What struck me the most was not only the diminishing returns on 17-24, but how the 24's teal highlights became really distracting, it's like my eyes are constantly being pulled towards it
That's quite interesting, because I read your comment before I got to the part of the video with 24 colours, and I actually quite liked the teal.i didn't really feel much for colours 17-23 and didn't notice them much, but as soon as the teal came in, it felt like something clicked in the piece and it felt so so much more cohesive suddenly
@@MillsTC I agree to me it is the best looking sprite, it's as if it's a final render within a scene, with ambient lighting from behind, and the actual lighting from the front. So it truly looks good.
This is a great study honestly. It shows both how important color choices are when working with limitations, AND why more isn't always better when it comes to color. I think it's great to set limitations with pixel art to not muddy things up, but honestly, every step of this challenge looks amazing. I'd LOVE to see this done with other game characters, like maybe a Pokemon.
@@alyxgraff9121 There's quite a few things I don't understand about his process here, it was looking crunchy because he was choosing colors that don't match the sprite; IE adding teal to what should've been a darker curve (as it's going away from the viewers perspective, and mario isn't shiny) along with other oddities like the green, brown, and purple pixels on both of the hands. Of course it will look crunchy if you don't make an attempt to make the new colors you add appropriate. If you increased the color count traditionally via more subtle hue shifting and brightness adjustments you could end up with way more colors than this and it looking better. If you gamified this, you could easily hide most of the "different colors" in gradients that are too subtle for the viewer to see whilst only really having a few main colors. I regularly make 32x~ sprite art with usually more than 20 colors and I've never made art like this before. It's also very strange to me to start with a limited pallet, as all flaws to your colors can be adjusted by eye on the final piece with very few problems these days.
Depends on the project and intent. A larger image would allow for more colors. But, he blatantly says he's choosing colors that have no reason to be there at around 4:45. He's following a "adding too much" trend. I've never seen it in this context and it makes for a fun video!
@uponeric36 that approach still runs the risk of making your sprite look washed out, or unclean. You can only fit so much gradient in that small number of pixels!
Well, the new 5 color sprite looks almost as realistic as the 24 color one even on an OLED/LCD imo! I guess working without restrictions and then compressing it down like this is a good way to make realistic graphics work on a very restricted system.
I'd say it's much better, it captures much more detail whilst working with the same amount of colours. Reminds me of old NES spritework and how modern games like Shovel Knight work to recapture that aesthetic with newer techniques.
Damn. As a professional pixel artist who's supposed to have a good intuition about all this, I must say that "orig vs new 5 color" sprites at 7:50 made for a striking image when it's lead up to and presented like this. I've spent 10 minutes just trying to comprehend that these two are both 5 colors, the brain fights it so furiously. Art-styles that get so much out of tiny palettes are always fascinating because the colors they use are highly strategic and purposeful, and you did an incredible job at illustrating how to approach this strategy "in reverse". The logical next step for me was to go "well surely i can use original 5 colors to achieve something remotely similar" - and yes, you can use blue as "dark red" and red as "dark skintone" and introduce sel-out and a shading level and AA and a few tricks to the original sprite to get a pretty interesting result by moving in a somewhat unexpected direction. It opens your mind a little. In other words, this video is golden. From now on I'm including it in my list of resources to recommend to beginners, for sure.
Thank you, that comparison surprised me as well! I was curious about how I might arrive at something like the 'New 5 Colour' result organically; it definitely helped to have started from the higher render to guide it into place. A big part of it is that I'd never think to render it with such a crazy use of highlights in the first place, so maybe it's just showing to experiment more regardless of colour count! :D
It's funny how hard it is to realize the number of colors, even when you know it. I also experience this effect on the GameBoy, which famously only has four colors, yet it often looks like much more (and sometimes also less). The most interesting thing though is how ot doesn't translate to other things. For instance the Super Mario levels. I've never noticed the repetitive nature of the background or the similarities in level design (safe for the most obvious ones), but ever since I've watched a deepdive into how the SMB levels are built and how the glitch levels work, I can't unsee these patterns while playing the game anymore! 😂
It's color relativity probably. I've found that in pixel art the same color can be both a highlight and a shadow within the same piece solely by how you frame it (ie. it can be a highlight if the surrounding colors are darker and a shadow if the surrounding colors are lighter)
That comparison to the crushed 5 vs original 5 is insane and provodes a lot of insight over what's possible Would be cool (and overly time consuming) to use that technique to push the limitations of older pallets like nes
it's not that hard to give an impression of more colors if you tint the whole thing so different colors can be used for shading and flat coloring on different parts of the pic. a while ago i took a photograph and turned it into only blues, then tried to crush it down as much as i could. i could pull off a good looking realistic picture with just 8 shades of blue and some nice dithering.
this seems like a really great exercise in colour theory. im not sure what its called off the top of my head, but the method of utilising every colour on the colour wheel while also maintaining a sense of harmony has always been such an interesting technique to me.
I know that in music, opening up to any note you want is called "Chromatic Scale", but "Chromatic" does just mean colorful so it'd be funny to apply that to visual art 🤣
My preference ended up being where color choices were pushed to the end of their style: 3 color feels great as a 'minimalist, 7 color just before face shading works well for me, 12 color just before he gets the whites of his eyes feels really fun, and 16 color where he looks like he'd fit in with Yoshi's Island style.
