Rogue!

[STE86]

A conversion/edit of one of my own c64 images from 2 years ago. (an oldschool 2000ad fan )

[McKlain]

Rogue Trooper! 

[arnoldemu]

STE86, great job as always!

[MacDeath]

we already gave a few try on this one at CPCrulez forum (in french) in the past... along a few other C64 stuffs.

how fun I hadn't realised yet that it was one of your stuff...



http://cpcrulez.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4274&start=30

this one was from Hermol, quite straight palette swap.



A few of my varied tries at this :










as usual, this C64 palette give us a hard time to be properly ported, and sometimes it jsut can't be ported through only a palette swap, or a few parts have to be separated into 2 dofferent inks in the process, also sometimes a few attribute clashes have to be corrected, which is the funny part too.




when i did the palette trials, I wanted to have the clothes with no dark red, in order to separate more the leather from the greem camo clothes...


Just as you did, the greys for the metal (gun) must be in "cyan metal" or else it just can't work on CPC (only 1 grey).
You used dark blue+ Dark Cyan + LightCyan...
I went Dark Cyan+lightCyan+white... because I used the dark Blue for the skin (= more contrast for it)


Hard part is the background too, which has to go into colour instead of real grey...
I like it in the red version because it is bloody and contrast with the blue and green from the soldier, but your choice is good too, less vividly coloured, more true to the original

[TotO]

The last is better than the 3 first. (greens)
I have also used "Cyan, LightCyan, White" to not be close to the skin color.

[MacDeath]

the green is difficult to deal with on CPC because we have like 4 greens that are almost at the same level.


In theory we have a lot of choices to get big long gradiants, but in fact not.

medium green is a bit vividly bright and don't gradiate well with the 3 others.
Dark green is good (yet even not dark enough)... and medium pure green... is not dark enough to contrast with all the others
Pastel green, Marine Green (Cyan+Green) and "Lime" (Green+yellow) as evidanced in the 3 first picture in my previous post.

The trick is then to go like Dark green + one medium green (the true green or the yellowish green) then switch to pastel yellow (or even white) so we get some sort of hue switch effect.
But sadly, can't do proper green gradiants in 3+ real green shades (+blakc&white of course).

perhaps you can also get green into pastel Cyan (the lighter one) too.

another possibility is to use a Dark yellow+medium/light green + pastel yellow/white...
Or Dark Green+dark Yellow+ somùething light ...yellow or green ? or the yellowgreen (lime ?).



Concerning the Grey into "cyan metal", to go black+DarkCyan+Light cyan (one of the 2... perhaps the lighter one) then white give a more metalic effect because of the "Black to White" contrast... then pixelisation is key part to have a real metalic effect.

like when I try to get gold metal, I go for a Black+Dark yellow+Pastel Yellow+White if i want it to be cold...
then perhaps dark red+Dark Yellow+"medium" yellow+White to have it warmer...(longer gradiant then)



This picture is awesome on C64 and can be quite as great on CPC, yet more colourfull of course...
The main difficulty on CPC is to stick to only 16 inks I guess.
But also to remember the CPC has no Attribute limitation at all... and can get more choices in colours, despite fewer greys and browns solutions.


And to arbitrate when dealing with the grey's replacement.
funny to see we don't even use the Grey on the CPC.




Edit :
on this one i gave a mix of all my previous ones...
I mixed DarkRed and Greens only for the "armoured" parts, so the helmet and the gun "grip"... so those are coloured differently than the clothe (pants) because it is not the same stuff/material...


This said the original picture is great and havea sweet pixelisation, so whatever choices, many solutions can be suitable, it's just a matter of opinion and personal tastes.


on this last one I bring back the red background because Red is not used a lot (few bits on the helmet and fire from the gun...) so it contrasts well with the rogue trooper in the middle.


but it also get a warmer feeling than bleu/cyan background so up to personnal tastes I guess.

[STE86]

now i REALLY like the looks of the greens with the pale yellow highlight on this LCD at work. I will have to check what it looks like at home on my CRT.

see this is really useful. I still try to use "c64 gradients" on the CPC so its useful to me to talk about what people have found to be "cpc gradients". the clouds I wanted to be a murky colour because they are, based on the strip supposed to be "chemical clouds" from chemical warfare.

I see that white too can be used on the cpc with no real problems. on the c64 we steered clear of it as highlight in the main because it greatly overpowered the luma of everything else

btw i do convert back the other way too.

[STE86]

and this one is a WIP. converted from a VERY retro 1987 pic of mine on the c64, but "current" because of the new film
its style mimics the 1980's 2000ad drawing style of black and white with colour photographic inks.

[MacDeath]

for "european skin", i like to use :
Black-Dark Red-Pink/(pastel red)- pastel Yellow-white.


