all of your colors off of the atmosphere, or in the case of having several background colors, use more than one palette, or do your best to find an average.
Hopefully someone's idea of a fire level isnt burning out my eyes. With dim greenish yellows, dull oranges, and hue shifting reds to magenta's, your character can pop out, even if it has bright yellows and reds, even on a 'fire' level. The one other thing to remember is the power of retinex. Smoldering gray tones with small bits of bright red and orange make for great stony fire levels because the details will stand out: Even if in reality the colors don't posess a great deal of contrast by comparison, a few bits of dull red can be bright against neutral or cool stony colors, and a sprite can safely stride through.
Generally true, but remember the platform you're viewing on. It's not always going to be a nice pretty super-bright/intense PC screen where you make your sprites. The GBA screen dulls all of your colors (a screen that's "pure white" will look greyish-blue to the eye). There almost ISN'T "saturation" on that damn thing, heh. The DS is much better, but it still messes with the intensity and colors get tinted to blue. Subtleties that show up on a PC screen don't translate over. Selout works around that.
I'm not sure about this arguement. I agree about the color intensity. Even with the backlight, the GBA displays colors much differently than on your standard monitor. Magenta's are especially prone to distortion/fading. Any light, whether it's the blue cast of the backlight or the yellow cast of natural or outdoor lighting, you're getting some toning/fading. But, if you're on a platform where things aren't as bright, you depend more on having a character with more texture than the background, or the faithful use of black outlines, since GBA doesnt have a high enough screen res to make selout that important.
He's not, really, heh, but that was more a response to saying a character wouldn't run into the white on white type situation. Black on black, white on white, blue on blue, it happens all the time. Not in single pieces where you can control most or all of the elements, but in larger projects it's pretty much guaranteed your jean-jacket wearing character is going to end up in front of a blue sky, and the sprite that works against that background has to also work against every other background.
So the understanding here seems to be that selout will not save you from a bad sprite. Must hope your sprites have enough detail to stand out against a background. If you're expecting alot of this sort of blending of sprite and background, then selout is deprecated. (Looks like you guys already covered that...) :P
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Holy god! Hello!
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How exactly do you pronounce Tsugumo?
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About freakin' time, man!
I say "Soo-goo-mo," but I'm probably wrong.
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That's correct. Sue, Goo, Mow! :D
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I say tsoo-gmoh
But I use the consonance and run the ts and the gm together.
It's fun.
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It's the same Conrad in the bright green jungle level that he is on the almost-full-black-and-neon death tower level. Selout? Nope.
True. But Flashback is an "artsy" game, where they were allowed to design things however they wanted right from scratch...which is like the holy grail of actual projects. Awesome if you get a chance to do it (which you do if you're working on your own stuff), but professionally, it's insanely rare. They were allowed to dress Conrad in colors that would work with the backgrounds and were allowed to get artistic with the shades and such used in the backgrounds. It's one of those situations where you don't need it, and so you definately shouldn't use it, but it's pretty rare to be fortunate enough to be in that situation it seems. Say Conrad belonged to CompanyX, and CompanyX said at the end of development "We've changed Conrad's design...now he wears a green jumpsuit (that happens to be a shade similar to your jungle, so you can't deviate and make it dark green or whatever)", it's like, agh, heh...that's when you're stuck busting out selout.
In fact, SNK sprites are so contrasty and saturated, they can work on the 12 or so backgrounds of their games without much problem) if you do so.
heh...as I was reading the first part, I was going to reply with this. That's the thing, is that SNK can get away with it because of their high contrast/saturation...which is great, for their style, but games shouldn't be limited to having to have neon vibrant colors and huge contrast in shades. Sometimes you want a low-saturation/low-contrast look for your art style (watercolor type effect to the game's graphics). Pumping up the saturation/contrast will ruin the effect you're going for. It's like black outlines...they're great in cases where the art style you want to go with is a cartoony type look, but if you're shooting for realistic stuff, the black outlines will ruin that and you need another solution.
This stuff sticks out to me because on my current project, I started out with a really fast art style that used black outlines and few colors, but could be done quickly...a few months down the road (this is after I've got some 150+ sprites done already in this style), I'm told by higher-ups that they've talked it over and the style is too cartoony, make it more realistic. I'm thinking "crap crap crap" and I had to revamp the style to use way more colors and different contrast/saturation and such. But at this point, a good chunk of backgrounds are already made and it's taking days out of development time to go back and recalibrate all the art, so we can't really do that. Ergo, I needed a solution, and selout fit the bill because it's pretty much guaranteed to work (even if it's not the ideal look I'd want if I were in charge of all the art decisions).
Again, I'm not saying selout is the way to do everything, but I'd say it can solve a good 90% of situations where the other 10% can be solved by big artistic design decisions, so I consider it an extremely useful tool to have in a person's arsenal (even if you just use it as a base for another technique (going lighter with the selout instead of darker), understanding the concept can help you choose that...like studying realistic anatomy before you draw Marvel characters). It's sort of like duct tape, heh...might not be pretty, but often, it gets the job done.
