Photoshop workspace for pixel creating

[Nando]

just wondering if any of you use PS for pixel art. Been messing around with it for a little while, still practicing.

What does your workspace look like?

[Arkhan Asylum]

Ask sunteam paul.   He uses Photosherp.

[_Paul]

Here's what mine generally looks like.

I've had to blur our the actual artwork due to its confidential nature ;)

/workspacel.png

[Arkhan Asylum]

that confuses the hell out of me. 

It looks like a puzzle game, not a paint program.

[Nando]

Very cool, thanks!
Have you ever tried the index color table trick as shown here?

http://kiwi-rgb.deviantart.com/art/Speed-Spriting-with-Photoshop-117628734

[_Paul]

I like to know exactly what my colours are as I'm painting rather than converting them to 'nearest' after the fact, where things can look mightily different. And Photoshop doesn't arrange the palette the way I need until I pick each colour onto it manually. It's the only way to make sure it's correct.

[Nando]

Makes sense. Thanks!

how do you work your sprites? I'm trying going from a pencil rough, to clean line art to pixel lines and man, I thought 2D animation was ROUGH! this can be brutal!

[Keranu]

I use Tile Studio. It's great for animation since you can instantly flip through the frames and test the animation at any given time.

[_Paul]

Makes sense. Thanks!

how do you work your sprites? I'm trying going from a pencil rough, to clean line art to pixel lines and man, I thought 2D animation was ROUGH! this can be brutal!

Most of PCE sprites are pretty small so I just draw them as I go, usually start with blobs of the medium range colour, then adding shadow and highlights. Sometimes I do a clean outline first, but not often. I find it can help if you start off with a good monochrome (i.e. ZX Spectrum style) shape that is refined so it looks right, then worry about snazzing it up. I've recoloured a lot of old Spectrum graphics and you get a feel for how good the artists originally were by getting the shapes just right.

For anaimation, I just use the inbuilt animation feature. It's a bit crappily long winded but does the job.

[Nando]

Thanks Keranu


Paul: I will have to study some ZX sprites.  Thanks again for the tips.  It's both challenging and rewarding working with a set of limits.

[lord_cack]

I use MS Paint. All the work for MSR I did, Pyramid Plunder, and all the original work for Jungle Bros. was done in MS Paint....  Seriously

[Nando]

I use MS Paint. All the work for MSR I did, Pyramid Plunder, and all the original work for Jungle Bros. was done in MS Paint....  Seriously

I believe it but, DAMN!

did you use a wacom or the good 'ol barsoa...erm mouse

I've tried different styles to see what sticks with me, I'm still getting a disconnect from my pencil art to the pixel level. One has to be definitely spartan and be thinking a few steps ahead. Mad respect for all pixel artist of all times.

[Arm]

I use photoshop and sometimes graphicsgale along with a wacom tablet.

[Arkhan Asylum]

I use NeoPaint whenever I actually have to paint.

Spectrum and MSX sprites are great to look at.  Monochrome = requires skill

[ccovell]

C'mon, guys, get Win(Mac/*nix)UAE, Dpaint, Brilliance, and PPaint and end the agony!

Or at least Grafx2.

[Arkhan Asylum]

I used to use Grafx2.  That's what all the Insanity art was done in, lol

[Nando]

C'mon, guys, get Win(Mac/*nix)UAE, Dpaint, Brilliance, and PPaint and end the agony!

Or at least Grafx2.

Will have to look into those as well.

THANKS!

[Arkhan Asylum]

Don't use the Win32fuckup of Grafx2

use the DOS one, in DOSBox, for maximum painting.

I stopped using Grafx2 because I basically stopped doing art for my games. 

It was for the best.  (I used grafx2 for years though, even for fun.)

[Nando]

What Spectrum, MSX game(s) (sprites) do you all recommend looking at?

ccovell: what is UAE? didn't know the Emirates made sprites as well as playgrounds for the rich and famous

Looking into GrafX2.

You guys kick ass, thank you!

[Nando]

Don't use the Win32fuckup of Grafx2

use the DOS one, in DOSBox, for maximum painting.

What's wrong with the Win version?

[Arkhan Asylum]

It butchered my palettes from the DOS ones, so I refuse to use it ever again.  The Win32 one, AFAIK is some after-the-fact port taken on by someone after the original team stopped.

But, that was over 3 years ago dude.  Give it a shot lol.  They may have bettered it up by now.

Grafx2, when I used to use it, was a great paint program for me only because I fucking suck at painting, and the interface is simple.  WYSIWYG.  Photoshops got too many goddamn buttons and menus and doodads.

