That Euro/UK aesthetic

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iNCEPTIONAL

Re: That Euro/UK aesthetic

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Pokun wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 9:03 am Yeah pillow shadowing is defenitily one. Other things that comes to mind from looking at those screenshots are:
  • Heavy use of dithering.
  • Dull colors, or little contrast between colors (Shadow Of The Beast is a good example).
  • A tendency to use certain shades of dark, dull or even reddish brown for the ground or similar things. In some cases it looks like the ground is covered in very reddish dirt, other times it just looks like the sky is just always very dark. I guess it's kinda similar to the previous point (a tendency towards dull colors) but I think the ground often stands out as being especially dull.
These are not only European things though, I think Bubsy fits with the last point despite being an otherwise pretty brightly colored game with good contrasts.
Yeah, I'm definitely seeing a lot of that.

And I think those dull colours are often coming from the lack of hue shifting for the light and dark tones too, as demonstrated here very succinctly:
86mzw1on7r751.png
Here's a good video showing how that works in practice:

https://youtu.be/PNtMAxYaGyg?t=458

There's some great tips on working with colours and pixel art in general in this guide:

https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_post ... 392#139392

And most of the main things we've motioned (pillow shading, hue shifting, and too much shading or too many colours), all covered here rather succinctly too:

https://kurovadis.wordpress.com/2012/12 ... -tutorial/
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Wed Aug 17, 2022 10:45 am, edited 2 times in total.
Drag
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Re: That Euro/UK aesthetic

Post by Drag »

I've always seen it as a combination of the following:
- Chrome-like gradients and shading: like everything is covered in shiny wax on a hot summer day
- Backlighting: In additional to the "normal" shading (e.g., highlights on the top/left edges), there's an additional highlight in the region that would normally be the shadow, like if there were a reflection or if there were a really strong colored light hitting from an oblique angle.

Bubble & Squeak, and the portraits in The Chaos Engine show off a lot of this.

I figure a lot of these effects come from brand new technologies at the time, where you suddenly had a full 256 colors you could show on screen, so why not use every single one of them? :D Hence, everything is really shiny, lots of gradients, super bright and colorful rim lighting, etc. Just really stick it to everyone who doesn't have an Amiga. ;)

I also noticed, around the time, there's lots of geometric shapes in place of where a more "natural" texture (like rocks or grass or trees) would normally be, making everything look like plastic toys. However, there's also the opposite direction, where the artwork looks like it comes straight off of the sleeve of a prog rock vinyl album, tons of barbarian games do that. :D

Finally, and more humorously for me, I don't know what was going on in Europe in terms of character design in the 90s, but lots of character design from that era looks super ultra cursed. Really uncanny, really ugly features, everything is warped unnecessarily, sometimes due to overdetailing (Valhalla), but other times due to wanting a more kid-friendly look (but it ends up looking like a nightmare still, James Pond II).

I also noticed that they really enjoy the conjoined-eye design, where a character has two round eyes which connect in the middle. I'm neutral on it, but I also know it can sometimes make spritework easier to have that design.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: That Euro/UK aesthetic

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Drag wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 10:05 am I've always seen it as a combination of the following:
- Chrome-like gradients and shading: like everything is covered in shiny wax on a hot summer day
- Backlighting: In additional to the "normal" shading (e.g., highlights on the top/left edges), there's an additional highlight in the region that would normally be the shadow, like if there were a reflection or if there were a really strong colored light hitting from an oblique angle.

Bubble & Squeak, and the portraits in The Chaos Engine show off a lot of this.

I figure a lot of these effects come from brand new technologies at the time, where you suddenly had a full 256 colors you could show on screen, so why not use every single one of them? :D Hence, everything is really shiny, lots of gradients, super bright and colorful rim lighting, etc. Just really stick it to everyone who doesn't have an Amiga. ;)

I also noticed, around the time, there's lots of geometric shapes in place of where a more "natural" texture (like rocks or grass or trees) would normally be, making everything look like plastic toys. However, there's also the opposite direction, where the artwork looks like it comes straight off of the sleeve of a prog rock vinyl album, tons of barbarian games do that. :D

Finally, and more humorously for me, I don't know what was going on in Europe in terms of character design in the 90s, but lots of character design from that era looks super ultra cursed. Really uncanny, really ugly features, everything is warped unnecessarily, sometimes due to overdetailing (Valhalla), but other times due to wanting a more kid-friendly look (but it ends up looking like a nightmare still, James Pond II).

