Franck Sauer's pixel art and recounts

[Helm]

http://francksauer.com/index.php/games/10-games/6-no-never-outside

Start here and look at all his games, descriptions and art. It's a valuable historical resource for our medium.

[ptoing]

The Agony stuff is very cool. Ace use of the copper.

[rikfuzz]

Wow, got to the Amiga stuff and my jaw dropped - must've been a fun time.  (Didn't really know what I was doing back then being just a kid).   

It must be amazing to make a game where you're putting everything into pushing the medium and hardware to the limit.  These days I find I'm putting most of my efforts into being as time efficient as possible which is a pretty different standpoint.    

Funny with today's tools and work-flows pixel art is the 'quick' medium, must've been pretty painstaking process in the early days!  Following that, I guess you have to leave pixels behind if you want to break new ground too - hard to be nostalgic and innovative at the same time...

[Anarkhya]

Such an insight! Archiving Agony and Unreal articles right now

[Cure]

This masochist pixelled on a C64, with a joystick and a monochrome monitor?

I'm pretty thankful I wasn't pixelling (or walking) in the 80's.

[Helm]

Well he used a buggy, skippy tablet.

[Anarkhya]

I remember reading an interview with a former pixel artist in the gaming industry where he briefly described his process, pixel pushing with a joystick: "clac, clac, clac, tic, clac, clac, tic, clac, clac, clac"

This is so alien..
I can't even imagine doing some pixelling without 32bits tools like curve control, smart saturation adjustments, layers, infinite RAM, and so on. That being said, I think Deluxe Paint (II? or maybe the III) was kind of a revolution for hard working artists back then.

[Helm]

I could work on an Amiga. The only newschool artifact we're used to that we'd have to outgrow is the 32bit colorspace/any color on any pixel. Work on 3,3,3 bits sometime, 7+1 colors, or halfbrite. Really interesting.

[yrizoud]

I spent hundreds hours pixelling on the thing, and now 15 years later I'm still everyday grateful for the progress of non-flickering screens and optical mice.

[ptoing]

I could work on an Amiga. The only newschool artifact we're used to that we'd have to outgrow is the 32bit colorspace/any color on any pixel. Work on 3,3,3 bits sometime, 7+1 colors, or halfbrite. Really interesting.

I could too, and I have, and also on a C64, but I would not wanna go back to working with a mouse. And I agree on the lower bitdepth and such being interesting. Amiga is actually RGB 444, not 333. 4096 colours really are enough for most intents and purposes, unless you wanna go super smooth.

[rikfuzz]

Just out of interest, what input device do you use if not a mouse?  I have a large wacom, but I end up using the mouse for 80% of my pixeling workflow.  I enjoyed pixelling on my old DS, so be tempted to give a cintiq a go, but seems a bit too much of a luxury since I never felt a mouse inadequate (and hadn't really heard anyone else say so in regards to pixelling till now).

[ptoing]

I have a Intuos3 6x11 tablet, which I use for EVERYTHING I can use it with. As in everything that does not go funk with a mouse, such as FPS games (generally use mouse for games which have wasd+mouse setup or something like that), and certain 3d software such as Wings3D which does not like absolute position input.

So yeah, using the tablet for everything including general navigation in Windows.

I would not say that a mouse is inadequate but I am A LOT faster with a stylus and it feels more natural. People who say that they are more steady with a mouse, yes that can be true, but you can always zoom in or use snapping or something like that. It never has been a problem for me.

[rikfuzz]

Oh we have the same tablet - maybe I will force myself to use it more in the pixel process in the hopes of speeding things up if I can get used to it.

[Helm]

Man, you're right though. Remember staring at flickering CRT monitors for hours on end?

[Mathias]

. . .
So yeah, using the tablet for everything including general navigation in Windows.
. . .

Lately, I've been trying to force myself to do this, too - use my wacom whenever possible. I hate that my drawing ability is still so much better and natural on paper. Making long curvy lines and stuff, following contours, etc, is much more difficult for me on my tablet. Getting better, though . . .

Man, you're right though. Remember staring at flickering CRT monitors for hours on end?

'Til my eyes bled.

[ptoing]

Man, you're right though. Remember staring at flickering CRT monitors for hours on end?

Man, yeah. They not only flicker, my 1084S Commodore monitor I use for my C64 also makes an audible highpitched whine kinda noise. It is not super loud and if you play something on it and have music going it gets drowned. But damn, I imagine doing stuff on it in a silent room, without listening to music and not having a lot of background noise. I'd go mad.

[Facet]

Bright colours, flickering screens = awesome migraine generator, ugh.

Another all-tablet-all-the-time convert here btw, digital linework is still a issue for me though, the only thing I've found to help is slowing down a lot.

[Anarkhya]

I don't remember experiencing that much flickering during my amiga days (as a gamer), and I also had a 108x serie monitor.
In fact, the only real souvenir of flickering was when I played Darkseed, I loved the game but it was clearly killing my eyes.

[ptoing]

Well yeah, Darkseed is in one of the interlace modes, so it will kill. There was flickerfixer hardware you could get to mitigate this. And I could not imagine working in DPaint in any of the 2 flickering modes without such hardware.

And I agree, during normal play and such the 50Hz is not too bad. Still it will strain your eyes more than higher Hz or LCD/Plasma screens which do not flicker.

[Helm]

I remember noticing the flicker once my eyes got so tired they started to defocus while pixelling/playing videogames. Headaches were a very common thing. But now this thread is becoming crochety. Once I have some time, I'll try to secure and interview with mister Franck Sauer. Perhaps he'll be interested in giving us his recounts of pixelling at the time, how he feels about the medium today and especially, as was mentioned in this thread, the paradigm shift of when art_made_of_pixels was the cutting edge and very laborious to create versus today when it's considered a cheap and retro asset creation method.

[ptoing]

My guess is that he percieved the shift as natural advance in technology, since "pixelart" was not a thing back then, it was just the state of the art of what could be done until you had much higher resolutions, truecolour and 3d graphics.

[Helm]

Well your guess is as good as mine, I'll try to get an interview so we don't have to guess 

[ptoing]

Yeah of course, not saying it is pointless to make an interview. I am sure he will have a lot of insightful things to share