AuthorTopic: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately  (Read 15405 times)

Offline Darien

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #20 on: November 03, 2005, 11:32:13 pm
Also sorry if I wasn't clear: looking at video games for inspiration for video games for me is fine. Looking just a little deeper though, to see the machine aesthetic, is more of what i'm talking about. Looking at resolution. Squares. Aspect ratios. Refresh rates. Scanlines. antiquated palettes like EGA or c64 colours... there's a special history and something very intimately ABOUT computers in video games that shouldn't just be conviniently brushed aside are replaced by quick-CG-just-like-anime-lol!

Now look who's talking about nostagia-fodder  ;)

Seriously, though, you do have a valid point.  I think I was unclear at what you were discouraging. Anime stereotypes do get tiresome, and from looking at game art you could miss that there are other ways of pixelling.  Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of information regarding what you said readily availiable, or at least making itself known to the pixel art community.  It'd be interesting if a series of articles or something was written about those aspects of pixel and computer art history, to educate artists who are too young to know about it.

Offline Conzeit

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #21 on: November 03, 2005, 11:56:20 pm
ah. you damn tease, why didnt you ever show your gameprojects in pixelation? were they rushed or something?(dont worry we wont laugh ;p) or is pixelation not up to your mighty gameplay ideas? are you just lazy?...or what?

you're making good points here, that's why I've enjoyed so much the path pep ptoing you and hell...the whole poocrew (whatever they're called now) you all seem to develop an aesthetic of your own.

I see your point about gameart vs demo, they are both pretty creatively empty comunities XD we're screwed

I kind of see what you mean about scanlines and whatnot, I've been curious about that trick on c64 that was used to make certain pixels in sprites selectively taller, it generated some pretty interesting looking stuff, I've been kind of tempted to try it out in my art but I dont know the exact limitations for it.

Another point that brings up is remakes. you know, it is kind of sad how in both movies and videogames directors are deciding to remake their stuff and take out a bunch of good old stuff very related to the flaws of the form of expression.

Take for example Rockman Rockman which's coming out for PSP, it's a remake of the first Megaman in which Infaune the creator decided to redesign megaman and make him a typical anime chibi, allegedly because "that's how I always wanted him in the first place", but I really disagree, because he also says that megaman is only blue because of the wide pallete of blues in NES, but he wouldnt make megaman another color just because he's making a remake would he?

In all these remakes, directors are always forgetting that the limitations of their expressive medium decided much of the look of their work and this became part of the essence of their piece, in Megaman's case it's the very curious and charming face features the characters have, every robot has an unintended expression caused by the weird compromises the pixelartist had to do in order to make the face, and this gives each of their expressions an unusual depth, but instead of recognizing this they just throw it out in favor of the current trends, which will in time also look as dated as the original versions, only they will be more empty and make a worse composition with the gameplay elements.

Star wars is another good example, much of the look depended on the limitations of the time, whenever there was an electrocution for example, the electricity effects were abstract lines that ran trough the form of the electrified object in quite a peculiar way, but in the prequels they just look like the more logical voltaic arcs one would expect.

it all strikes me as if a painter decided to tear his painting just because he heard that photoshop came out, and now he can automatically do lensflare effects, how is that improving the art at all?

eh....that got awfully offtopic, back on topic a little bit more...why dont we think of a way to reflect this in the boards? make a "create your own style" challenge of some sort? there must be some way we can use this insight.

Offline Helm

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #22 on: November 04, 2005, 12:09:03 am
no, none of this is offtopic. This is my thread, and it aint' about my unfinished art if I say so :P so no worries, this discussion is very stimulating for me. Everybody, go ahead and contribute your thoughts if you desire. There's not much to say about lolmetal anymore anyway. Or we could take this to OT possibly. if it gets REALLY derailed, I'll split the topic.

Quote
ah. you damn tease, why didnt you ever show your gameprojects in pixelation? were they rushed or something?(dont worry we wont laugh ;p) or is pixelation not up to your mighty gameplay ideas? are you just lazy?...or what?

dunno if you've noticed, but I don't pimp. At all. not even my art in art-related boards. I don't like it, that's all. My games aren't rushed, some of them are good ( Gladiator Quest, Caverns ) but they'll be found by those that care to find them.

as to the 'trick' in c64, it didn't make pixels in sprites taller, it made everything you drew in tiles doublewidth in pixels. There's an interesting aesthetic there, you could indeed give it a little try. For anyone who wants to look in pixel art history more, do yourselves a favour and play a few old nes games, then Captain Blood, then Impossible Mission for the c64, perhaps a few old AGI Sierra adventure games ( with the doublewide pixels we discussed and EGA palettes :) ) and a more coherent picture will emerge from all of these.

