Classic VGA/EGA Graphics...how do they do it?

[big brother]

The stlye of the cottage picture looks a lot like that of a Thomas Kinkade painting.

[Pod]

Nice looking game! what is it?

[Snarky]

The stlye of the cottage picture looks a lot like that of a Thomas Kinkade painting.

Hey, it's not that bad! 

[stuh505]

well so far, Thomas Kinkade is more famous than any of us...

my mom even got suckered into buying some of his shit, and she hasn't bought anything of mine lol

[TheYak]

well so far, Thomas Kinkade is more famous than any of us...

And so is Martha Stewart, doesn't stop me from wanting to turn her skin into a beautiful couch-cover.

[Hollister Man]

I think part of the problem with the 'Grainyness' in the early pictures is Photoshop.  It really doesn't give you many options.  I use Paint Shop Pro 7 and there's a setting or two to reduce those speckles and color bleeding.

[stuh505]

Although I managed to get very close results by using posterize, I now believe that it is more likely that they simply did not apply any method of dithering when converting to Indexed Color, because that produces similar results without the blatant intentional loss of color information.

[Helm]

Automatic dithering was used, as part of their colour reduction scemes, sierra might have had inhouse software built exactly to that intent, as LEC made debabelizer to do the same to the drawn then reduced backgrounds of games like MI2. Obviously, after reduction, a pixel artist would go in and fix blatant errors and jarring dither patterns.


EDIT:

and so we're clear:

They often don't have the look of being hand-drawn.  So I wonder, how do they mask that?  People aren't perfect and I won't accept the explanatino that they are "just good"...there must be some techniques about their design process that helps them to get a professional look besides just being "good" at pixel art.

Besides automatic dither patterns, all the rest is skill in pixel art. Sorry to break it to you, but most EGA and early VGA games were not based on scans. But because there's different sorts, here's a rundown:

Sierra AGI:  used inhouse tool, picedit. Vector-ish program, where you can use the basic 16 colour palette to great effect if you're patient. The advantage was, that picedit saved the room in vectors, not in bitmap, so you could have lots and lots of rooms compress down to small space.

Early Sierra SCI: see http://www.bripro.com/scistudio/tutorial/chapter6.html

Also vectored images, now with 1:1 pixel ratio. Again, automatic dithering if you needed it, but that's that. Otherwise all skill with pixels/drawing. Tracing images could have been the case, but I doubt a lot of this was going on. For more on tracing images, look at eric's first post.

Late Sierra SCI: Gabriel Knight era and forth: Scanned in backgrounds, reduced colours, touched up. This thread has this covered completely.

Early SCUMM: pixel art, ega, rock awesome.

Middle Period SCUMM: MI, Dott, etc: These were all made in Deluxe Paint, Ppaint or other clones. these are programs that operate closely to what photoshop can do, but with indexed palettes. This mean you get a semblance of automatic anti alias, several dither patterns, gradient paterns, noise, blurring etc etc. Just download a demo of pro motion by cosmigo software and see what this is all about

Late SCUMM: all based on scanned drawings, either pixelled over (Full Throttle) or colour-reduced like MI2. Again, this thread has this covered so far.

Looking at a game like QFG...I wonder, if perhaps someone has painted pictures IRL, then scanned them in and shrunk them down before converting to VGA?

QFG 1 and 2 were EGA, using the SCI interpreter. No scanned pictures were used, and pics were made starting from zero in an in-engine drawing program storing the information as vectors, like I said. QFG3 and 4 are yes, scanned pics, colour reduced and tweaked as dragonrose explained.

A lot of times I see shading that is done with alternating pixel patterns and stuff like that also.  I don't believe someone went through the tedium of placing all those alternate pixels....because they often appear to have been done in a way that looks computer generated.

Dithering is made simply by having a series of patterened brush edges like:
xoxo
oxox
xoxo

saved, of differing sizes. Nothing overly automatic about it. Colour reduction scemes are however, automatic, although you can adjust the amount of dithering, if it's ordered or not, etc, similarly to photoshop.

