AuthorTopic: [WIP] 16x16 NES Portraits  (Read 6732 times)

Offline setz

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[WIP] 16x16 NES Portraits

on: October 09, 2009, 10:41:12 pm
- - -

Well it doesn't look so hot at 1x zoom, but someone was talking about NES tiles in an IRC room and I realized I haven't done any in a very long time. So I opened up YY-CHR and wasn't really sure what to go with so I took a hint from ptoing, and his portrait collections, except these are tiny and not symmetrical.  Eventually i want to fill up the whole page with them. Each one is 16x16, and a palette of 4 colors, and I'll be using 8 palettes total.

Some of these ar elooking pretty bad now so I'll have to go back and touch them up, and I'll update this as I get more batches done.

edit: I should note I'm using YY-CHR's NES Palette for this, which isn't the most accurate, but its one that has grown on me.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2009, 01:21:11 am by setz »

Offline Gil

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Re: [WIP] 16x16 NES Portraits

Reply #1 on: October 09, 2009, 10:46:37 pm
It would be cool to make these fit to NES restrictions, since you've already taken it so close. I think for NES restrictions you need to make sure that there's one shared color in the 4-color palettes and 5bit RGB or something like that.

Love the faces so far! Not too fond of the purple palette though, it lacks range.

Offline Kasumi

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Re: [WIP] 16x16 NES Portraits

Reply #2 on: October 10, 2009, 04:07:56 am
Your palette choices are very good. I use Black, $07, $36 (close to $37) for sprites, for its re-usability. I looked through the other purple colors in yy-chr's palette to try to find a good solution to Gil's critique, but I wasn't able to do any better.

My only real critique for now is about the purple glasses guy on the second row. A quick edit:



I thought the way his glasses moved up was strange, so I straightened it. This change also changed the shape of his nose though. I then changed the hair to match the new glasses, and rounded up his mouth. I added another beige pixel by his ear since all the light purple pixels by his ear looked awkward to me. Take all this with a grain of salt though. I'm still pretty new to this.

These DO fit NES restrictions. At least each individual portrait does. They couldn't all be displayed on the screen as background tiles at once, though. While it's true that one color must be shared between all background palettes, that one color can be changed every frame if needed. One color that's shared between one set of palettes is black. (Used for the orange-red-beige palette, the dark blue-blue-beige palette and the lime green, green, beige palette) So all the portraits that use these palettes can be displayed on screen at the same time as background tiles, with none of the others. And the color that's shared between his other palette set is offwhite. (Used for the dark purple-purple-beige palette, and the black-brown-pink palette) Likewise portraits that use this set can all be displayed on screen at once as background tiles, with none of the others. (Though this is only my guess as how he laid out his shared colors. It might be another setup)

(I may have guessed his black and white palette numbers wrong)

As for 5bit RGB, I'm pretty sure that's a Game Boy Color thing. NES has only 64 colors, each assigned a number in hex. I don't think their RGB values are stored which is why there are so many varying NES palettes out there.

Edit: Forgot to say I look forward to the rest of them, I really enjoy the Link looking one in the first row. Also the fourth sprite in the first row. (The brown one with the hat)
« Last Edit: October 10, 2009, 04:31:29 am by Kasumi »
I make actual NES games. Thus, I'm the unofficial forum dealer of too much information about the NES

Offline setz

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Re: [WIP] 16x16 NES Portraits

Reply #3 on: October 10, 2009, 05:55:10 am
I'm pretty familiar with NES hardware, I re-did most of the palettes, the purple issue should be helped some now, and there is now a global background color (black).

I did touch up the crooked glasses boy, but I'm not going to straighten them out (Him being wonky was the intention). I added another row and a half or so of portraits. Some of them are still a bit bad in parts (cyclops, monobrow, sonic) so I'll have to get back to those later. I just realized how much the cowboy with an eyepatch looks like snake plissken, so I might remove his hat later.

Anyway thanks for the input, these are a lot of fun so I'll probably keep working on them.

Offline Gil

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Re: [WIP] 16x16 NES Portraits

Reply #4 on: October 10, 2009, 09:38:08 am
The black in the purple palette fixes both the shared color problem and the range problem with that palette. Loving it now!

It would be fun to see these on original hardware. The only one I don't *love* is the one below mario. The rest is look good :)

Offline setz

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Re: [WIP] 16x16 NES Portraits

Reply #5 on: October 11, 2009, 11:23:34 pm
Thanks gil, and yeah something bothers me about him too, his eyes mostly. I gave him a bit of a touchup, also did about another row and a half.

Offline Dr D

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Re: [WIP] 16x16 NES Portraits

Reply #6 on: October 12, 2009, 03:13:10 am
Unfortunately, I can only identify a very few of these characters (Link, Sonic, Mario, Luigi, Megaman, Football Player (Chargin' Chuck?), Santa Clause, and Lion-O) that I'm very sure of.. if they're all supposed to be iconic/known characters.

But nevertheless, these are pretty nice portraits, and I love most of them.
« Last Edit: October 12, 2009, 04:57:15 am by Dr D »

Offline ndchristie

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Re: [WIP] 16x16 NES Portraits

Reply #7 on: October 12, 2009, 03:27:50 am
At this point, I would concentrate less on palettes and a lot more on readability.  you've chosen an impressively small resolution and some of them (sonic, link, lion-o) read very very well but others just become a mess of colors.
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Offline #36005A

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Re: [WIP] 16x16 NES Portraits

Reply #8 on: October 12, 2009, 04:15:41 am
It might improve readability to space them out a bit more, or just have them as separate images.

Offline setz

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Re: [WIP] 16x16 NES Portraits

Reply #9 on: October 12, 2009, 01:38:11 pm
Only a few of these are known characters, Dr D. Most are just spur of the moment doodles, and a couple are ones only me and maybe a few others would recognize. The known characters so far are Mario, Luigi, Sonic, Link, Hitler, Santa, Megaman, Slime (DQ), Lion-O. A lot are inspired from other characters, like the Gnome, Cyclops (I dig The Odyssey), animals, some are stereotypes, ethnicities and professions. Really if I had too, I don't know if I could think of 64 known characters.

Yeah, I haven't messed with the palettes since the second update, they're pretty much set in stone, now. As for the mess of colors, some of them do look pretty jumbled at 1x zoom, but I really wouldn't recommend viewing these on anything less than 2x zoom at 1024x768. I'm not sure if this forum has issues viewing zoomed pixels without blur (I never get blurred pixels anyways), so if it does, you can zoom cleanly here.

As for spacing them out, I think I'll do just that, once I get them all done, make a window/border to place them in, and spread them around on a larger canvas. I'm making these in YY-CHR through wine, and for whatever reason, the copy+paste feature is broken, so spreading them out will have to wait until they're all completed.