White should be used very lightly (a few pixels here and there) and Black only for the "inked comics style lines".
some often mix Orange and pastel Red (Pink) but i think it is quite an error to do so on CPC.

Well, it can be good sometimes, but mostly not.
Sadly most automatic graphic conversion tools get those Orange and Pink on the same gradiant...

C64 users made us believe that you can get like 9 colours gradiants by mixing 2 greys, 3 browns, blue and green and yellow and magenta...

On CPC it simply doesn't work that way IMO.

you actually don't really have such large 9 colours gradiant... exept perhaps on the Blue/Cyan ... and then some shades are too close to each other to be actually used.

There are some old things I did when i was researching on the CPC palette.










Basically CPC palette is :

I use my own names, which are more logical than the official IMO.

6 basic RGB colours :
RGB and yellow, Cyan, Magenta...

all in 3 shades :
dark, normal, pastel.

in official Amstrad naming...
the the darker is normal, the medium is "light" and the lighter is "Pastel...
with a few exception, like Pastel RED being called Pink...

Also the "White... I call it Grey and Bright White I call it White...
less words to write.

then 6 unique mixed/crossbreed colours :
Orange (Yellow+Red)
Lime (Green+yellow)
Seagreen (Green+Cyan)
SkyBlue (Blue+Cyan)
Mauve (Blue+Magenta, I love this one, it mix well with Pastel Blue actually)
Purple (Red+Magenta)

While in theroy all basic 6 colours have a good  natural and pure 3 shades gradiant, some can't be considered having 3 shades but 2...

Green.
Cyan.
Yellow.

of course all gradiants can start and end at Black and White...


So...
Cyan need to be mixed with some blues in order to have really bigger gradiants.
Yellow can be mixed with orange or green.

Green need Pastel yellow or even dark Yellow to get bigger gradiants.

Most cyan+green+yellow  hybrid colours are just alternative choices so you can give a betterly tuned colour atmosphere/feeling in your art.

To use pastel yellow instead of medium yellow gives a colder result...
The same when you use pastel Cyan instead of normal cyan.

to use a coloured Green instead of a normal green is good to have a better transition into the Yellow spectrum (could theorically be done with Cyan too... so you could get some reflection effect i guess..



Post edit :
ok, i searched a bit...
To go from green to yellow per exemple is called "Hue shifting".

Because CPC have saturated colours it is quite hard to perform hue shiftings, but still a few exceptions...

So yeah.

Blue to cyan (skyblue)
Green to yellow (Lime)
Red to yellow (Orange)

other hue shifting are not wellusable...
I mean going from Red to Magenta is rarely used I guess in figurative art...
needless to say, it works better on the amstrad PLUS.


@STE'86 :
you should go to Pixeljoint site... it is a great community in pixel art.

http://www.pixeljoint.com/default.asp

A bit like a pixel art oriented deviantART.
they also have a nice forum.

[rexbeng]

I really like these threads about pixeling/converting images, but why not keep everything under the same thread? It would be so much easier to keep track on all the images posted, browse back and forth, comment on newer and older ones... So why not ask Gryzor to merge all different threads into a single one, maybe calling it something like "STE's image conversions", perhaps? Or "image conversions workshop" if you want it to retain a more "free for all" essence. Anyway, in anycase It would be a lot more easy and fun


regards,
rb

[MacDeath]

there the Judge Dread...

I changed the highlight from the skin into pastel Yellow, changed the orange into Dark yellow (less close to traditionnal Comic colours I guess, but looks more metalic and colder...

And the green is now Lime so it mix slightly more with yellow (but it doesn't change a lot, lol...)

This said, it is clearly pixelised for the C64...
on a CPC, the sking would have good like more shades :
Black-DarkRed-pastelred-white...

But it would loose a bit of the Conics effect perhaps.

Also the "gold parts" (orange-yellow armour) could do with a bit more things...

Could do with some Darkred+orange+yellow (the actual long orange gradiant on CPC.

but C64 can't put more than 4 ink in each character so gettings this done on CPC need a large repixel job for the whole ditherings.


That the whole problem.
C64 graphics and CPC graphics, while sharing theoricall similarities like the 160x200x16 mode... are completely different.


CPC :
160x200x16 : no attribute, more colours to choose from but also saturated palette so less Hue shiftings.
You have to seperate a bit more the colours, but you are not limited to the attributes.


C64 :
same resolution, 16 colours on screen... yet the attributes don't always enable you to do some details with as many colours as you would want as you would like (can be patched by sprites of course) and the colours available need to always hue shift and mix with greys...

Hence C64 often go into large gradiants as if on Amiga... but it all the same mix of browns and greys+ a pair of "pastel"...

On CPC you must stick to not as big gradiants, but can have more differently coloured elements all "interlaced" with each other.
Then on CPC you can seperate each graphical element's palette IMO, with only a few common colours here and there.
Giving far more contrast.

