My art showcase (Character Portraits - April 03)

[ptoing]

Hi everyone, new to these parts of the internet. I was talking to Kasumi who told me some stuff about NES gfx I did not yet know and that inspired me to start a new mockup which is true to the NES restrictions.



This is 55 8x8 tiles right now and uses 3 palettes (I am sure that is obvious).
I plan to chip away at this and add more things when I have time (which I do not have too much of atm, because I have quite a lot of work.)



Latest:


New mockup action:


Health displayed with sprites. Less HUD = better


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Other stuff:


4 tile palettes per face.

[tokumaru]

Hey ptoing, nice to have you here. I'm a big fan of your work, have been following it for a couple of years. It's actually quite a coincidence that just a couple days ago I was checking/updating the "ptoing" section in my sprites folder!

Very cool graphics you have there! You're pretty good at dodging color limitations, nearly everything you make appears to have more colors than it actually does. Welcome to NESDEV, hope we can see more of your art here!

BTW, I'm kinda wondering what could Kasumi have told you about NES graphics that made you want to do mockups for it again... care to share?

[ptoing]

We were just talking about the U-Head stuff I made and talking about palettes as well as the 32x32 pixel metatiles stuff most games use. I have not kept an eye on the 32x32s super much on this one yet (A but though), but it should be fine.

Also the U-Head stuff was made with some PAL palette, not sure how accurate that one is, but it seems to be a lot nicer than the NTSC one (which this is). The thing about the NES NTSC palette is that you basically have 6 values, more or less. meaning black, white, and then each row of colours being one value with the greys at the left and right being offset by one up and down. All the colours in from 30 to 3F are more or less the same lightness and it is pointless to use them in the same 4 colour palette, as they blend, in 99% of all cases. This goes for the other rows as well, but a little less so. There are some cases I can see using 2 colours of the same row in the same sub palette, like for example if you have a palette to spare and just want some details in the back where shading does not matter, such as techy lights for example.

The PAL palette does not have this problem, it actually has some contrast within the different rows, and not just between them. But it is good fun to pixel with the NTSC one too, extra challenge. I certainly enjoy it.

[infiniteneslives]

Wow, your work is amazing. Certainly hope to see you stick around these parts of the internets.

[thefox]

Hello and welcome! Your graphics look very nice. If you ever want to start working on an NES game project and need a programmer, hit me up. Have to throw that out every time something exceptional shows up, because we don't get too many graphics guys in here.

[ptoing]

Thanks everyone.

thefox: Sure, I am up for that. if you got a cool idea for a game, let me know. If I like it chances are I will make art for it (prototype with gameplay would help). But I am very busy working right now, so I do not have a lot of time for side projects. But I definitely want to work on NES game someday. (Don't even have a NES atm, derp)

[Bregalad]

Just want to say that this mookup looks very great. We can immediately see you're very skilled.

[sonder]

Pretty.

EDIT: you might be able to get away with just using a single dark cyan and freeing up a color as the two shades of dark cyan are not likely to be very distinguishable among the black on a CRT display.

[Kasumi]

That Kasumi person, always spreading lies. Nah, but I wouldn't worry too much about the 32x32 thing. It's a thing that happens in my game and some others, but keeping 16x16s in check will work fine.

I made a super quick rom of the desert scene in this. Don't worry, he already knows what things in those scenes won't truly work, no need to tell him. (Can I post that rom, ptoing? I normally don't share stuff like that without asking, but uh... I guess now I'm shadily asking you publicly.) One other thing that may be worth posting is the fixed U-Head scene, but I'll leave that one to you.

He's pretty serious about some kind of NES collab (though in the future, not right now). I'm working on some epic project (which you know nothing about, got it ptoing?), but if it ends up stable in some months you can bet I'm calling dibs on this collab.

[ptoing]

Hehe, sure, I got no problem with you posting that rom. Perhaps add a little credit thing on it or something, dunno.

sonder: Not quite sure I get what you mean. I take it you are speaking about the blue palette I am using for the rocks and sky and some bg stuff on the black (more rocks) as well as the water. If I make either of those cyans the other one that looks fugly as hell to me, at least on an LCD. Don't have a CRT to check here.
Feel free to make an edit to show me what you mean, if I am missing something.

The mockup Kasumi was talking about. This is retooled to have less than 256 8x8 tiles, still quite a lot though.

PAL palette I originally made it in. No clue where this one came from.


Retooled to NTSC palette from Joel Yliluoma's webapp.

[sonder]

sonder: Not quite sure I get what you mean. I take it you are speaking about the blue palette I am using for the rocks and sky and some bg stuff on the black (more rocks) as well as the water. If I make either of those cyans the other one that looks fugly as hell to me, at least on an LCD. Don't have a CRT to check here.
Feel free to make an edit to show me what you mean, if I am missing something.

Assuming you care about how it would look coming out of a real NES (just hooking up your computer to a CRT monitor wouldn't get the full effect) then the next best thing would be to import your graphics into a program like NES Screen Tool by Shiru, recreating the palette and setting the attribute data, then get all the data into an NES program that shoves it onto the PPU, and then run it in Nestopia with the NTSC filter enabled. I did this exact thing to test out my graphics "as it would look". I could help if you have any interest.

You'll find out that some detail is lost and some is actually added, just because of how the NES cuts corners to get the display signal out. A "pixel" doesn't really exist in CRT technology, is a big reason why.

[rainwarrior]

I find these images inspiring. Thanks for sharing them.

[ptoing]

Thanks everyone for the nice comments.

sonder: Yeah, I know about CRT vs LCD difference and the analog nature of it all. Can you link me to the tools needed to do this? I would be very thankful. I hope I can get my head around it and it's not too code-y :/ I'd really like to see what it looks like with proper NTSC emu.

[Imperial]

I find these images inspiring. Thanks for sharing them.

Very much so! It reminds me of FF6, as well as Tsugomo's So You Want To Be A Pixel Artist.

[tepples]

the next best thing would be to import your graphics into a program like NES Screen Tool by Shiru, recreating the palette and setting the attribute data, then get all the data into an NES program that shoves it onto the PPU, and then run it in Nestopia with the NTSC filter enabled.

I made an NES drawing program that ended up morphing into exactly this. You specify a 32-hex-digit NES palette, and savtool builds a .sav file containing the pattern table, nametable, and palette so that you can view it on an NES or in an emulator. You'll need to install Python and Python Imaging Library first.