Cool experiment! The ~256 colors version looks more like an art-project, reminds me of Seurat and pointilism. Of course completely crazy in the context of a pixel game, but beautiful on its own :)
Thanks! Yeah the 256 one reminds me of those collage-style pieces, where you'd zoom in and every 'pixel' would actually be a full scene with that particular dominant colour
i gotta say, i LOVE the funky colorfun lighting on the 24 colors one, even if it is a little too over-rendered and distracting. i love cartoony rim lighting and bright lineart, so i fell in love with the redone 5 colors version! it really helps me out as someone who has a style that strives for this type of vibe to see that you dont need to overdo bright colors to have a bright funky drawing in the end.
Seeing all the Marios lined up like that, it feels like seeing the plumber getting blasted through a bunch of different realities 😆 That was a really great exercise! I enjoy seeing these where you can isolate a single parameter (colour count) and try pushing it to its limits to see how it affects the results. Kinda reframes how you think of these things in the future! 🎨
Mario: I've visited millions of futures to see all possible outcomes. Luigi: In how many did we save the princess? Mario: One. And thanks, yeah it was pretty interesting to discover some of the later stuff through colour reduction. I don't think it would have ever occurred to me to render a 5-colour sprite like that so it's neat to find out what's possible.
The 32 color sprite is really cool as pixel art. It looks like a watercolor painting in pixel form! Great work, Brandon! I think my favorite or the bunch ended up being the 2 color red and black render.
This was absolutely delightful to watch. I like that you didn't really have a point, it was just nice watching/hearing your brain do its thing. The teal highlight in 24 really made it feel like the promo art for Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. It would be interesting to see a whole game scene in a style like this.
I'm not a frequent commenter on youtube, but I really appreciate your straightforward videos with your amazing pixel art and relaxing voice! Your creativity always makes me want to create art and your content is always exciting. Anyway thanks for the videos, take care and keep it square!
I tend to be the same when watching youtube, so I really appreciate this! Thanks for the kind words, and thanks for watching (...andtakecareandkeepitsquare)!
Personally I think 8 colors is the minimum you need to make this particular character look good (you need to have shadows for the skin tone otherwise it looks unnatural and plasticy), with 4-7 being the uncanny valley of not intentionally being super low color count while also not having enough color information to look "complete". Anywhere from 10-14ish is what I think would be reasonable to animate as an actual sprite in a platformer, with 15 and above being more what pixel artists who paint non-moving pieces (maybe with short animation loops within them) would aim for. The alternate 5 colors is a great example of how stylized you can make pixel art and the power of color relativity (eg. the back of his hat and the front of his overalls are the same color and the brain reads the former as subsurface scattering and the latter as a highlight because of the surrounding colors). On the CRT, I still think the original 8 colors is still the minimum needed to look good, but it also gives you a lot more leeway because the blurriness of the "pixels" is kind of adding free "color blending" to the sprites for you. The 10-15 color range in particular looks really smooth, with the hat becoming practically a gradient- it reminds me a lot of Yoshi's Island sprites. In the context of the CRT a lot of the details of 15 colors and above are kind of lost due to the aforementioned color blending, and can kind of explain why super high detail spritework with lots of colors wasn't popular in the 80s and 90s besides the technology- because on a CRT screen that detail is lost, so there's no point in adding it. The exception, of course, are the bright highlights on the very last sprite. On a digital screen they honestly looked kind of distracting, but here the color blending gives it a very smooth look and I honestly like how it looks a lot. On the flip side, the alternate 5 colors doesn't look good at all in my opinion- the CRT tends to blow out lighter colors and given that there are lots of light colors used in that sprite the whole thing is kind of hard to look at. Overall this is a really interesting look at how pixel art has evolved over time and how the medium it's displayed on (CRTs in the olden days and LCDs/OLEDs now) have affected how people draw. CRTs give lots of free color blending so color blocking and composition were more important (more than they already are now), while little details would get lost so people wouldn't bother. Dithering also made more sense back then, because with the color blending it would result in more of an actual gradient. I'm sure technological limitations also played a role as well, but people often overlook the influence CRTs had in directing how people drew art for them. Meanwhile in the modern day we have super accurate displays that can show down to the individual pixels, so there's a lot more emphasis placed on things like high color counts, rendering actual gradients with individual colors, and single-pixel level details. Because we also get more accurate color displays, color usage has become more important and things like limited palettes are able to be explored more readily (before they were often a side-effect of things like backlit screens or technological limitations).
That's a pretty cool idea to play with and quite like how those turned out, they just look really neat. As a video I also really like just watching you work that as you mention might not have "a point" but just seeing the process of just playing around with an idea is super entertaining. Like even these type of videos where it's more just playing around with an idea really gets some idea flowing for me for my next works~
This was super cool. I think my favorite rendering was somewhere in the 14-16 color range, but I think that’s mostly what my experience is in sprite work lol
weird comment but I just wanna say that this was a really unique, well made video! I paint and animate digitally but have never tried pixel art. This gave me a whole new perspective on it!
nah okay the 32 color one is just how i do minecraft textures. i love doing that kinda stuff. tho honestly, love the "modded terraria" feel of the finished 24 color one. its like way too fancy to be vanilla, and strays away from the color palette like any fanwork does. like thats deadass how some shit looks. also, love how eventually you just ended up doing things that some indie games use in engine lighting for. neat stuff! i wish i could be this much of a crackhead about lighting! and im already insane about it!