Perhaps someone could try to port my picture on C64 ?
not sure if the attributes wouldn't need a few Hardsprites patches...



Also i guess a C64 version would need to be re-sized/centered (large chunks cut out) because C64 can't into full screen overscan...

[TotO]

I really like these threads about pixeling/converting images, but why not keep everything under the same thread? It would be so much easier to keep track on all the images posted, browse back and forth, comment on newer and older ones... So why not ask Gryzor to merge all different threads into a single one, maybe calling it something like "STE's image conversions", perhaps? Or "image conversions workshop" if you want it to retain a more "free for all" essence. Anyway, in anycase It would be a lot more easy and fun

With a rule... No more than 2 pictures and 5 lines of text per post... 

[TotO]

there the Judge Dread...

I though that you lose the "Cartoon" touch by removing the white "paper-like" color...

[MacDeath]

I though that you lose the "Cartoon" touch by removing the white "paper-like" color...

me too.
I was just a try, more proper thing would be to just pust some pastelyellow between the Pink and white but this needs to actually modify the pixels too.

I see that white too can be used on the cpc with no real problems. on the c64 we steered clear of it as highlight in the main because it greatly overpowered the luma of everything else

I think the C64 often use the lighter Grey as some sort of white, being unsaturated means you can mix it with anything...
But on CPC, to me you clearly have to mix "everything" with Black and White so more contrast and those goes with everything.

Also the Attribute less CPC is perhaps better for this, so is the palette with "complete" set of colours in dark and bright (and sometimes medium) range of colours.

Because CPC colours are saturated and vividly coloured, to use white is often the only way to have real highlights (and black for real shadows).
As I told :
=Yellow can't gradiate with Pastel yellow
=Green can't gradiate with lighter greens
=cyan can't gradiate with Pastel cyan.

So you can simply use the white, and choose whatever normal or pastel or mixed one you put between the Dark and the White, provided you want a pure gradiant (no hue shifting).

even though, a green to yellow gradiant could be like :
=Black-DarkGreen-Lime/mediumGreen-pastelyellow-white.
Or also :
=Black-DarkGreen-Dark Yellow-Lime-pastelyellow-white


=C64 aim to get all thing going "around" the medium grey.
=CPC tend to get all things going between Black or White = more contrast

I think C64 only have 4 "pure" gradiants (all mixable with each others because non-saturated...)

Basically :
=Greys (B&W+3 greys).
=Browns (Redx2 and brownsx2 + yellow too)
=blues (blue, Cyan, purple and Mauve, sort of)
=Greens (Greenx2+yellow)

[STE86]

in all honesty, the use of "rainbow" colour fades on 64 images is something which only the new artists do, because it is totally reliant on the use of the very under saturated Pepto palette. "oldschool" c64 artists such as myself always seem to isolate our colour usage into elements, probably because using the colour controls on an old CRT instantly renders the new guys lovely fades into a gaudy mess.

we were used to viewing a c64 with the colour saturation at 70-80% whereas they draw with Pepto plattes which are about 35% saturation.

hence, all my images it will be seen have clearly defined areas of graduation and colour, and will never use the whole rainbow "luma fade" of many new c64 images. (because I don't draw using the pepto palette).



That's about the closest I would get to going through some of the more unorthodox palette fades.

anyone who is interested can view all my c64 stuff going back to 1986 at [CSDb] - STE'86

where can I view some of the experimental conversion stuff thats gone on for the amstrad? and where is the best place to view amstrad artwork?

Steve

[rexbeng]

@STE: the most aggregate source for CPC pixelwork should be this one (contains demoscene and games stuff)  &#9733 CPCRULEZ &#9733 DEMOSCENE &#9733 CPC GRAPHICS GALLERY


regards,
rb

[STE86]

OK thats good.

who's the admin on there? anyone on here?

coz there are a few amends to make. Like the pro artist credited as "Simon" is Simon Butler formerly of Ocean sw and Chaz Davies seems to be missing completely. I am more than willing to help add to that database if it will help.

Steve

[MacDeath]

JavaCPC does have some CRTC emulation mode (despite too much scanlines compaired to real CRTC display), and some easy screen  launched in Basic conversion tools...


Also sorry but half the stuff you talked about... I couldn't undertand...


what are Luma fade and pepito biscuits ?


BTW I know that C64 can really look quite differently in PAl, Secam or NTSC (and even emulation)... really really differently.
even just true Hard or emulation, or Flat screen or old CRTC... it's a different world here.


As for the Spectrum... many "Software video modes" are often shown in "grolious" theorical magnificiency (see some pseudo "speccy" at pixel joint... with true orange... ok it's theorical flicker screen...)... but when seen on a real hardware, such "awesome" software video mode in like theoricall "320x400x65556" actually is blurry, cause severee epylepsy, and actually look shitty...


