AuthorTopic: cpc animalmen  (Read 6950 times)

Offline tocky

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cpc animalmen

on: July 04, 2010, 02:10:59 am

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/cpc-animalmen-colortest.png

I'm coming up on the end of this thing but I'm spotting a recurring problem I have with materials, or texture or whatever. I don't know if this is a pixel problem really but it's a problem I keep having.

I feel like i'm just blocking colours on top of one another. I try to play attention to the light and how it hits and what it hits but mostly what i end up doing is blocking on colors and adding more lights or shadows, or mixing at the edges where it looks wrong - which works okay, but it kinda keeps me from making anything that looks properly hairy or leathery or whatever - i rely on the colours a whole lot. Can I maybe get some pointers on how to handle this stuff?
« Last Edit: July 08, 2010, 02:25:24 pm by tocky »

Offline tocky

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Re: problem with materials

Reply #1 on: July 08, 2010, 02:25:09 pm
more of this:

Offline Mathias

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Re: cpc animalmen

Reply #2 on: July 08, 2010, 03:25:05 pm
Great chars. I like the ones that are turned at more of a 3/4 view than the flat profile views. Colors on all are pretty interesting.

This a predefined pallet? What's CPC?

Sometimes texture is simply not possible with such a limited res. And these are even wide-pixel. You could be more selective with dither to designate texture. For instance, the frog's skin could only use smooth pixel clusters with little speculars here and there with no dither. That to me would express a smooth and shiny surface. Same for the shark guy.

Offline tocky

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Re: cpc animalmen

Reply #3 on: July 08, 2010, 04:42:54 pm
I'm borrowing the restrictions from the Amstrad CPC, a machine i've never owned and don't honestly know a whole lot about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_CPC


it has a 27-color palette, and the subset i'm using is 16 colors, which i think would be correct for the CPC's widepixel mode.

Offline Ai

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Re: cpc animalmen

Reply #4 on: July 09, 2010, 02:03:19 am

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/cpc-animalmen-colortest.png
Nice frog and rhino :) These are a bit more stylish than practically any actual CPC graphics, so you've had a win there.

The palette makes sense for what you seem to be aiming for (sort of toony)
.. however it lacks contrast. One common way of getting things to look better on CPC was to exaggerate the lighting and the lines (over-rendering, in short, which would disguise the shortage of shades that the rendering was actually done with)

Quote
I feel like i'm just blocking colours on top of one another. I try to play attention to the light and how it hits and what it hits but mostly what i end up doing is blocking on colors and adding more lights or shadows, or mixing at the edges where it looks wrong - which works okay, but it kinda keeps me from making anything that looks properly hairy or leathery or whatever - i rely on the colours a whole lot. Can I maybe get some pointers on how to handle this stuff?

Exaggerate like mad. Seriously. Mostly, Mode 0 CPC games did not achieve a good level of texturing, but those that did, exaggerated their lighting vastly, for instance.
One of the best games to look at for the kind of art you are doing here is Xyphoes Fantasy. http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Xyphoes_Fantasy
It has graphics that are considered to push the CPC to it's limits.
Have a look at the screenshots at the link and/or emulate it using Arnold or WinAPE; it had large (huge by CPC standards) animated animal sprites. I think you will find that texturing is used sparely per se; most texturing is more color interleaving than brightness interleaving.

It's also worth considering, on my 1280x1024 screen, 300% - 400% zoom matches 'native' CPC Mode 0 pixel size. Knowing this may effect your texturing choices.

The details of CPC stuff are here: http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=3225.msg40939#msg40939 and here: http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=7639.msg90277#msg90277 (which also includes CPC+ info, which might be interesting to you)

To sum up, you have three issues here:
* Your palette does not exploit the quirks of the image limitations as well as it could ( for example, that pink is only used on the kiwi -- I would swap it for orange, or swap all the orange for pink, and use the extra palette slot on a dark blue, which tends to be quite versatile; and the lightest blue might better be a bright cyan instead (#0FF))
* Your characters have good CPCish outlines, the inside structure is not really worked out as well as it could for good-looking CPC rendering.
* your lighting choices are directly obstructing your ability to render texture clearly. Exaggerating it more will allow you to exaggerate the textural difference between surfaces.

Somewhat crappy edit:



I don't endorse all of the changes I made, but they should give you some idea what I mean.
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline tocky

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Re: cpc animalmen

Reply #5 on: February 07, 2015, 03:47:42 pm
" These are a bit more stylish than practically any actual CPC graphics, so you've had a win there. "

i should say that i disagree with this. the CPC is a good machine with a very nice palette and a good set of restrictions. CARNIVAC uses it but noone else does really. this is a shame, i am fond of this machine that i have never known.

Offline rikfuzz

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Re: cpc animalmen

Reply #6 on: February 08, 2015, 12:12:50 am
These are really cute, I like it a lot, and don't see much wide pixel stuff these days.

Small tip for anyone working with wide pixels or making edits in photoshop...
in the menu:
view > pixel aspect ratio > anamorphic 2:1
Then you can draw directly in wide-pixel mode, turning 'Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction' on and off as you like from the same menu.

(I don't think aspect ratio data is used in browser tho, so you still have to resize to 200% x 100% before uploading). 

Offline Decroded

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Re: cpc animalmen

Reply #7 on: February 08, 2015, 12:34:28 am
Great chars. I like the ones that are turned at more of a 3/4 view than the flat profile views.
agreed. I think the side on view is more interesting. id be interested to a lighting edit later when I have computer access as ive never done this kind of palette or wide pixel.

I probably wont have much success but if I come up with anything I'll share  ::)

Offline tocky

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Re: cpc animalmen

Reply #8 on: February 08, 2015, 12:43:34 am
view > pixel aspect ratio > anamorphic 2:1

i've done this before, sometimes i just draw the thing in  wonky tallmode and widen before export though, that the easiest way if you dont mind looking at it, like just draw it as though it were half as wide and then stretch it out. soneone here used to have a wonky tallmode avatar, thats how i knew to do it

if youre a filthy heretic you can take any pixels, half the width, double it, instant widepixels. then you cna just clean it up
« Last Edit: February 08, 2015, 12:45:49 am by tocky »

Offline Seiseki

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Re: cpc animalmen

Reply #9 on: February 08, 2015, 02:40:09 pm
I love the shark, these are very charming.
The frog seems to miss a leg though?