"nah okay the 32 color one is just how i do minecraft textures" There's actually a term for it, block vomit It's when a build has many many different blocks, sometimes it can look good but it depends on the build really
What I especially love are the two 5-color results after you played around with the color indexing, then redid it. I feel like I normally shy away from rim lighting as it often distracts my eye, but it's somehow not as bad when it's more of the surface area. Srsly, tho, this is just good color study, something I really never played around with until recently, so this is deffos a video that is right up my alley at the moment. Wow, what a result. :o
A particular exercise! Simplicity often is key in pixel art (despite how impressive certain complex pieces can get) so looking at it on a palette angle is important! Also notification gang
I honestly really like the third iteration with only black, tan, and red. Something about the simple colours really lends itself to good line work, which I think you did a great job with. It's very elegant and toned back compared to the regular Mario with his blue overalls and white gloves.
Not to get POLITICAL but I do think this is a good demonstration on what's happening in the video game industry in terms of graphical fidelity. Graphics have become so advanced that each new console is starting to deliver those diminishing returns. I feel like we're in the 17-24 color range at this point, so to speak, and each new improvement is exponentially less impactful than the ones that came before. The bit at the end also shows why art style is ultimately more important graphical fidelity, too.
I would love it if more devs made cel shaded games because they look so good at a high res. Its the best time for that type of aesthetic in terms of hardware because everyone could boost it up to a high res and not have lag at this point, and it makes all the lines look perfect, otherwise cel shading has lots of visible jaggies.
I'm working on a lot of pixel art at the moment for a game and this is a very helpful look at what is possible and how one might approach choosing colors or choosing things and I think this is good because it's forced me to be a little bit more experimental
That's really cool little experiment. You don't need to make a point, you just made a very interesting video, raised an important topic, showed the possibilities. From this moment, everyone can decide for themselves how much colors they want to add into their works.
1- this isn’t anything 2- still not much to say, but great shade of red 3- i love this one 4- just mario without shading 5- just mario without shading with gloves 6- just mario without shading with gloves with colored shoes 7- if nintendo went back to 2d, and changed the art style a bit for it, this is probably what you’d get 8- i take it back this is what you’d get 9- realizing how uneventful this comment might actually become 10- i’m not gonna repeat 7 again 11- prime mario? 12- ofc i spoke too soon 13- first point of “criticism…” i like 12 more now. its just the shadeless skin looked nice 14- and you brought me right back in 15- subtle but nice 16- i think we’ve actually reached what we needed for mario 17- gonna miss the black shading 18- looks great actually 19- this comment is getting so hard to make 20- too dark actually 21- what is happening 22- alright i like it again 23- ok you can stop now it looks good 24- jeez those actually are distracting FURTHER 32- mario on rainbow road next to the sun 256- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA messing around in photoshop- looks good from 3 - 12 5 new- if mario wonder had those pixel pipes from odyssey crt time- nothing new but id love those in a real mario game UGHH THIS COMMENT IS FINALLY OVER
Such a fun exercise! Feels like you explored every corner of it too. That final comparison of the new 5 tones vs the original 5 was so interesting how different they looked.
Good idea. For this sprite, 7-8 is the sweet spot IMO, and after 12 it gets starts to appear messy. ~20 is probably optimal for a full-color design. You'd really need bigger pixel art to get away with more colors. Anyway, interesting to see all the variations.
Here's something I noticed with the indexed 5 color and the original 5 color. When put side by side, I realise that I read the original as having mario's left foot forward and in the indexed version, the contour on his suit makes it look like mario's right foot is forward instead. Thanks for the video!
true, and that (weirdly enough) changes the tone of the sprite for me. the og 5count looks almost childlike, where the newer 5count looks more whimsical, if you get what i mean
Wanted to thank you for inspiring to start my pixel art journey this year. Always look to your videos to give my practice some direction especially for retro styled pieces. Looking forward to more videos!
The final comparison between the two 5 indexed colors version is great. It shows how limitation can spark creativity if you know what you're doing. Great stuff, thank you for that video :D
I've been doing sprite art as a hobby for a few years at this point, and I can't believe I just now found your channel! Even this one video has convinced me to take a more intentional approach to how I think about color and shading. Definitely earned yourself a sub!
I do pixel art for some years but only as a hobby and I also spend several months without drawing anything, but this video made me so inspired that I wanted to do something similar. I did the same thing with two characters and that was the most fun I've had doing pixel art ever. And also I learned so much!!! For example, my brain exploded when I used the same color to shade two different colors (like you do with Mario's blue clothes and red hat). Thank you so much for this amazing video.
