Bucket Mouse
Active member
As any gamer in the 90s will will you, digitized pre-rendered graphics are radical, dude. And good news -- we're not in the 90s anymore, so digitized graphics no longer require expensive workstations. Anyone can use their average, common computer to drop a piece of art, a photo or a CGI model into a retro game.
The only question is....how? What's the best method?
When dealing with the NES, there's an unavoidable loss due to its color limitations. Digitizing scenes with a lot of details and shadows -- basically any photo, but also some art -- won't look nearly as impressive when the colors are limited to 3 out of 64. That's why digitized graphics are best rendered in black and white, at least to start out with. I believe this is what Mugi did with his Dimension Drive title screen. To my eye it even looks like most of the background tiles and sprites are imports.:
https://youtu.be/-xyn0iGjA0Y
This is the way I know of: Photoshop has a filter called "Posterize" that reduces an image down to the number of colors you select. Fortunately for us, it can be as few as 3. I used Posterize to get the image of a human face into my game (no spoilers yet as to which one). I advise that you convert the image to Grayscale before you Posterize.
This is the best method I know of, but there are two problems with it:
1) Not everyone has access to Photoshop; there have to be some less expensive options out there
2) This filter doesn't do dithering (breaking shades up into dots and patterns to create in-between shades).
What is you preferred method for digitzing graphics?
The only question is....how? What's the best method?
When dealing with the NES, there's an unavoidable loss due to its color limitations. Digitizing scenes with a lot of details and shadows -- basically any photo, but also some art -- won't look nearly as impressive when the colors are limited to 3 out of 64. That's why digitized graphics are best rendered in black and white, at least to start out with. I believe this is what Mugi did with his Dimension Drive title screen. To my eye it even looks like most of the background tiles and sprites are imports.:
https://youtu.be/-xyn0iGjA0Y
This is the way I know of: Photoshop has a filter called "Posterize" that reduces an image down to the number of colors you select. Fortunately for us, it can be as few as 3. I used Posterize to get the image of a human face into my game (no spoilers yet as to which one). I advise that you convert the image to Grayscale before you Posterize.
This is the best method I know of, but there are two problems with it:
1) Not everyone has access to Photoshop; there have to be some less expensive options out there
2) This filter doesn't do dithering (breaking shades up into dots and patterns to create in-between shades).
What is you preferred method for digitzing graphics?