This said many of those fakes are even found in .jpg on the internet...


If you believe those moderner sources, C64 was clearly already in 640x400xtrue colours...
And ZX Speccy could into a good 256x192x(225 colours) thx to flickerings and shits...


But of course CPC is a lame system because it can't even emulate Speccy properly and lack the C64 awesome greys andd browns... (and have no Sid nor Sprites+scrolls... ouch)
And C64 disk drive is best ever because it even have a whole dedicated CPU in it...   
Even Speccy palette is well know for being awesome while CPc one is lame because of too brightly colourfull vividly and so on...
(what a joke, implying speccy have a better palette... upgraded Russians clones on the other hand... but hey, if you want to compare with a SamCoupé, just compare with an Amstrad PLUS...)


sorry, a few beer and I get into Xtreem Ironing.





BTW STE'86... you should get yourself a dedicated topic here where we could talk about all those palette and graphic stuffs... and your latest port on CPC from older well known awesome jobs.
Always good to talk with you about your nice productions.
(you're some sort of legend I guess...I'm even being serious here...)

Always a playsure to see how you do it, and as I told, at CPCrulez (sorry but in French) we already had a lot of topic trying to port C64 stuff (and even Amiga or VGA or AtariST and shits)...




doing mock ups is fun and cheap after all.
yet quite hard to manage to do it well (= actually reasonnably do-able on real machine/game)

who's the admin on there? anyone on here?

Hermol is the guy to ask for, despite his engrish being lame, he's a nice person...


Also there's the "les sucres en morceaux" site, by "Supersly", which is great in pixelarting CPC style...
Les sucres en Morceaux


if you want to connect with french scene, there is also push'N'Pop...
Push'n'Pop | Amstrad CPC Demoscene | News


Cesar is also a spanish guy who did a lot of C64/CPC conversions...
http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/index.html?lang=1


yep, such is Amstrad community...
Frenchs, UK and Spanish... Germans seems to suck at graphics though.
Greeks are not bad too.
and Aussies are nice at Shoot'hem'ups...

[ralferoo]

As for the Spectrum... many "Software video modes" are often shown in "grolious" theorical magnificiency (see some pseudo "speccy" at pixel joint... with true orange... ok it's theorical flicker screen...)... but when seen on a real hardware, such "awesome" software video mode in like theoricall "320x400x65556" actually is blurry, cause severee epylepsy, and actually look shitty...

My understanding was that some of these "spectrum" demos are actually meant for the russian spectrum clones on which they are supposed to look phenomenal.

[rexbeng]

Hm... I didn't actually know a lot about this Pepto palette variation for the C64. I've done a bit of looking up and from what I read there used to be some controversy around it... Still, since I've been wanting to try on converting some of my own images from the CPC to the C64, this troubles me. It seems that Pepto is quite the standard these days, but it looks to me as if it is somewhat a "cheat". My own C64 is currently packed and stored since the original diskdrive has died, so I cannot really try out myself, but here's a question: I have an 1084 monitor, would I see the Pepto palette upon pluging the C64 to it? Or would I get the more saturated colors STE is speaking of?


Regards,
rb

[MaV]

Frenchs, UK and Spanish... Germans seems to suck at graphics though.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder how many times you've got your ass kicked in your French town after you've had a few beers.

@rexbeng: Excellent question! I'd like to know that as well (though I do not have a 1084 yet).

[SyX]

@MaV: I love your new avatar!!! 

[TotO]

Sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder how many times you've got your ass kicked in your French town after you've had a few beers.

Speak for you, Señora que restaura Cristos de Borja !!! 

[MaV]

Speak for you, Señora que restaura Cristos de Borja !!! 

That's to remind those who don't know about the painting that they need to google the text to get the news.
But you're right, I've changed the text to reflect my virility (Señor with burps, farts, smelly feet and all that.)

And don't get me wrong here, I like his attitude but I wonder what happens when he meets the wrong guys.

@MaV: I love your new avatar!!! 

My co-workers were wondering about my laughs today while I stared at the screen and read about it. And I like the Spanish attitude towards it: Well, she tried real hard, but I guess we have to restore it for good now.

BTW, I'm not for restoration of the painting. I think they should work on a duplicate of the original art and exhibit both the botched original and the duplicate side by side.

[MacDeath]

I never get kicked, because our tourists are mostly Belges and Dutch... no germans to kick me because I implyed they don't do CPC/schneider graphics... (which is false of course, I hope)


talking drunk on a forum is a good way to not get kicked...
IRL i'm a bit more calm.




anyway, back to topic, was is PEPTO palette ?


Oik, after a short search, it's a guy who put a better palette on an emulator...
Clearly some cheat here so the young generations would believe C64 used to have nice colours.