Personally, I really like the colorful outline on the last few sprites, it's very eye-catching and provides alot more ambient, especially the last one made with the neon-themed colors just makes me want to keep looking at it
The pixel art in Cookie Clicker is remarkably small, (Like 16x16 pixels) and Orteil (The game's creator) uses striking and distinct colors to distinguish identical pixel arts. Generally, the more vibrant they are, the harder they are to obtain. Frankly, in my opinion they look phenomenal at the size they are in their respective menu, while seen at their intended size. I contend If you took the ~256 color Mario and made him a good deal smaller (like with the sheet at 8:35) it would look great, especially if it weren't the focus of the scene.
The comparison between the 5 color sprites is so cool!!! The new one looks so unique with how it uses the same purple-ish color for the cap and the pants
This was such a cool study! Seeing you build up the layers one by one from 1 - 13 colors also provided great insight into how to think about shading in pixel art. This might actually get me to give it a go again in the future. Thanks!
This was pretty cool. I appreciate the insights you provide for each step. In a different video, I saw someone create essentially a mesh for sprite, and some of the ideas in this video could pair really nicely with that to get some dynamic, real-time sprite rendering effects.
6:32 -256 kinda looks like a sprite where mario collects one of those stars, but instead of the entire sprite being a rainbow its just shimmers like he jumped in a can of glitter, loll
This was really fun and very informative, and I really appreciate it. Especially seeing how 5 colors can look so incredibly different depending on implementation was really stunning.
I love the differences between the 5 color palettes at the end. The old is definitely more classic & recognizable, but the new is very dynamic and wild. It even uses the purple to help outline! I could see it representing Mario in Wonder, or being painted by Bowser Jr
This is why I prefer setting 16 colors for a sprite at max I make, half of those 16 bring lighter and darker versions of one of the at most 8 others, ensureing the outline is either black or nonexistant.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
What struck me the most was not only the diminishing returns on 17-24, but how the 24's teal highlights became really distracting, it's like my eyes are constantly being pulled towards it
That's quite interesting, because I read your comment before I got to the part of the video with 24 colours, and I actually quite liked the teal.i didn't really feel much for colours 17-23 and didn't notice them much, but as soon as the teal came in, it felt like something clicked in the piece and it felt so so much more cohesive suddenly
It makes it look like a sprite from katana zero me thinks
@@MillsTC I agree to me it is the best looking sprite, it's as if it's a final render within a scene, with ambient lighting from behind, and the actual lighting from the front. So it truly looks good.
Honestly the teal doesn’t look that bad, reminds me of a lot of the promo art for M&L Dream Team
@@MillsTCagreed
This is a great study honestly. It shows both how important color choices are when working with limitations, AND why more isn't always better when it comes to color. I think it's great to set limitations with pixel art to not muddy things up, but honestly, every step of this challenge looks amazing. I'd LOVE to see this done with other game characters, like maybe a Pokemon.
I agree. The less detailed sprites look more attuned to a GBC title, but by the time 32 colors was introduced it became way too crunchy looking.
@@alyxgraff9121 There's quite a few things I don't understand about his process here, it was looking crunchy because he was choosing colors that don't match the sprite; IE adding teal to what should've been a darker curve (as it's going away from the viewers perspective, and mario isn't shiny) along with other oddities like the green, brown, and purple pixels on both of the hands. Of course it will look crunchy if you don't make an attempt to make the new colors you add appropriate.
If you increased the color count traditionally via more subtle hue shifting and brightness adjustments you could end up with way more colors than this and it looking better. If you gamified this, you could easily hide most of the "different colors" in gradients that are too subtle for the viewer to see whilst only really having a few main colors.
I regularly make 32x~ sprite art with usually more than 20 colors and I've never made art like this before. It's also very strange to me to start with a limited pallet, as all flaws to your colors can be adjusted by eye on the final piece with very few problems these days.
Kinda like how the Sega Genesis has less colors than the SNES but the Genesis uses its colors way more efficiently.
Depends on the project and intent. A larger image would allow for more colors. But, he blatantly says he's choosing colors that have no reason to be there at around 4:45. He's following a "adding too much" trend. I've never seen it in this context and it makes for a fun video!
@uponeric36 that approach still runs the risk of making your sprite look washed out, or unclean. You can only fit so much gradient in that small number of pixels!
I like how the joke ~256 colour one looks quite striking on a CRT where all the colours blend together in quite a satisfying way. 👍
It almost looks like a watercolor painting.
Came here to comment just this. I’d like to see this kind of style done for a whole scene on a CRT just to see!
It does kind of wind up making the image feel more detailed than it actually is.
The ~256 color one (especially on the crt) has a very "Braid" look to it honestly. Not sure exactly why, but I definitely feel the vibes
how are you watching this on a crt
It's insane how the new 5 five colors end up being just as good, or even better than the ones with much higher color count on CRT
I was just going to say exactly the same ! the new 5 colors look amazing on CRT !
honestly, the 256 on crt looks painted, its kinda beautiful
Well, the new 5 color sprite looks almost as realistic as the 24 color one even on an OLED/LCD imo!
I guess working without restrictions and then compressing it down like this is a good way to make realistic graphics work on a very restricted system.
I'd say it's much better, it captures much more detail whilst working with the same amount of colours. Reminds me of old NES spritework and how modern games like Shovel Knight work to recapture that aesthetic with newer techniques.