I completely hear you about limitations. Limitations lead to alternate ways to deal with something besides the most obvious way. This is many times good because for no other reason than that it makes you SIT DOWN AND THINK of these alternate reasons. As they say in creative writing classes: the first thing that comes to mind when writing about something? Disregard it. So yeah, I'm 100% more interested in what a limited budget 70's movie would have to put in place of the giant CGI 3d robot they have planned for. Case in point: stop motion animation! I find it a lot more charming than all the 3d effects of recent movies.

Limitations, when faced bravely and ingeniously are POWER. We're dealing with limitations here. Self-restrictions. We can do great things with 16 colours and 256 pixels of space.

Offline Conzeit

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #23 on: November 04, 2005, 12:47:25 am
hmmm, no...I dont think you know what I'm talking about on c64 graphics.

you see, this is something I saw in fist when I helped madgarden, if you look at the fist sprites, there are some pixels that are taller than others. this doesnt look particularily good in fist, but I've seen atleast one sprite (as an avatar on a oldschool forum) that made it look good, so I'm a little tempted to seeing how that works out, maybe if I toy with the limitations of sprites it can help me find out why I like lowres images so much.

I think there's more to limitations than the fact they make you reconsider, every medium has it's limitations you know? just like you cant have an infinite pallete in oil painting, or you cant see what your image is like when you do engraving, you cant make smooth curves with pixelart.

This all calls for new forms of expression, and any given piece is always defined by the limitations of it's mediums. Take movies example, movie characters absolutley must have visual ways of expressing their feelings, no matter how forced it'll feel for the character.Therefore a piece will always show signs of what medium originated it, because it's basic structure is related to the limitations of the medium. This always seems to be underestimated in videogames though, specially when it comes to pixelart, I belive many of the basic aesthetics of pixelart could be useful in many other mediums, vectors and 3d included

just look at the 3d KOFs, 2dKOF always stood for a very specific style, in the beggining this was realism, but on the later entries pretty much from 99 onward, it came to be a little more, a very weird mix of cel shading and gradient where the shadowed areas are composed of a simple outline, an overbearing terminator shade, and the litup areas are extremely detailed, somewhat reasembling a harsh mid-day sunlight.hmmm, no...I dont think you know what I'm talking about on c64 graphics.

you see, this is something I saw in fist when I helped madgarden, if you look at the fist sprites, there are some pixels that are taller than others. this doesnt look particularily good in fist, but I've seen atleast one sprite (as an avatar on a oldschool forum) that made it look good, so I'm a little tempted to seeing how that works out, maybe if I toy with the limitations of sprites it can help me find out why I like lowres images so much.

I think there's more to limitations than the fact they make you reconsider, every medium has it's limitations you know? just like you cant have an infinite pallete in oil painting, or you cant see what your image is like when you do engraving, you cant make smooth curves with pixelart.

This all calls for new forms of expression, and any given piece is always defined by the limitations of it's mediums. Take movies example, movie characters absolutley must have visual ways of expressing their feelings, no matter how forced it'll feel for the character.Therefore a piece will always show signs of what medium originated it, because it's basic structure is related to the limitations of the medium. This always seems to be underestimated in videogames though, specially when it comes to pixelart, I belive many of the basic aesthetics of pixelart could be useful in many other mediums, vectors and 3d included

just look at the 3d KOFs, 2dKOF always stood for a very specific style, in the beggining this was realism, but on the later entries pretty much from 99 onward, it came to be a little more, a very weird mix of cel shading and gradient where the shadowed areas are composed of a simple outline, an overbearing terminator shade, and the litup areas are extremely detailed, somewhat reasembling a harsh mid-day sunlight.All in all, quite a unique and interesting aesthetic

what's the 3d version like? just like anything else in the market.What is SNK thinking? does it not know it's own work?
« Last Edit: November 04, 2005, 01:04:39 am by Camus »

Offline Locrian

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #24 on: November 07, 2005, 03:04:21 am

UBER KVLT KRIEGENDOLLEN AWARD!

Seriously this is very fun to look through.  His corpse paint really looks all nasty and sweaty.  Dig the cartoonyness.  And the texuring or whatever it would be called.  The green in the skin tones is nice because it compliments the reddish colors in the skin.  Setting complimentary colors against each other in flesh helps round out the form.  Now you just need to finish him and give him two sidekicks.  Quit this artsy fartsy whining.  This behavior is not very tr00. 

google "black metal apricots" and watch the video if you haven't seen it already.  +5 Inspiration.

Offline Helm

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #25 on: November 07, 2005, 04:30:43 am
black metal is funnier when it's dead serious and the hilarity comes from unintentionality. This black metal apricot thing is rediculous, not funny.

