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#colorcycling#paletteshifting#pixelart

8 Bit & '8 Bitish' Graphics-Outside the Box

GDC Festival of Gaming

555K subscribers • 54 videos on Hallway • Conference channel

YouTube
  • Recommended by 14 people: 13 on Hacker News and 1 on Lobsters.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2017 to 2026.
  • Presented by Mark Ferrari, background artist
  • May be out of date. Uploaded 9 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

568K views9 years ago14 recommendations

Graphics and audioGame developmentRenderingRetro games and consolesCreative coding

Mark Ferrari demonstrates his techniques for creating complex background animations in 8-bit games using color cycling and palette shifting.

In this GDC 2016 talk, Terrible Toybox's Mark Ferrari discusses and demonstrate some of his techniques for drawing 8 bit game graphics, including his celebrated methods for use of color cycling and pallet shifting to create complex and realistic background animation effects without frame-animation GDC talks cover a range of developmental topics including game design, programming, audio, visual arts, business management, production, online games, and much more. We post a fresh GDC video every weekday. Subscribe to the channel to stay on top of regular updates, and check out GDC Vault for thousands of more in-depth talks from our archives. Follow us on Twitter twitter.com/Official_GDC Check out our Facebook page for GDC exclusives facebook.com/GameDevelopersConference Visit our site: ubm.io/2ctNvqZ

Why it's here

14 people recommend this

What people say. Widely recommended as a legendary GDC talk on the artistic and technical mastery of palette cycling in retro games.

corysamaon Hacker News • Recommends

On “GrafX2 – a bitmap paint program inspired by Amiga programs”

If you are here and you haven’t seen Mark Ferrari’s GDC talk, you really should sit down and watch it. He is perhaps the greatest pallete animator of all time. Even if you aren’t familiar with the games he worked on, HN folks have likely seen his gallery of single-image animations linked below. link to this video link
View on Hacker News

corysamaon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Making a Game Boy Game in 2017”

Every Deluxe Paint fan out needs to watch this video of the master of that tool explain his craft Mark Ferrari: 8 Bit & '8 Bitish' Graphics-Outside the Box link to this video
View on Hacker News

Macuyikoon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Loom EGA/VGA Comparison”

> The original EGA background art for Loom was made by Mark Ferrari Obligatory recommendation for this talk by Mark Ferrari: link to this video - truly an artist
View on Hacker News

imachine1980_on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Living Worlds: 8 Bit art animated with palette cycling (2012)”

this is incredible talk form the Background Artist of monkey island, about 8 bit and explain in details how palette cycling works, and modern way to doing the same more efficiently for modern games. 8 Bit & '8 Bitish' Graphics-Outside the Box link to this video
View on Hacker News

chonglion Hacker News • Recommends

On “How video games use lookup tables”

He gave one of my favourite GDC talks of all time 1! I recommend this talk to anyone who is interested in the details and history of working on limited colour palette games! 1 link to this video
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corysamaon Hacker News • Recommends

On “A Pixel Parable”

Mark was nice enough to invite me to his home studio when I was a new high school grad to talk working in games as an artist. He told me the story of the fight over dithering. I give him strong partial credit for ending up a game engine/art pipeline coder instead and got to thank him after his most excellent GDC presentation on the lost power of palettized textures link to this video You can see that power in action here link (Hit show options) link BTW: Deluxe Paint has been remade in Python if you want to give it a try link
View on Hacker News

codetrotteron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Dithering Process, Return of the Obra Dinn (2017)”

…d to look and how it would have looked on an old computer with 1-bit graphics.” says one commenter. I think these comments are missing the forest for the trees. It’s not about faithful recreation, it’s about artistic inspiration and invoking certain feelings. See also the talk “8 Bit & ‘8 Bitish’ Graphics - Outside the Box” by artist Mark Ferrari. link to this video If you artificially constrain yourself too much, your game will suffer and no-one will want to play it. On the other hand, if you can give a nod to the past and a feeling of nostalgia but at the same time acknowledge that we have had progress, and incorporate that progress in your game, then there is potential for a game that is actually fu…
View on Hacker News

kickon Hacker News • Recommends

On “A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art (2015)”