Damn. As a professional pixel artist who's supposed to have a good intuition about all this, I must say that "orig vs new 5 color" sprites at 7:50 made for a striking image when it's lead up to and presented like this. I've spent 10 minutes just trying to comprehend that these two are both 5 colors, the brain fights it so furiously. Art-styles that get so much out of tiny palettes are always fascinating because the colors they use are highly strategic and purposeful, and you did an incredible job at illustrating how to approach this strategy "in reverse". The logical next step for me was to go "well surely i can use original 5 colors to achieve something remotely similar" - and yes, you can use blue as "dark red" and red as "dark skintone" and introduce sel-out and a shading level and AA and a few tricks to the original sprite to get a pretty interesting result by moving in a somewhat unexpected direction. It opens your mind a little.
In other words, this video is golden. From now on I'm including it in my list of resources to recommend to beginners, for sure.
Thank you, that comparison surprised me as well! I was curious about how I might arrive at something like the 'New 5 Colour' result organically; it definitely helped to have started from the higher render to guide it into place. A big part of it is that I'd never think to render it with such a crazy use of highlights in the first place, so maybe it's just showing to experiment more regardless of colour count! :D
I had to individually count the colors on each sprite because I didn’t even believe it at first
It's funny how hard it is to realize the number of colors, even when you know it. I also experience this effect on the GameBoy, which famously only has four colors, yet it often looks like much more (and sometimes also less).
The most interesting thing though is how ot doesn't translate to other things. For instance the Super Mario levels. I've never noticed the repetitive nature of the background or the similarities in level design (safe for the most obvious ones), but ever since I've watched a deepdive into how the SMB levels are built and how the glitch levels work, I can't unsee these patterns while playing the game anymore! 😂
The alternate 5-colour one is extremely cool and really shows off the power of relative colour.
It's color relativity probably. I've found that in pixel art the same color can be both a highlight and a shadow within the same piece solely by how you frame it (ie. it can be a highlight if the surrounding colors are darker and a shadow if the surrounding colors are lighter)
I love how the 256~ looked on the CRT. It really help blend the colors to make it look so vibrant!
It was actually so cool
That comparison to the crushed 5 vs original 5 is insane and provodes a lot of insight over what's possible
Would be cool (and overly time consuming) to use that technique to push the limitations of older pallets like nes
I made a video about this. There is an easy way to achieve that.
I mean they kind of already did that on the nes, they really had to didnt they
if you look at a lot of chinese bootleg nes demakes, you can kinda see that, most notably in the fighting games, donkey kong country 4 and aladdin
it's not that hard to give an impression of more colors if you tint the whole thing so different colors can be used for shading and flat coloring on different parts of the pic. a while ago i took a photograph and turned it into only blues, then tried to crush it down as much as i could. i could pull off a good looking realistic picture with just 8 shades of blue and some nice dithering.
The colors used on the final sprite had suprising similarities to the boxart of the Mario and Luigi games
Mario and Luigi’s pixel art works becuase it builds up the detail of each character instead of distracting the audience
i was also thinking yoshis island.
Calamity Mod ahh sprite
this seems like a really great exercise in colour theory. im not sure what its called off the top of my head, but the method of utilising every colour on the colour wheel while also maintaining a sense of harmony has always been such an interesting technique to me.
I know that in music, opening up to any note you want is called "Chromatic Scale", but "Chromatic" does just mean colorful so it'd be funny to apply that to visual art 🤣
@@Deadflower019 one of my artstyles is chromatic scale now
What are your flags?
@@Jroobelucios oh they dont really apply to me anymore, something like wolf gender and the lesbian flag i think. ive gotta replace this icon.
@@theboythatsayshootyhoo3865 ohh ok! I've never heard of wolf gender before, I'm learning more every day :D
sprites 13 - 16 are my sweet spot, when the volume gets a lot more refined.
Стараюсь держать от 8 - 12 цветов.
they kinda make me think of the Yoshi's Island art style, which i love so i have to agree with ya
For me it's the 6th sprite just before the cap gets some shade, I like how simple it looks & it reminds me of of SMB3 which I really love
I really like 4. It feels retro and minimalist in a way that isn't as annoying as I usually find those styles.
12 was mine, I actually really didn't like when he shaded next to the eye and my eye kept being drawn to it like it was a pupil.
The "It's-a Sorta Me!" at 5:30 is hilarious 😂
The last one really does look like a shiny reflective sticker.
What if they maed a Mario game based around collecting and using stickers?
@@PixyEm it just needs to have a good reason to use them.
@@PixyEmWho's gonna tell him.
@@PixyEmPaper Mario is on his way to your exact address (with a copy of Sticker Star)
My preference ended up being where color choices were pushed to the end of their style: 3 color feels great as a 'minimalist, 7 color just before face shading works well for me, 12 color just before he gets the whites of his eyes feels really fun, and 16 color where he looks like he'd fit in with Yoshi's Island style.
Cool experiment!
The ~256 colors version looks more like an art-project, reminds me of Seurat and pointilism. Of course completely crazy in the context of a pixel game, but beautiful on its own :)
Thanks! Yeah the 256 one reminds me of those collage-style pieces, where you'd zoom in and every 'pixel' would actually be a full scene with that particular dominant colour
1:03 "I'm just trying to make a goofy sort of running pose, I sup-pose I-"
Intentional or not I already see a pun! Very fun!
i gotta say, i LOVE the funky colorfun lighting on the 24 colors one, even if it is a little too over-rendered and distracting. i love cartoony rim lighting and bright lineart, so i fell in love with the redone 5 colors version! it really helps me out as someone who has a style that strives for this type of vibe to see that you dont need to overdo bright colors to have a bright funky drawing in the end.