Offline ptoing

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #26 on: November 07, 2005, 04:35:16 am
Camus, i am pretty sure I know what you are talking about acording the c64 sprites.
C64 sprites can be 24x21 at max and there are two different gfx modes a sprite can be (prolly some more hax modes).
A mcol sprite can have 3 colours + trans and has wide pixels so the res is 12x21 stretched.
A hires sprite can only have 1 colour + trans, but has the full 24x21.

Many games used two or more overlayed sprites.

Here is reverse engineered 2 player sprites from 2 c64 games

This one is from Mayhem in Monsterland (really good jump and run)

I have no clue why the mcol only has 2 colours + trans, perhaps part of the feet were black in the mcol for whatever reason.
Basically they made the outline in hires and coloured the thing underneath with an mcol sprite.

This one is from Turrican, and it is in fact 4 sprites, 2 hires and 2 mcol sprites.

Here the hires ones are used to add a 4th colour to the sprite,  it makes very little use of 1x1 pixels.

This concludes my c64 blabbering.

Btw, what do you mean with "you cant make smooth curves with pixelart"??

About the 3d KOF: it looks actually pretty crap compared to other fighters and that simply is because SNK has no experience in 3d at all and prolly did not hire many new artists for 3d at that point, also it is way easier to make abstractions in 2d than in 3d art (where it is possible as well but takes a bit more expertise to make it look good imo)

And another thing, I think you think too much about stuff that is not worth thinking about and due to this interpret stuff in into something that has not deeper meaning or you just miss a certain thing. With the NES Megaman sprites for example, i don't think that the expressions were "untintended" they were to some extend dictated by the hardware, just like the fact that mario has a mustache and a hat was dictated by the hardware, but they were still design choices made by the respecrie designers and artists. No offense.

« Last Edit: November 07, 2005, 04:37:15 am by ptoing »
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.

Offline Conzeit

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #27 on: November 07, 2005, 06:30:09 pm
wow, thanks a lot...yeah, that does look like what I'm thinking of, specially with the turrican one, the monsterland one is much more impressive though, because they used the technolgy so cleverly to make it look as  if it's all in hi-res. this is so interesting.

 I'll see if I can mess with that....how did you reverse engineer these sprites? just guesswork or do you have a special tool/knowledge? I may D/L some c64 games just to try this out...seems very interesting =)


they were to some extend dictated by the hardware....... but they were still design choices made by the respecrie designers and artists.
heh, I know! I gues my point is just that when they leave this hardware, they should keep in mind what this hardware forced them to think like and imitate it, because that type of thinking HAS become part of their franchise, so in a way they should emulate to a certain extent the limitations the older hardware gave em.

take stipling for example, of course the artist was the one to think up that he should be using a lot of lines to simulate shading and have a rich language when doing engraving, but it is stil engraving what motivated him to invent stipling, it's not like a medium can invent a technique all on it's own, of course it's the artist the one that comes up with it.

if you're gonna do a cg muppets movie you couldnt just make all the characters move like a normal cg character because that's what they are now, you would have to imitate the way a puppet would move because puppet-like expressions are part of every muppet character, the same should apply to moving from hardware to hardware in videogames.
« Last Edit: November 07, 2005, 06:42:42 pm by Camus »

Offline Helm

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #28 on: November 07, 2005, 06:39:03 pm
I agree very much with your last post, camus. In the history of the machines you can see the developing aesthetic, and it should be studied and implemented so as to computer art distinct.

Offline Conzeit

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Re: TRVE MASTERS OF NEBULAR FROST - unfinished indefinately

Reply #29 on: November 07, 2005, 08:58:17 pm
heh, I knew we would agree helm, you were the reason this ever even came up anyway, how could you not agree? :p

Ptoing: that is the frog I reffered to. it doesnt really use the technique to add any extra color, but it uses the two types of res so seamlessly I think it captures the appeal of pixelart whitout limiting to only one kind of pixel.

Any clue what game that's from? I just grabbed it from someone's avatar at a retro forum I cant even remember, I would D/L and inspect that game if I knew.


For anyone who wondered what the hell my vampire avatar was all about, it was my first stab at understanding a pixelart aesthetic not based in only one kind of pixel, I didnt know about C64 sprites back then so that's why it was such a shabby attempt at that, I may try a second piece like that after some c64 inspection though =)

I find pixelart made up of multiple pixel sizes so exciting because deciding wether pixelart is meaningfull or not is a constant struggle for me, I belive any given form of expression is only meaningfull if it's basic aesthetics CAN be taken out of it and used on other mediums.

pixelart of multiple pixel sizes takes the appeal of a rigid grid of homohenic squares OUT of the homogenity and rigidness, so it gives me a little glimmer of hope that maybe pixelart isnt meaningless after all :´)
« Last Edit: November 07, 2005, 09:27:17 pm by Camus »