This makes me think that someone drew a cartoon, then colored it on the computer, then used some software to make an EGA rendition, which is capable of forming in-between colors by using pixel shading patterns.

As far as EGA goes, no.

[stuh505]

QFG 1 and 2 were EGA, using the SCI interpreter. No scanned pictures were used, and pics were made starting from zero in an in-engine drawing program storing the information as vectors, like I said. QFG3 and 4 are yes, scanned pics, colour reduced and tweaked as dragonrose explained.

I forgot QFG was originally in an EGA version.  When I played QFG back seems like 10 years ago, it was the VGA version that I played so that's what I was talking about.  That's gotta be scanned, right?

When I said "no dithering" I was referring to a specific setting on Photoshop which isn't really like classic dithering.  If you convert it to indexed color in photoshop and try turing the dithering option on and off you'll see what I mean.

[Helm]

When I said "no dithering" I was referring to a specific setting on Photoshop which isn't really like classic dithering.  If you convert it to indexed color in photoshop and try turing the dithering option on and off you'll see what I mean.

If you think they colour-reduced with no dithering, and then added all the diffusion manually, I think I have to dissagree. Seeing how much the nuances of the art carry over to the indexed versions, a computer certainly had a part in this. I believe Sierra reduced with a homebrewed limited diffusion utility, and then cleaned up minimally afterwards. It's improbable that they posterize-reduced and then added the grain themselves, as I see it, as it would take too much time for too little benefit.

[MrColossal]

You could just colour reduce to all 4 different dithering patterns in photoshop and then cut it up and stick the best looking parts together and see if you saved more colours...

[stuh505]

Well, I was talking about QFG VGA...in which I recall there is no dithering of any sort.

[Gilbert]

Well if the palette is set properly (or if a conversion has good colour reduction and optimal palette generating mechanism), 256 colour backgrounds can be good without "dithering". That's it.

[Ionias]

Ok, I have a question. How in the world did SIERRA do this style of dithering?



This is a screenshot from SIERRA's Space Quest 6. I love the style! Did the artists truly do this pixel by pixel?

[Helm]

Yes indeed, this is done in deluxe paint or some similar program. There's some automated dithering here and there, based on some gradiental patterns, and this just might be a trace of some concept image done on paper, but the real work is all pixel art indeed.

[Darth Mandarb]

Actually SQVI was one of the major reasons I started doing pixel art.  The backgrounds were just amazing and inspiring.

You know ... it always amazed me (in Space Quest VI) how meticulously constructed, and beautiful, the background art was yet Roger's character sprite looks like shit.

[Helm]

aaaand the answer to that one is simple: animation

roger was meticulously animated hand-drawn frame by hand-drawn frame. so they could achieve smooth animations without spending an eternity,  roger is generally flat-shaded or cel-shaded. It's the same reason most cookie-cutter animation is like that, over painted backgrounds.

Still, that doesn't mean they couldn't draw him a bit better from what I see on that screen.

Also, I really do not suggest people sit down and start handpixelling 640x480 backgrounds, unless they have lots of time and patience, or an art team. Too much work.

[Kweepa]

yet Roger's character sprite looks like shit.

You said it Darth!
And no, it's not because it's animated. Post that sprite in Critics' lounge (err, right here I guess) and we've got plenty of people who could make it much better without increasing the shading detail.

[Igor]

Must agree here.. Roger in SQVI is a perfect example of bad character design.. very generic and boring to look at.
I don't see non shaded sprites as a shortcoming.. on contrary, they can be quite a challenge and make everything look more stylish and intersting.. *if* done right.
CMI (and Broken Sword too- if i remember correctly?) actually had non shaded sprites and with a few minor exceptions, they were perfect.

[Darth Mandarb]

Helm - I can see your point about adding complex shading to the character would make it difficult to animate properly.

However, I think the contrast between the style of the characters and the style of the backgrounds is cool.  I think they should have spent a little more time on the characters.  The BGs look mega-professional, while the characters (and not just Roger) look amatuerish.

It's almost like they had deadlines to meet and had their programmer whip up some characters for the game.