Seeing all the Marios lined up like that, it feels like seeing the plumber getting blasted through a bunch of different realities 😆
That was a really great exercise! I enjoy seeing these where you can isolate a single parameter (colour count) and try pushing it to its limits to see how it affects the results. Kinda reframes how you think of these things in the future! 🎨
Mario: I've visited millions of futures to see all possible outcomes.
Luigi: In how many did we save the princess?
Mario: One.
And thanks, yeah it was pretty interesting to discover some of the later stuff through colour reduction. I don't think it would have ever occurred to me to render a 5-colour sprite like that so it's neat to find out what's possible.
The 32 color sprite is really cool as pixel art. It looks like a watercolor painting in pixel form! Great work, Brandon! I think my favorite or the bunch ended up being the 2 color red and black render.
This was absolutely delightful to watch. I like that you didn't really have a point, it was just nice watching/hearing your brain do its thing.
The teal highlight in 24 really made it feel like the promo art for Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. It would be interesting to see a whole game scene in a style like this.
Colors are cool indeed
Calamity mod art:
That sprite got so calamitous by the end
I'm not a frequent commenter on youtube, but I really appreciate your straightforward videos with your amazing pixel art and relaxing voice! Your creativity always makes me want to create art and your content is always exciting. Anyway thanks for the videos, take care and keep it square!
I tend to be the same when watching youtube, so I really appreciate this! Thanks for the kind words, and thanks for watching (...andtakecareandkeepitsquare)!
I'm genuinely in love with 5 color indexed Mario, especially on CRT.
Personally I think 8 colors is the minimum you need to make this particular character look good (you need to have shadows for the skin tone otherwise it looks unnatural and plasticy), with 4-7 being the uncanny valley of not intentionally being super low color count while also not having enough color information to look "complete". Anywhere from 10-14ish is what I think would be reasonable to animate as an actual sprite in a platformer, with 15 and above being more what pixel artists who paint non-moving pieces (maybe with short animation loops within them) would aim for.
The alternate 5 colors is a great example of how stylized you can make pixel art and the power of color relativity (eg. the back of his hat and the front of his overalls are the same color and the brain reads the former as subsurface scattering and the latter as a highlight because of the surrounding colors). On the CRT, I still think the original 8 colors is still the minimum needed to look good, but it also gives you a lot more leeway because the blurriness of the "pixels" is kind of adding free "color blending" to the sprites for you. The 10-15 color range in particular looks really smooth, with the hat becoming practically a gradient- it reminds me a lot of Yoshi's Island sprites.
In the context of the CRT a lot of the details of 15 colors and above are kind of lost due to the aforementioned color blending, and can kind of explain why super high detail spritework with lots of colors wasn't popular in the 80s and 90s besides the technology- because on a CRT screen that detail is lost, so there's no point in adding it. The exception, of course, are the bright highlights on the very last sprite. On a digital screen they honestly looked kind of distracting, but here the color blending gives it a very smooth look and I honestly like how it looks a lot. On the flip side, the alternate 5 colors doesn't look good at all in my opinion- the CRT tends to blow out lighter colors and given that there are lots of light colors used in that sprite the whole thing is kind of hard to look at.
Overall this is a really interesting look at how pixel art has evolved over time and how the medium it's displayed on (CRTs in the olden days and LCDs/OLEDs now) have affected how people draw. CRTs give lots of free color blending so color blocking and composition were more important (more than they already are now), while little details would get lost so people wouldn't bother. Dithering also made more sense back then, because with the color blending it would result in more of an actual gradient. I'm sure technological limitations also played a role as well, but people often overlook the influence CRTs had in directing how people drew art for them.
Meanwhile in the modern day we have super accurate displays that can show down to the individual pixels, so there's a lot more emphasis placed on things like high color counts, rendering actual gradients with individual colors, and single-pixel level details. Because we also get more accurate color displays, color usage has become more important and things like limited palettes are able to be explored more readily (before they were often a side-effect of things like backlit screens or technological limitations).
You are a pixel art god. I love the stylized look with the wacky colors.
That new 5 looks incredible and makes me want a game made in that style
That's a pretty cool idea to play with and quite like how those turned out, they just look really neat. As a video I also really like just watching you work that as you mention might not have "a point" but just seeing the process of just playing around with an idea is super entertaining. Like even these type of videos where it's more just playing around with an idea really gets some idea flowing for me for my next works~
This was super cool. I think my favorite rendering was somewhere in the 14-16 color range, but I think that’s mostly what my experience is in sprite work lol
My favorite ones are 12 and 24. There's something about the teal highlights on 24 that just really hits the spot for me.
weird comment but I just wanna say that this was a really unique, well made video! I paint and animate digitally but have never tried pixel art. This gave me a whole new perspective on it!
Holy Heck. 5 (new) looked really good on the crt.