I also noticed that they really enjoy the conjoined-eye design, where a character has two round eyes which connect in the middle. I'm neutral on it, but I also know it can sometimes make spritework easier to have that design.
Yeah, lots of great observations there. I've noticed all of that stuff in many Euro/UK games, and often most/all of it at once.
Pokun
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Re: That Euro/UK aesthetic

Post by Pokun »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 9:35 am And I think those dull colours are often coming from the lack of hue shifting for the light and dark tones too, as demonstrated here very succinctly:

86mzw1on7r751.png

Here's a good video showing how that works in practice:

https://youtu.be/PNtMAxYaGyg?t=458
Yes the lack of that technique is probably a large part of it. From watching that video I understand what hue shifting is about.
none
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Re: That Euro/UK aesthetic

Post by none »

Don't know many for consoles, but IMO some of the best looking games for Amiga / DOS from the 80ies / early 90ies are from europe. Especially the BG artwork.

Some of my favourites

Future Wars (Delphine / France / 1988)
Image

Burntime (Max Design / Austria / 1993)
Image

Die Siedler (Blue Byte / Germany / 1993)
Image

Transarctica (Silmarils / France / 1993)
Image

Beneath a steel sky (Revolution / UK / 1994)
Image

Especially the french games looked really good, also France / French speaking Belgium had some really good (the best IMO) comic books and lots of french game artists were either influenced by that or were comic book artists before and switched over or created games as a side project.
turboxray
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Re: That Euro/UK aesthetic

Post by turboxray »

The whole Amiga extra "dull" look, where the trend started from IMO, is simply because of the limited number of on screen colors - but large main palette range. This is especially true when they're trying to use dual plane mode, where each plane only has 7 colors. Removing the saturation and contrast from the color range results in colors blending better. Otherwise you have a garish-contrast look. Having a "sprite" that's 4 dull colors looks smoother than those same colors (and hue) being more separated by more contrast.

Funny thing related to pillow shading.. I definitely was trying to do something similar in my new Bonk demo for PCE.. trying to get the color count up there (I'm at 150 colors) without it looking like a rainbow. Got comments that it looks like a snes game haha. I never really associate SNES games in general with pillow shading.

But yeah, that whole under-light red/blue etc lighting that 90's Euro games likes to do too. I think that might be more popular on 8bit titles though?
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: That Euro/UK aesthetic

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

none wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 5:23 am Don't know many for consoles, but IMO some of the best looking games for Amiga / DOS from the 80ies / early 90ies are from europe. Especially the BG artwork. Especially the french games looked really good, also France / French speaking Belgium had some really good (the best IMO) comic books and lots of french game artists were either influenced by that or were comic book artists before and switched over or created games as a side project.
It looks like some of the images are not showing in your post above, so maybe make sure you're inserting them into the post using the Attachments option below your post when composing it, if you're not doing so. I learnt that recently too. :)

PS. You just write is at '80s and '90s. That's just me being an*l though, so write it however you want. Lol
Drag
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Re: That Euro/UK aesthetic

Post by Drag »

About hue shifting, since it's on my mind right now. Something artists need to know about is a phenomenon called "subsurface scattering". When you hold your fingers up to a light, notice how the light still shines through your fingers with a bright red glow. The idea that light shining through a material makes the material look glowy, sometimes with a different color? That's subsurface scattering.

When you're painting a flesh tone, it's common to have the midtones be redder/pinker than the highlights and the shadows, because that simulates SSS. Without it, the flesh just looks like plastic or paint. Many figurine painters will also tell you that they like using rosy tones for certain areas of the skin, like ears, nose, lips, elbows, knees, etc because it makes the figurine look more "alive", and this is partially why (but also due to concentration of blood vessels, etc).

Anyway, hue shifting simulates a lot of those light-physics effects pretty easily, so it's no surprise that with higher graphics fidelity, pixel artists started applying actual painting techniques and color theory to their assets. You really do need to start treating it like actual pencil/ink/paint animation once the technology improves, since you have too many pixels and colors now. :P

About high fidelity pixel art coming from mostly from Europe; that may be true for computers, and console-ports of computer games, because (here's my opinion incoming) Europe enjoyed a healthier "technology as an art medium" boon due to the fact that their economy and worldview at the time would've enabled kids and adults to (1) afford a computer, (2) have enough free time to have a hobby, (3) make stuff on the computer for fun, giving rise to things like demoscenes and garage-based indie developers. In the US, I think you'd need to look at arcade games for examples of comparable art styles, since computers were for business and video games were "just a fad" and art was beaten out of us and "not a real job", so we'd lag behind in skill in terms of indie offerings. :P (end of opinion)

Also, don't forget, a lot of high fidelity pixel art came out of Japan too, it's just that we didn't see a lot of it unless it saw a console conversion and an English translation. :P
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Re: That Euro/UK aesthetic

Post by creaothceann »

My current setup:
Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-GPM-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: That Euro/UK aesthetic

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

creaothceann wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 9:33 pm relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcJ1Jvtef0
OK, now I have to wonder just how close we could get to this guy's utterly stunning 8-bit-colour art on SNES.

