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.