I don't agree with that! Early personal computers also had pixel art, and it was mind-blowing what was done with it. Watch this talk from Mark Ferrari, for example: link to this video link Check out what he did with color cycling in this demo: it's amazing. I recommend looking at "May - Jungle Waterfall - Rain" to see how amazing this is. That's not a gif, it's a single image, just rotating the colors. That was to deal with storage constraints. Can you imagine? The techniques of early PC and applications are worth saving , too. The art shown in that tweet is amazing, too, but it's not the same thing! It's an entirely different thing, with entirely different constraints.
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arexxbifson Hacker News • Recommends

On “I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something”

There's a lot of stuff available but the problem is knowing what to look for. For example, the book "Commodore: A Company on the Edge" chronicles quite a bit of Commodore lore, and there are numerous resources for both Amiga and C64 online. Too many to mention, really, and lots of them are heavily specialized. CSDb0 for the C64 demo and cracking scene, for example. I also recommend The Early History of Smalltalk1 by Alan Kay himself and Mark Ferrari's talk2 on creating pixel art for LucasArts games. 0 link 1 link 2 link to this video
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rozabon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Designing 2D graphics in the Japanese industry”

You might be interested in this GCD talk. The speaker was an artist on various classic adventure games. I found it really interesting how he considered himself a traditional artist and doesn't really like computers at all. The things they achieved with pallette switching were unbelievable, especially considering the limitations of their tools. It's crazy how he managed to do this stuff just in basic paint programs. Some HNers will be horrified (just write some code!) but I think it's really inspiring. link to this video
View on Hacker News

_dpson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade EGA/VGA Comparison”

If you have an interest in this kind of art, this GDC presentation by Mark Ferrari "8 Bit & 8 Bit-ish Graphics" gives lots of great detail about the art process, tools, and practices of the time (Ferrari worked on the EGA art for Monkey Island, among several others). link to this video
View on Hacker News

rcarmoon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Super Pyxelate converts images to 8-bit pixel art”

This is very neat, but if you want to see a true (human) master at work, check out Mark Ferrari's GDC talk here: link to this video I'd love to see an algorithm that could approximate this degree of mastery :)
View on Hacker News

SonOfLiliton Hacker News • Recommends

On “Living Worlds in HTML5 (2012)”

This is an amazing engineering and artistic achievement. I have the Live Wallpaper for Android and it's the most delightful $2 I've ever spent, even though it crashes every few days. Right now it's snowing. Yesterday night I spotted a shooting star. There's a great talk by Mark Ferrari about his work: link to this video
View on Hacker News

corysamaon Hacker News • Recommends

On “An Ode to Deluxe Paint (2023)”

If you want to see what a master of Deluxe Paint palette cycling can do check out Mark Ferrari's link (hit "Show Options) and link to this video
View on Hacker News

corysamaon Hacker News • Recommends

On “A Clone of Deluxe Paint II Written in Python”

If you want to see what a master of Deluxe Paint palette cycling can do check out Mark Ferrari's link (hit "Show Options) and link to this video
View on Hacker News

jkbycon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Boris Vallejo and the pixel art of the demoscene”

You might enjoy an entire talk on using a limited color palette for graphics in early games and how it stimulated creativity link to this video "In this GDC 2016 talk, Terrible Toybox's Mark Ferrari discusses and demonstrate some of his techniques for drawing 8 bit game graphics, including his celebrated methods for use of color cycling and pallet shifting to create complex and realistic background animation effects without frame-animation GDC talks cover a range of developmental topics including game design, programming, audio, visual arts, business management, production, online games, and much more. We post a fresh GDC video every weekday. Subscribe to the channel to stay on top of regular updates,…
View on Hacker News