Oldschool Sierra-Spritingstyle(Blue-Screen)

[Digital Mosaic Games]

Hey AGS-Friends,

To keep an animation as realistic as possible, I tried to use the old Sierra-Animation-Technique with a BlueScreen. Like sprites from Kings Quest6, Quest for Glory3, Police Quest: the Kindred, Gabriel Knight1...


In my case it was a Green-Screen. A very cheap greenscreen. I used the coat of my garden furniture.

Okay, I recorded me a in a simple move. Than I converted it to gif and scaled it down.


Than I scaled it again down until it had the size of a sierra-character like prince alexander of daventry. But I noticed that they scaled down the height a bit more as the width. I don´t know why. I think than it looks a bit more cartoony.


Than I had to make the background transparent(one-colored). But my "Greenscreen"-construction was shit. There where too many colors in the background, which where also on my body, maybe because the crinkles on my "Greenscreen" and the wronk lightening. And this was the fatal thing. I needed a professional Bluescreen. Anyway I had to cut the background out. That is a hard job. I also tried to use the "Magicstick-Tool" in Photoshop CS4 but there was the same problem. The program didn´t noticed the diffrent colors.


So, I cutted it out and than I had to overpaint it to give it a cartoony-retro-game-Look like in the sierra games I mentioned. For this I used a Palette. Every of this sierra games from the early 90s had his own colors on a palette. Me as GK-Fanatic of course took the GK1-Palette. Here you can see it:


So what do think about the result? Have you any tips for me(Bluebox etc.)?

BTW:
I also tried to make my photo to a GK1-Sprite:

[xenogia]

Looks fantastic, but his right foot looks a bit large.  With the greenscreen and my own personal experience.  If your having trouble with lighting try and put the greenscreen where there is a LOT of natural sunlight. Also it seems that your greenscreen is rather dark shade of green or is that lighting.

[kaputtnik]

Wow, that must have been a lot of work to get that animation from your source material, haha. I suggest you try capturing on a brightly lit white wall (I guess most people have access to one of these).

The signal is not as accurate as on a professional green screen, of course, and you might run into some problems with hands and face, but since you will be changing resolution and colours later on anyway, this might just be the solution for you. Put on dark clothes, light up the background uniformly (or as good as you can) and then capture; it will be much easier for you.

Your garden furniture green screen probably won't give you any good results unless you get a really good source of light, it's too dark and reflects too much diffuse light.

edit: For further information, Chicky says the same thing in other words one post below, haha.

[Chicky]

Nice sprite but that green screen is useless! You need Chroma green for anything other than pixel art and a plastic cover simply wont work.

Here's a few green screen tips:

Stand 5ft away from the green screen.

Use a key light from one side of the actor and a fill (with diffusion paper) on the other. Don't let these lights spill out onto the green screen.

Use another non diffused light as a backlight, this will separate the actor from your background.

Dont setup your green screen in a corner! Use a flat wall.

If you can't use chroma paint or afford expensive green screen tape then just buy some cheap bright green fabric; it wont crinkle like your current setup.

Failing all that just stand in front of a white wall with a bright light facing your back from the side; and wear dark clothes. I appreciate it's only a matter of cutting out the pixels with low res but even using a white wall would save you a lot of time (You could use the magic wand). Your current setup is making it harder than without those plastic garden covers

[Monsieur OUXX]

Next thing I want to see made with AGS: MORTAL KOMBAT!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n76JWYONHvY

[InCreator]

For wrinkles, you can use something to stretch it out. A weight or something to push corners.
Like soliders put newspapers folded into stiff sticks into edges of bed to pull bedsheet straight (so it'd look super neat).

Also, lighting is the key. The less you cast a shadow to the screen, the easier to work. Use paper over lamps to diffuse light, fluorescent light if you can access any (they aren't that expensive) -- to have more natural and less yellow light, etc.

As far as you are right now, I'd say this sprite looks quite good actually... simply the work to get there - when compared to your screen results - feels like too much for such simple thing.

[Gilbert]

But I noticed that they scaled down the height a bit more as the width. I don�t know why. I think than it looks a bit more cartoony.

This is because games of those days used the 320x200 resolution (no matter whether it's AGI or SCI in CGA, EGA, MCGA or whatever), which when displayed on a 4:3 (standard) monitor screen the pixel aspect is not square (same goes to 640x400, whereas for 320x240 and 640x480 the pixels are square). Each pixel is actually a tall rectangle. The width:height ratio of a pixel in such mode is (200/3):(320/4)=1:1.2 . So, if you want to say paint a square you need to use a bit more pixels in the horizontal direction than the vertical direction. That's why they resized photos (be they used as-if or used for rotor-scoping) to be a bit wider as this made the images displayed in their correct aspect ratio in-game. Since most people develop games under a desktop with square pixels few people will notice this now. Note that even some game designers in the past didn't care about this and so graphics actually appeared stretched vertically, but ironically when these games are played under a square pixel aspect display (since as played windowed with DOSBOX) the graphics will magically appear like having their aspect ratio fixed, but for games that were designed with this in mind (such as AGI and SCI games) they'll appear squished when played under resolutions with square pixel aspect.

To people who still manage to argue that 320x200 was a wide-screen resolution: no, this was never intended as a wide-screen resolution. Using a wide-screen monitor for computers was not a popular idea until recently, and coincidently when 320x200 is displayed fullscreen on a 16:10 monitor the pixels become squares, so some people use this as a wide-screen resolution now but this was never the case in the past.

So, depending on what screen resolution you expect your characters are supposed to put on, if you want to use 320x200 or 640x400 like classics games you should scale the sprites' height down a bit so that they appear correctly, but if you use resolutions with square pixels such as 320x240 or 640x480 you actually don't need to do that.

[NsMn]

Wow. Abso-fucko-lutely fucktastic.

[Kaio]

I tried this once, too.
Turned out to be the same problem: my greenscreen was shit. Maybe because I didn't have one in the first place and just used my wall...
Anywho, I gave up on it after the 1st animation, because it was as much work as doing it from scratch. Other work, yes, but it took as long as my old approach.
You, on the other hand, did a very nice job on this .

[Digital Mosaic Games]

Thanks for the tipps!
And, Gilbet V7000a, thanks for your close explination.

I see my problem... I think I´ll buy a blue/greenscreen or maybe I´ll find other solutions. But at first I´ll try with the white wall and natural light.

[GarageGothic]

Looks great so far. Once you settle on an efficient production pipeline, this technique should allow some really smooth animations in the fraction of the time it would take to draw the same frames. I've actually been looking into doing the same for one of my future games, even dumpster-dived a treadmill that I intend to paint green and use for capturing walkcycles

Regarding natural light - if thereby you mean sunlight - I'd recommend against it. You'll want a lighting setup that ensures consistency and can easily be replicated at a later date if additional animations are needed. With natural light, you're not just limiting yourself to always shooting during more or less the same hours of the day, but you'll also need additional color correction to match up takes shot during different weather conditions or a different time of year.
For the same reasons you should also experiment a lot and decide on the best method before shooting any footage that you intend to use in the finished game. It's no good if the shading or hue of the character shift all of a sudden as he transitions from standing still to his picking-up animation just because you discovered a better lighting setup midway through production.

Best of luck with your endeavor, already looking very promising.

[Dualnames]

Next thing I want to see made with AGS: MORTAL KOMBAT!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n76JWYONHvY

Done. Twice! Mortal Wombat.