Just discovered you, and love the CRT Time section!
nah okay the 32 color one is just how i do minecraft textures. i love doing that kinda stuff. tho honestly, love the "modded terraria" feel of the finished 24 color one. its like way too fancy to be vanilla, and strays away from the color palette like any fanwork does. like thats deadass how some shit looks. also, love how eventually you just ended up doing things that some indie games use in engine lighting for. neat stuff! i wish i could be this much of a crackhead about lighting! and im already insane about it!
"nah okay the 32 color one is just how i do minecraft textures"
There's actually a term for it, block vomit
It's when a build has many many different blocks, sometimes it can look good but it depends on the build really
I've loved to see all those marios on CRT, but smaller models. To see how pixels got mixed.
Nice to have you back, Brandon! I always look forward to your videos :D
What I especially love are the two 5-color results after you played around with the color indexing, then redid it. I feel like I normally shy away from rim lighting as it often distracts my eye, but it's somehow not as bad when it's more of the surface area.
Srsly, tho, this is just good color study, something I really never played around with until recently, so this is deffos a video that is right up my alley at the moment. Wow, what a result. :o
A particular exercise! Simplicity often is key in pixel art (despite how impressive certain complex pieces can get) so looking at it on a palette angle is important!
Also notification gang
I honestly really like the third iteration with only black, tan, and red. Something about the simple colours really lends itself to good line work, which I think you did a great job with. It's very elegant and toned back compared to the regular Mario with his blue overalls and white gloves.
"I don't think there really was a point beyond just *hey, colors are cool, I guess!*" Dang if that ain't me every day.
I'd LOVE to see a game in the style of 9!
I missed your videos! Thanks to you I'm back at it and I'm better than ever! Stay well man and I hope to see you more!
This was beautiful, the 5 v 5 comparison at the end was so nice
What a great video. I like the color indexing technique, that was a really unique design
Suddenly turned into Calvin and Hobbes when the shading was added
Woah that stylized 5 color mario actually looks really good on the crt!
The part where you showed the two wildly different sprites that have the same number of colors blew my mind.
Not to get POLITICAL but I do think this is a good demonstration on what's happening in the video game industry in terms of graphical fidelity. Graphics have become so advanced that each new console is starting to deliver those diminishing returns. I feel like we're in the 17-24 color range at this point, so to speak, and each new improvement is exponentially less impactful than the ones that came before.
The bit at the end also shows why art style is ultimately more important graphical fidelity, too.
I would love it if more devs made cel shaded games because they look so good at a high res. Its the best time for that type of aesthetic in terms of hardware because everyone could boost it up to a high res and not have lag at this point, and it makes all the lines look perfect, otherwise cel shading has lots of visible jaggies.
I don't think that's political 😂
@@chunkymonkey7983 I was joking. Lol
This is a really good pixel art tutorial. Simplifying it down to one color at a time is a really helpful way to break down a complex design.
Now animate it
LMAO
impossible!1!!
@@ERRAYAMAKASSARCENDEKIAI am an animator, animating is possible.
@@ERRAYAMAKASSARCENDEKIA It isn't impossible, but it'd definitely take a long time and honestly? Wouldn't be worth it to do it just for a video.
@@yonakakurai1737 We'll quit half through. But if somebody manages to do it,
welp. Congratulate them.
Crazy
256 looks good on the crt! the new 5 and 7 are also really cool. i could see them being in the new mario wonder game
This is exactly the content I wanted to see today.
That last 24 color one gives me Mario & Luigi series game cover / case art vibes
1:47 looks like the smb3 sprite
I'm working on a lot of pixel art at the moment for a game and this is a very helpful look at what is possible and how one might approach choosing colors or choosing things and I think this is good because it's forced me to be a little bit more experimental
Towards the middle of the video I felt my gut start dropping, But then pulling it back was such a cool result! good job dude
this is what I need today, just a chill guy doing something funny.
the nintendo ninjis are coming for you drawing mario
Ninja is our word, you can use Ninji.
We have a GameCube game called i-ninja so I call them Nintendo I-ninjas
Gradually became a magical vacation/starsign sprite with all those colours
That's really cool little experiment. You don't need to make a point, you just made a very interesting video, raised an important topic, showed the possibilities. From this moment, everyone can decide for themselves how much colors they want to add into their works.
This video made my day, you just earned a new sub
1- this isn’t anything
2- still not much to say, but great shade of red
3- i love this one
4- just mario without shading
5- just mario without shading with gloves
6- just mario without shading with gloves with colored shoes
7- if nintendo went back to 2d, and changed the art style a bit for it, this is probably what you’d get
8- i take it back this is what you’d get
9- realizing how uneventful this comment might actually become
10- i’m not gonna repeat 7 again
11- prime mario?
12- ofc i spoke too soon
13- first point of “criticism…” i like 12 more now. its just the shadeless skin looked nice
14- and you brought me right back in
15- subtle but nice
16- i think we’ve actually reached what we needed for mario
17- gonna miss the black shading
18- looks great actually
19- this comment is getting so hard to make
20- too dark actually
21- what is happening
22- alright i like it again
23- ok you can stop now it looks good
24- jeez those actually are distracting
FURTHER
32- mario on rainbow road next to the sun
256- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
messing around in photoshop- looks good from 3 - 12
5 new- if mario wonder had those pixel pipes from odyssey
crt time- nothing new but id love those in a real mario game
UGHH THIS COMMENT IS FINALLY OVER
Such a fun exercise! Feels like you explored every corner of it too. That final comparison of the new 5 tones vs the original 5 was so interesting how different they looked.