On an semirelated note (haven't had such a good debate about pixels in ages), Tsu, would you consider sticking around in this forum, and pixelation, when it comes back?
I'd sort of like to, in that I miss discussing this stuff...but in all honesty, I don't think you'll see me around much. I'm on a computer all day long at work doing pixel art, and I'm being paid so I can't be reading/responding to threads while I'm at work, and when I come home the absolute last thing I feel like doing is turning on my computer at home and doing the same thing I was doing all day, heh...I don't want to burnout or anything because now I'm being paid to do this stuff so I can't just take a break if I get tired of looking at pixels.
I'm mainly updating the tutorials again because I've learned a bunch of new stuff (or how to explain old stuff) and I want to share that info with other people. What they use it for, or whether they agree with it or not (if it starts a debate, that's awesome as far as I'm concerned, because in the end we all benefit from looking at pros and cons of a concept), or if it just gives people something to read while they're eating a bowl of cereal, I don't care, heh...I just want it to be out there floating around. Theoretically, other companies could read my tutorials and learn some stuff they didn't think of and out-pixel me, but I welcome the competition, 'cause at the end of the day I play games as well as make them, and I want to play sweet-looking games. :)
It's like the Nintendo DS...fancy little system. Basically a GBA, but the one thing it has that obliterates the GBA is alpha-blending. Finally, we can use multiple levels of translucency in a sprite. That means some SERIOUSLY awesome effects can be made...I'm talking you can go into Photoshop, airbrush a swipe, add sweet glows all over it, and kaboom, it comes out like that in-game. We figured out a nice way to do it with our current project, and I'm abusing the hell out of it. Unfortunately, we didn't figure it out until halfway through development, so it's not as huge a part of the game as I'd've wanted it to be if we were planning for it from the start...but I'm cramming what I can in there. I plan to do up a tutorial on special effects (fire, glows, lightning, water splashes, etc.) explaining my method and how you can abuse it on the DS, because it's great...but at the same time, I download the trailer for Castlevania DS (so we're talking Konami here) and even THEY aren't using this new ability as well as they could. Maybe it's 'cause it's first-gen, or maybe it's 'cause they have so much art that they just can't fit it, I don't know, but I do know that DS games can look bloody amazing.
Same time though, the DS screen poops on a lot of things that look beautiful on a PC screen, heh...not nearly as vibrant as, say, the PSP.
I've actually forgotten what I was originally talking about, heh. Basically what I'm doing right now, I've been typing for like 20 minutes...I don't have time to be doing this, so I probably won't be around much. :) Just updating the tutorials was my only intention.
At least use temporary selout colors. After you get a look at the background artists tiles, collect the tiles that you think your sprite will be set against, then use a filter to average-blur the tiles to get a middle color
Again, ideal world situation, heh...temporary colors don't work when the publisher is hounding you for screenshots (I had to make a TRAILER for a game before we even had sprites loaded on-screen, heh) that can spend 2 months going down the line at their company for approval and come back saying "change it all". The game industry is jading me. :)
But, if you're on a platform where things aren't as bright, you depend more on having a character with more texture than the background, or the faithful use of black outlines, since GBA doesnt have a high enough screen res to make selout that important.
My personal rule is that if the system is a handheld that doesn't have an absolutely beautiful screen (PSP does, everything else is generally crappy in some way and doesn't look like a PC monitor at all), black outlines are the way to go. Combine that with less-saturated background colors (with no black outlines, only colored) and intense character sprite colors, and everything'll stand out nice and beautiful, and the black outlines will help keep your graphics separated...but out of 3 projects I've worked on so far, all 3 I've had to get rid of the black outlines in favor of color ones...which I think is crappy, but I don't get to make the rules, you know? If I could sit down the president of whatever publisher we're working for and say "hey look, here's why this is better...", I could probably get my way and make a sweet looking game...but this stuff gets decided by some random people in suits having a coffee break and BSing about the last golf game, heh...or so it seems at least.
Again, my opinions these days are all based around what I've run into in the industry so far. I'm not real happy with it (the industry as a whole), because I think people making important decisions are often people who shouldn't be going anywhere NEAR those decisions (but what industry ISN'T like that, right?)...but this is how it seems to go. One of the projects we were working on, our whole art team (including the lead) wanted to go with and totally envisioned a Flashback/Out of this World style to everything...it would have been beautiful artistically. But then we get word back from higher up the chain that they want it "to look like Diablo" (which is pre-rendered, on top of being ugly and nothing like what we were thinking to start with). We just didn't get to make the decision, even though we all believe that ultimately the game would have looked better in the end. This is crap no one told me before I got into the industry, and I thought any stories I heard about it were just exaggerated. Alas, heh.
How exactly do you pronounce Tsugumo?
Wing it. I do. :)
Anyway, like I say, great discussion going on (I think we're all sort of agreeing, but stressing different angles of it so we don't run into a bunch of "this is the only way to do things" static thinking), and I'd like to keep going with it, but I'm going to have to bail from this thread, aside from answering a few misc questions now and then. Just can't dedicate a ton of time to doing this, and I can't keep myself from rambling out these page-long posts, heh. Hell, I didn't even bust out sprite rips and screenshot close-ups and stuff for examples and this thing is already ridiculously long, heheh...
