GDC'16 - 8bit graphics (palette swapping and more)

Community Forums/Technical Discourse/GDC'16 - 8bit graphics (palette swapping and more)

Derron(Posted February) [#1]
Just watched this and think it might be interesting for people who were in the business during the old days - or enjoyed these graphics during their "video game-grow-up-period".



Interesting parts start at ~0:21:00 (he then begins to explain how he does or did things - instead of showing examples of his art).


bye
Ron


therevills(Posted February) [#2]
Thanks for posting this Ron, I've been watching the process of Thimbleweed Park and love the art style.


grable(Posted February) [#3]
This was awesome! Thanks for posting it :)


taumel(Posted March) [#4]
He could have used Deluxe Paint via an Amiga-Emulator instead of DosBox. DP doesn't offer a lot of comfort but it's still useable and leads to its very own results.

@8bit
A fixed palette often results into a distinctive look. A win if the palette is good and you have enough time to tweak things. A defined limited palette, like 5 bitplanes with 32/4096 colors offers more freedom and can results into great pixel art. A 'i don't count colors anymore' approach depends on what you're doing exactly. It's the fastest workflow but can result into sloppy work with images which just don't look right anymore.

Some scenes in TWP look really good, others don't, they have too many colors, some weird shading here and there, mixed styles, they look rushed and lack a more sensible color selection.

Without technical restrictions these old games wouldn't have been the same. I doubt, for quite some cases, it would have been for the better.


Steve Elliott(Posted March) [#5]
Some great work here, with limited resources.