A question about Curse of Monkey Island

ginanubismon · Wed 07/04/2010 20:08:19

I am an hobbist animator and I love how they had done all of the special animation in Curse of Monkey Island and heard somewhere on this form that to create those frames the artists made a black outline around each cell/frame so it can be used in game, is this true?

Anian · Wed 07/04/2010 21:28:44

What do you mean by "special" animation?

QuoteThe big thing to talk about, however, is the graphics. In a word, they are suburb. LucasArts has decided (finally) to move away from the 256 colors, VGA graphics of their last games, and instead uses 800x600 16-bit graphics glory. The style of animation has also changed -- instead of using roto-scoping to animate real people, LucasArts has opted to use real Disney-style animation for the game, giving the game a smooth and professional feel. And amazingly enough, this Windows 95 only game ran flawlessly and fast on my Pentium 90 (with DirectX 3 installed), even when most of the screen is filled with moving animation.

http://www.worldofmi.com/features/trivia/viewimage.php?id=60ype=triviarivia_id=16

http://www.worldofmi.com/features/interview/tiller.php

Eggie · Thu 08/04/2010 16:43:13

A better question is what the hell is the dude in that quote talking about? Did he just have a top-hat full of random technical/animation terms or something?

Anyway, I imagine the animation was made by hand-inking the frames as cleanly as possible, scanning them in black and white and cleaning them up by hand; pixel by pixel until they'd got rid off all the artefacts but I could be wrong.

OneDollar · Thu 08/04/2010 17:35:39

Quote...uses 800x600 16-bit graphics glory

I thought it was still 256 colour...

Babar · Thu 08/04/2010 17:43:55

It was. And only 640x480 (or was it 400?).

The graphics were suburb?

...In fact, anian, where are you quoting from? That passage doesnÂ´t seem to appear in either of the links.

Mr Flibble · Thu 08/04/2010 19:35:33

It was definitely 256 colour, infact Bill Tiller mentions it in the interview.

Anian · Thu 08/04/2010 20:14:55

Quote from: Babar on Thu 08/04/2010 17:43:55...In fact, anian, where are you quoting from? That passage doesnÂ´t seem to appear in either of the links.

It was from some review, I reread it, might have been a bit hasty in qouting, my bad.

In any case, I still don't understand the "special" part in the question.

Andail · Thu 08/04/2010 21:43:03

What does it mean to make a black outline around each frame/cell? I can't really wrap my head around that statement no matter how I try.

Privateer Puddin' · Thu 08/04/2010 22:03:34

All it means is an outline on the character.

Ryan Timothy B · Thu 08/04/2010 23:05:33

There weren't any black outlines on the animations that I can recall.

Privateer Puddin' · Thu 08/04/2010 23:09:04

There used to be a tutorial about doing anti aliased sprites with a solid outline, way back in the day before we had 32 bit mode.

Questionable · Thu 08/04/2010 23:25:41

I was under the impression that they made the animations by animating black and white outlines (which I believe is a process called "blocking" in animation) then coloring them after the "blocking" was perfect. So basically you make everything work, look good and feel smooth, then go in and color it frame by frame.

Does that answer the OP question, or maybe you could clarify?