So adios for now, all, and again, it's great to see the community still kicking. I'll probably be lurking in the shadows wherever it moves to.
- Tsugumo
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*bows to Tsugumo*
Thank you so much for thinking of Pixelation. My life would not be the same without you.
Also, btw, why did you stop being head honcho anyways?
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Again, I'm not saying selout is the way to do everything, but I'd say it can solve a good 90% of situations where the other 10% can be solved by big artistic design decisions, so I consider it an extremely useful tool to have in a person's arsenal (even if you just use it as a base for another technique (going lighter with the selout instead of darker), understanding the concept can help you choose that...like studying realistic anatomy before you draw Marvel characters). It's sort of like duct tape, heh...might not be pretty, but often, it gets the job done.
To this I agree completely. The zen way, heh, learn selout before you forget selout (and if something can't be worked in another way, conviniently remember selout).
Shame about you not sticking around, but I understand the reasons completely. Good luck in the industry.
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Dang! A Tsugumo.
... Hey. Nice to see you still alive.
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that was the tutorials that got me pixelin
great work Tsugumo hope to see you doing one containing coloring
helm . that mock is very nice and the ninja too :P
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With the updating of the tutorial, can we expect an active neh too?
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Awesome! There's a new chapter and it totally PWNs. Now I know what kind of outline Capcom and other pro game companies used. In the past, I thought it was anti-aliasing lol.
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That tutorial was the one that i first found and got me into pixel art in the first place. Creepy...
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Whoa, Tsugumo lives!!! Good to see you around man even if its just on a part-time basis... :)
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so... I hope im not to late, but I wanted to get in on this too.
So from what I was reading and what I grasped was that Tsugumo has his selout with using darker shades than those in the sprite. Helm was saying to use lighter shades.
So that got me to thinking. Why not combine both?
Heres a small example I through together in 5mins just for explanation purposes.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v300/flaber/exmp.png)
The first image shows the sphere. I have 3 colours used in it, and then one darker and one lighter for the outline. I figured that why not colour the lines like they were the sprite themself. Use the darkest shade where the shadows would be on the sprite, and the highlight colour thats closest to the lightsource. Then select one of the colours you used in the sprite itself as a transition colour. For me I used the darkest colour. BUT, the colour you used for the transition colour, CANNOT touch itself within the image. You used it as an outline therefore if it touches itself it looses some of that outline crisp, like the second image.
Now the second image, I just edited my display pic just because its the closest thing i have to a sprite that could be used in a game. Here I have only one new colour. Thats the darkest shade. I used it the same was as I did in the first. I put it in the darkest places. Next I used the colours within and extended them to the lines. I find it doesnt look as crisp, but it can still get the job done. Perhaps I even went too far and added a new darkshade for each set of colours. I could of very easily done this using one one new colour. But owell.
I just thought Id show my thought on the subject. Perhaps a solution or another viewpoint to this that helm and tsu have created. Hope it fits.
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Well, that IS what helm said. Don't just make all the selout dark, but according to the lightsource. Just look at his lil ninja edit :0
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heh oops.
but atleast I kinda explained how to do it. Or atleast how I did it. So then i guess I was semi-backing up helm. Oh well, tis fine for me. Just wanted to state my views on the subject.
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I havent got the time to check this new tutorial in a decent way, but I just wanted to say thanks for all of the other tutorials. that's where I started to pixel. you and zoogles where the big motivations to pixel, and know I'm an artist with a pixeled demo for the GBA. thanks!
Kazuya Mochu
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Boo Tsugumo! Boo! ;D
See, they missed ya. And it's good to see you Pixelation'ers did find refuge after CSP had... issues. Greetz.
And to be an ass, I'll invade this thread by replying to other peoples questions. Ha ha!
And congrats on getting hired, Tsug. Did you work on Betty GBA at all?
Naa, Mr. "I'm the king of pixels" avoided that one. Instead, that was myself on engine code, an artist we'll call "Secret Agent Barbie BG Artist", and more people you guys wouldn't know. Even Z-Gravity managed to avoid Betty. Truly, "Secret Agent Barbie BG Artist" and I are cursed by girl games. :D That was either our third of fourth Girl Game together.
Hey, congratz on Sigma Star. I've always kept an eye on Way Forwards stuff, which is always up there in the art quality. The game looks great.
I'm mainly updating the tutorials again because I've learned a bunch of new stuff (or how to explain old stuff) and I want to share that info with other people.
Tch, yeah. It's a shame it'll be a while longer before the publisher begins to tease the game he's been on. The stuff he'd been doing with effects has us all in awe (at least any of us that can appreciate the pixels), not to mention the animations are great. He coped with being tossed into the fire of retail development well. The "Tsu on Selout" tut is such a tease, the real cool stuff is coming... when he can find the time.
Ahh, now that's he's here, I can retire... not that it makes any sense, given I'm always on code. ;D You think I'm joking.