NeoPaint is a pretty solid program too.  I suggest people check it out when they can.  It's worth getting, IMO.  Supports 16 color PCX properly.

[FraGMarE]

I have always and still do use Photoshop for my all pixeling.  For colors, i just manually type the 9bit-compliant RBG values into the color picker as I need them.  Turning off anti-aliasing on all the tools helps too (selection tools especially).  I also set up a 16x16 grid with subdivisions set at 2 so i can toggle that on/off as needed with CTRL+'.  Setting all increments to 'px' in the options also is nice, instead of the default 'inches' or whatever it is.

[Nando]

On a side note, looking at a Dpaint videos made me think of illustrator and I found this.

http://creativefusion.se/?p=43


I'll take a look at neo paint as well, thanks ArkFace! ;)


fragmare: have you thought about creating custom color swatches/palettes in PS? I have Pauls PCE color palette guide, it could obviously be done, even it if would be a tad painful.

[Arkhan Asylum]

i also used PC Paintbrush for awhile.  like, DOS style, lol

[TurboXray]

I used PC Paintbrush back in the Windows 3.1 days. It was the windows version and I loved it.

 I use photoshop for almost everything pixel related for the PCE. I've even use it to make maps like a map editor. I wrote a converter that takes raw palette data from a pce game (I dump it using an emulator) and converts it to ACT format (and vice verse). Photoshop's 'posterize' is good tool for snapping colors into the PCE legal range too (set to steps of .

 The other app I've uses is Pro Motion 6.5. It's pretty decent and more support for console systems, where as PS doesn't. ProM even has support for pic-> tilemap+tile format. You can set the color depth and number of subpalettes and even colors per tile. It's automated results are some times good and some times bad. But it great for making a reference plate and then edit the original by hand, for pic conversions.

[Nando]

I wrote a converter that takes raw palette data from a pce game (I dump it using an emulator) and converts it to ACT format (and vice verse). Photoshop's 'posterize' is good tool for snapping colors into the PCE legal range too (set to steps of .

That's fucking cool. NICE!

Photoshop's 'posterize' is good tool for snapping colors into the PCE legal range too (set to steps of .

Writing that one down.
Thanks!

[Nando]

Tell you what, that spline tool looks like it could be a TIME saver.

[spenoza]

Anyone use Paint .NET?

[TurboXray]

I use to have some custom color maps that I made, but this is the only one I could find: www.pcedev.net/pce_gfx/color_maps/color_grid_336colors.bmp

 The idea was the draw a line from one color to another, and all colors that fall within that line you can use for the gradient. I don't think I ever end up doing that, though.

 I used to also go through PCE and MD games (since it's 9bit palette too) looking for color layouts that looked like what I could use. Browns, greens, etc. The problem you have to watch out for is the relative range. That is to say, the current perception of what color range you're using (because the perception of color or hue is always effected and relative to what other colors add or subtract from it). What might look like brown could end up looking like green-brown if you get a hue that subtracts too much the range, making one or the other stick out. You can compress the color range via the luma range too, but never using black (using lowest grey or a dark color). Same difference for mixing cool and warm color swatches, etc. I always had problems with earth tones (browns and related colors) on the PCE's palette. Especially if there's a lot of it in a scene or pic. So I usually end up seeing what other games do for similar.

[ccovell]

Colourcubes are not always the most useful things, but anyway...

Here's one small pic that has all 512 PCE colours:

And - for more inbetween colours -- you can always choose your path through the colour cube using wider straight lines, or even curve through the cube:

[_Paul]

What Spectrum, MSX game(s) (sprites) do you all recommend looking at?

Anything by Ultimate:Play The Game or Raffaele Cecco (Exolon, Cybernoid) is a good start, or games like Starquake as well.

[Sadler]

Anyone use Paint .NET?

Yes, frequently. It's my go to paint application. Any functional/technical specification I've done has probably used Paint.NET. I'm not an artist though, and I've never used it for PCE stuff. Anything I've attempted on PCE has been NeoPaint.

[Arkhan Asylum]

What Spectrum, MSX game(s) (sprites) do you all recommend looking at?

ccovell: what is UAE? didn't know the Emirates made sprites as well as playgrounds for the rich and famous

Looking into GrafX2.

You guys kick ass, thank you!

WinUAE is an Amiga emulator for windows.


And as far as sprites to look at on MSX, it depends.

