How I make graphics for retro systems and retro-styled games

Re:How I make graphics for retro systems and retro-styled games by willis936 on Tuesday March 16, 2021 @03:14PM (#26481489)

When I’ve done this in the past I would make vector images in inkscape, then write a script that would use inkscape export a low resolution raster image. The script would also pick a color palette that would minimize error of the entire sprite map. Scripting with vector images is nice because simple animations can be made by modifying transforms in svg.

The results weren’t amazing, but it’s mostly because I’m not a great artist and had more fun making a workflow than producing actual work.

https://youtu.be/gCO8X6JQAhM

The results felt authentic. Looking up the video capabilities of the system you’re targeting the style of is an important step that a lot of retro style games don’t do. For instance: the SNES can only have a palette with 256 colors and the colors that can be in that palette is 15-bit RGB (64k unique colors).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_console_pal...

If I were to pick this back up I'd probably spend time getting comfortable with blender to use that instead of inkscape. Many games in the 80s and 90s used pre-rendered 3D assets, so it would still adhere to some art styles. I know it's not the hand-drawn pixel art that many are familiar with, but there isn't much in the way of tool development there to interest me :p

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Re:How I make graphics for retro systems and retro-styled games by laumars on Wednesday March 17, 2021 @04:39AM (#26488026)

I appreciate you approached this from a personal enjoyment perspective and that the pipeline is what really interests you, but isn’t how low resolution pix art is drawn. It’s a common misconception that low resolution art is just high pixelated equivalents of resolution art but actually it’s more of a caricature that is hand drawn at that resolution (like those cartoonists you see at some tourist hotspots who draw exaggerated portraits).

There are some exceptions to this, like Mortal Kombat. But that’s what made that game so distinctive and it’s certainly not a style that would pay off for every game.

With regards to 3D modelling, that came really late in the 90s. It was only the last few titles on the popular 16 but platforms that had 3D rendered assets and even there, they’d still be rendered back down to 2D assets and then often manually edited afterwards (eg reducing and changing the colour palette so that larger assets can be loaded and animated via palette swapping rather than wasting expensive video memory on sprite data).

But ostensibly retro graphics were hand drawn, often on grid paper, before being encoded on a computer.

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