Just imagine some graphic adventure game made out of a bunch of 8-bit-colour images drawn to that level (edit: to be clear, I mean like an interactive graphic novel or Choose Your Own Adventure types of thing here), with some palette cycling to add the illusion of motion/animation and day/night/weather cycling and the like. Combine it with the SNES' second layer in Mode 3 for a bit of parallax, plus some colour math for whatever added effect, along with the sprites too--none of which are necessary but might as well be there too if it's possible--and, my God, it could be astounding.

I'm kind of stunned no one has really done anything quite like this on SNES yet to be honest, even as just an experiment of what's possible visually.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Tue Aug 23, 2022 6:22 am, edited 5 times in total.
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Dwedit
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Re: That Euro/UK aesthetic

Post by Dwedit »

I've seen that video too, the use of color cycling produces amazing looking results.

But the SNES can blend. You don't need to reserve big ranges of colors for palette animations. The 8x8 attribute grid and 16 color tile mode also interferes with trying to use the palette animation techniques directly.
Instead, you can use a secondary layer with additive/subtractive blending, and have a static main layer.
Do the palette animation on the secondary layer.

For adding Snow to a scene, palette animation alone will work great here, as everything that isn't snow needs to be black anyway.
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iNCEPTIONAL

Re: That Euro/UK aesthetic

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Dwedit wrote: Fri Aug 19, 2022 4:53 pm I've seen that video too, the use of color cycling produces amazing looking results.

But the SNES can blend. You don't need to reserve big ranges of colors for palette animations. The 8x8 attribute grid and 16 color tile mode also interferes with trying to use the palette animation techniques directly.
Instead, you can use a secondary layer with additive/subtractive blending, and have a static main layer.
Do the palette animation on the secondary layer.

For adding Snow to a scene, palette animation alone will work great here, as everything that isn't snow needs to be black anyway.
I made an error in my last post (now corrected), so it might not have been clear I was talking about using Mode 3 for this idea (edit: which, for the main background layer, uses a single 256-colour palette and means we don't have to worry about the 8x8 attribute grid and 16-colour tile mode limitations here). I think that would make most sense in terms of mimicking what this guys does with his 8-bit-colour art.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Tue Aug 23, 2022 5:54 am, edited 4 times in total.
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tokumaru
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Re: That Euro/UK aesthetic

Post by tokumaru »

The whole "animation through palette cycling" thing is still mostly a gimmick, though. It doesn't produce better results than actually changing the pixels, it's a workaround for when you can't or don't want to actually change the pixels, but it comes with compromises. Having to spread your color count over time obviously reduces the amount of colors available for each frame, and things moving along paths (such as the snow) results in very noticeable trails of reduced detail.

I don't see much reason to use something like this in an SNES game, where you could use proper pattern animation and real transparency.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: That Euro/UK aesthetic

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Well, I'm talking about whichever one actually looks nicest and works best with whatever someone might want to do to actually build a game and get as close as possible to the gorgeous 256-colours-per-tile "animated" artwork that guy created. I'm pretty sure that trying to do complex and lovely looking flowing waterfalls, falling snow, day/night/weather transitions, smoke rotating around volcanoes, waves of water lapping up on the shore, flaming torches lighting up the walls, etc, and potentially multiple of those things at once in one image, all with 256 total colours onscreen too, would take up far less resources if done via palette cycling rather than actual tile animation. And the SNES actually has the full 8-bit, 256 colours [per tile] palette to work with here, just like that guy's stunning 8-bit-colour artwork. So I think the same or a very similar approach would make sense when trying to get as close to that level of sheer aesthetic beauty in motion, but someone would obviously need to test it to see for sure--and it would be stunning for a 16-bit console if it actually worked and looked as intended--which is why I'm surprised no one really has that I'm aware of.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Mon Aug 22, 2022 11:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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rainwarrior
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Re: That Euro/UK aesthetic

Post by rainwarrior »

tokumaru wrote: Sat Aug 20, 2022 5:44 amI don't see much reason to use something like this in an SNES game, where you could use proper pattern animation and real transparency.
On SNES, replacing a whole 16-colour palette takes only as much bandwidth as a single 8x8 4bpp tile. At 8bpp... you can replace the entire 256 colour palette for the same bandwidth as just 8 8bpp tiles.

I think this can be a pretty good reason to do palette cycling instead of trying to animate tiles, and lots of SNES games did do it. As usual, depends on your specific bandwidth budget, how much ROM space you want to spend, etc.
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