For MSX2: Check out Fray and Xak for sure.

for MSX1 games, check out Knightmare, Maze of Galious, any of the other Konami games really...

Then there's Sorcerian, Drasle Family...

MSX is an interesting machine since it has hardware and software sprites.  What kind of spriting are you looking for here? 

MSX1 is basically hardware sprites with color tricks to get more than 1 single color.  This game Caos Begins (homebrew) is a good one to see for that kind of shit

MSX2's most popular screen mode was Screen5, a bitmapped one.  (Fray)

Sexy shit.

[Nando]

Paul: Thanks!

Ark: Information on both types would be helpful. (hardware/software)

[Nando]

Paul you also mentioned a shared color among sprites. Could you all clarify this? Also there is no true "alpha" on the PCE correct?

[OldMan]

a shared color among sprites

Not just sprites. Background tiles too, iirc. Slot 0 in each 16-color palette block is shared. Whatever color you put in there automagically becomes 'invisible' when on the screen.
Have to check, but I think it only applies to slot 0, though. You -might- be able to use the same color value in a different slot, and get it to show up.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Ark: Information on both types would be helpful. (hardware/software)

Software sprites for MSX can be ANY size you want really.  they are blittered.   in Screen5 for example, you have a 16 color palette for the ENTIRE screen.

Tiles and sprites share this single palette.  Sprites can be as many colors as you want from that palette.  You can blit to screen with or without transparency.  Color 0 of the screen palette is used as the transparent color.


hardware sprites can be used in many modes (even 5).  there are monochrome sprites for MSX1 (1 single color. holycrap)

msx2 has better sprite possibilities.  but its still really tricky since you can do like 2 colors per line and shit.  You'd be better off getting the v9938 chip manual and reading the section explaining it , or find an MSX sprite editor and mess with it that way.   I am terrible at graphics.  Most good looking sprites in games are more than one sprite on top each other.   that's why Screen5 is so popular.  You can just use software sprites instead....

http://www.ccas.ru/brychkov/MSX/V9938_programmers_guide.pdf

To get really great sprites you have to use multiple sprites and do tricks to create more colors via ORing.  It's nuts.

[Nando]

Jesus christ on a trike the MXS can read convoluted. Guess it's just a matter of understanding it.

Makes me appreciate the design of the PCE even more.


If you have any ther PCE specific sprite related info let me know please.

Ark, I'm going back to all that documentation you sent me awhile back as well.

Thanks all!

[Arkhan Asylum]

The PCE has better game hardware since its a game platform.  It's got one of the best sprite/tile modes ever.


MSX is a computer, so it has more to deal with basically.

But, once you start using the VDP of the MSX, it's pretty friggin easy.

[Arm]

For those interested, I'm continuing with this demo project and all the tiles/artworks are made with photoshop.

[Arkhan Asylum]

God damn I fucking love Lunar.

[Arm]

The idea of the demo is to remake/enhance the prologue of the game (from the beginning up to the point when Alex and Luna part)

[Nando]

Looks sharp!  Thanks for sharing. Any place on the web you got more info on the project?

Do you have any particular setup for your PS workspace?

[Arkhan Asylum]

The idea of the demo is to remake/enhance the prologue of the game (from the beginning up to the point when Alex and Luna part)

can you hide hentai in the demo somewhere? 

[Arm]

nando : Sorry,  I still don't have a dedicated site for this project. There was an old thread on this forum with a couple of old screenshots which don't reflect the final version, as I've completed most of the maps of the prologue since then. I shall put additional pictures when the project is more advanced.
I use photoshop 7 because it is pretty light and effective. I don't have any special workspace. I've been creating artworks for around 13 years with photoshop before doing pixel art, but the principle is the same. The posterize level 8 command is very useful to have compatible colors with pce color palette.

arkhan : I had done a softcore syscard picture, but I don't know if I should go further than that. Although the game is on the pc engine, it would look more like a dragon knight game rather than Lunar. Nonetheless, you never know...

[Arkhan Asylum]

pics or it didn't happen.

[Arm]

There was an old version of the syscard picture in the old Lunar thread.

[Arkhan Asylum]

=O lemme go find it.

[Arkhan Asylum]

oh yeah, I remember those now!


\o/

[Nando]

I shall put additional pictures when the project is more advanced.

Looking forward to that!

The posterize level 8 command is very useful to have compatible colors with pce color palette.

YES! I've been playing around with that for awhile now, taking games from other systems and breaking down the palette and art style. It makes it easier for me to understand the overall concepts and study how the art was done. There are so  many incredible pixel artists all over.