Would love a 2d Mario game with this pixel art 😍
A game with the 2 colors would be interesting, kind of like down well.
Good idea. For this sprite, 7-8 is the sweet spot IMO, and after 12 it gets starts to appear messy. ~20 is probably optimal for a full-color design. You'd really need bigger pixel art to get away with more colors. Anyway, interesting to see all the variations.
Someone should make a game where all sprites are 24, 32 or 48 colors
I love your "curb-stomped a .jpeg" comment, I was thinking the same thing!
5:00 looks like something from terraria calamity
Great video! Super cool seeing that final comparison of 5 color sprites. Can't believe how much depth remained in the new one.
Here's something I noticed with the indexed 5 color and the original 5 color. When put side by side, I realise that I read the original as having mario's left foot forward and in the indexed version, the contour on his suit makes it look like mario's right foot is forward instead. Thanks for the video!
true, and that (weirdly enough) changes the tone of the sprite for me. the og 5count looks almost childlike, where the newer 5count looks more whimsical, if you get what i mean
Wanted to thank you for inspiring to start my pixel art journey this year. Always look to your videos to give my practice some direction especially for retro styled pieces. Looking forward to more videos!
This is more insightful and useful than any pixel art tutorial I've seen
I can imagine a fan game with this sprite. Like a mixture of a platformer and an rpg, it would be cool. IMO
This channel is a gem I'm so glad this got recommended to me!!
Jpg compressed mario has some flair to it ngl 😂, love all of them
The final comparison between the two 5 indexed colors version is great. It shows how limitation can spark creativity if you know what you're doing. Great stuff, thank you for that video :D
I've been doing sprite art as a hobby for a few years at this point, and I can't believe I just now found your channel! Even this one video has convinced me to take a more intentional approach to how I think about color and shading. Definitely earned yourself a sub!
Looks like a mario sprite that you would see in one of the Mario and Luigi games on the Game Boy Advance
I for one am very fond of the psychedelic traveler 256 Mario, he looks like a pretty watercolor set piece like others have said
6:31 ok but why does ~256 genuinely look good. its pretty
I do pixel art for some years but only as a hobby and I also spend several months without drawing anything, but this video made me so inspired that I wanted to do something similar. I did the same thing with two characters and that was the most fun I've had doing pixel art ever. And also I learned so much!!! For example, my brain exploded when I used the same color to shade two different colors (like you do with Mario's blue clothes and red hat).
Thank you so much for this amazing video.
Personally, I really like the colorful outline on the last few sprites, it's very eye-catching and provides alot more ambient, especially the last one made with the neon-themed colors just makes me want to keep looking at it
Those 2 and 3 colors look the best for me
The pixel art in Cookie Clicker is remarkably small, (Like 16x16 pixels) and Orteil (The game's creator) uses striking and distinct colors to distinguish identical pixel arts. Generally, the more vibrant they are, the harder they are to obtain. Frankly, in my opinion they look phenomenal at the size they are in their respective menu, while seen at their intended size.
I contend If you took the ~256 color Mario and made him a good deal smaller (like with the sheet at 8:35) it would look great, especially if it weren't the focus of the scene.
The 5 colour version based on indexing looks AMAZING on the CRT. I can imagine an effect like that being used back in the day.
The comparison between the 5 color sprites is so cool!!! The new one looks so unique with how it uses the same purple-ish color for the cap and the pants
This was such a cool study! Seeing you build up the layers one by one from 1 - 13 colors also provided great insight into how to think about shading in pixel art. This might actually get me to give it a go again in the future. Thanks!
'Colors are cool i guess' is a good conclusion
This was interesting and I liked it
This was pretty cool. I appreciate the insights you provide for each step. In a different video, I saw someone create essentially a mesh for sprite, and some of the ideas in this video could pair really nicely with that to get some dynamic, real-time sprite rendering effects.
6:32 -256 kinda looks like a sprite where mario collects one of those stars, but instead of the entire sprite being a rainbow its just shimmers like he jumped in a can of glitter, loll
Just found your channel! The pixel art looks awesome =). Guess, I have a a lot of really cool videos to binge-watch!
I do like the 3 color version at 7:14, has a very gameboyesque vibe
damn that new 5 is so pretty
This was very enjoyable and well edited! Engaging, fun, and endearing. Thank you for uploading!
Man as a pixel artist myself, I love this
7:40 looks like a CGA-inspired Mario!
This was really fun and very informative, and I really appreciate it. Especially seeing how 5 colors can look so incredibly different depending on implementation was really stunning.
I love the differences between the 5 color palettes at the end. The old is definitely more classic & recognizable, but the new is very dynamic and wild. It even uses the purple to help outline! I could see it representing Mario in Wonder, or being painted by Bowser Jr
This actually looks amazing! I really like the final result, but I also really like the 8 color
This is why I prefer setting 16 colors for a sprite at max I make, half of those 16 bring lighter and darker versions of one of the at most 8 others, ensureing the outline is either black or nonexistant.