Mostly pixel artist won't take into consideration that Super Mario uses 8KB for all the sprites, and the bottom of the Peach's dress is mirrored to save memory. It would be interesting if the people "teleport" themselves to NES age and think as game developers, to understand why this initial Peach's design could be the better solution for the NES limitations.
While true, a few of those reinterpretations do actually seem to keep the mirroring in mind while still making significant improvements. Which isn't to say the original is bad for what it was. Of course an artist with the benefit of hindsight and no time constraints could do better. Whereas given just how little screen time she get, the original just couldn't be such a singular focused priority when they were also having to draw everysingle other sprite in the game as well.
@@EmeralBookwiseObviously if the original developers cared this much about the art direction, they would have tried to bring it to all sprites, not just Peach. Later NES games like SMB2 USA and SMB3 have much better art styles than early NES games with more utilitarian design like SMB1, though they also had more experienced developers and more advanced cartridge technology so it's hard to say how much of that is art direction
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@@TheRenegade...Dokidoki Panic is also already a lot better.
There is also what is lost from viewing old sprites on modern panels. These graphics were designed for CRTs and that affects the output. Also, there is how large the image would be on a 10-13 in television at 240p. Oh and then there is the difference depending on if you are connected with RF or composite cables. NES sprites range in how good they are, so I'm not just saying bad sprites should get a pass. Just that the modern experience is most likely not the same as what it was made for.
Also a good way to learn art in general, some of the most skilled artist that I met in college had been the kids that traced pictures of goku in elementary and middle school
Something I found missing from the critique of the original sprite is how it was designed to be viewed. Unlike more modern pixel art, it was designed to be viewed sitting some distance away from a CRT TV, rather than sitting close to a high-resolution monitor. What may seem a bit odd now, could be required due to the medium of its time. Other than that though, great video.
Tbf, most pixel artists miss this because A) them and their audiences do not use a CRT B) Modern Pixel art software makes it hard to view pixel art with at the 1 scanline per pixel row ratio typical in the CRT era during the drawing process. C) 480p is your realistic minimum as that's as low as most CRT monitors go, but so much of the era was drawn at 240p, in fact pretty much all of it was until 3D gaming. D) even if they do use CRT as a reference, they will likely reference RGB/component which loses out on blending effects. There is an active effort to hide the widespread usage of composite video effects historically in the retro-gaming community because they all use expensive HD RETROVISION cables and have an attachment to the maker, even though composite looks better for many games due to such effects. It's funny because we all love pixel art, but I'd say the vast majority of pixel artists are disconnected from it's origins, many may have never seen a CRT before, some might even not realize there's a difference between CRT and flat screens other than resolution.
Though I probably should have paid service to this point in the video, I did take a peek at the original sprite on a CRT recording of the game and I think in this case all of the criticisms still stand. Note, if you were a handheld gamer you've been seeing pixel art on LCD since 1989, including this sprite on the GB:C remake Super Mario Bros Deluxe in 1999, 25 years ago, without CRT artifacting.
@@AdamCYounis I certainly agree that most people are more familiar with crisp pixel art presented by LCD screens. I was mostly explaining that the odd way the fact looks could be to capture specific elements on lower-resolution CRTs, rather than simply odd design decisions. I don't happen to have an old 80's CRT I can test it out on though, so cannot say for sure. It is just something people don't generally bring up when criticizing older pixel art, so I wanted to mention it.
The sprite was also limited, like the skirt is symmetrical because half of it is flipped, to save 2 tiles. That is probably why toad is looking directly at the camera. Bowser and Mario were higher priority sprites that peach and toad. But peach's sprites have never been that good, even the one in super Mario world feels odd
@@rex_melynas and the original sprite uses 2 different palettes, since NES sprites could only use 3 colors (4 without transparency) That's why there's no white in the upper section (using black instead), a restriction that most reinterpretations ignored
I think even as a beginner, I definitely enjoy working with smaller sprites because it can feel less overwhelming with a smaller canvas and definitely serves as a good warmup. That’s not to say it holds little challenge.
Yeah small pixel art makes it a lot easy to make something that is at least passable. But trying to make something really good can actually be harder than traditional art.
I also think that small-ish canvases (64x64 or smaller depending on personal preference) are better for learning pixel art for two big reasons: Doing a lot of small pieces gives you more opportunities to make mistakes, learn from them, and move on than spending forever on a big piece. And every pixel is a decision you need to make, so a canvas with fewer pixels has a smaller number of much higher impact decisions, so you’ll find yourself with more opportunities to learn and problem solve
I suspect that a small part of why NES peach looks a little awkward and stiff is because her lower dress is (internally in the NES) actually one 8x8 tile flipped horizontally! Her arms, hair, and hands can't go any lower than where they are. The head is still a little funny looking, but clearly intentional and the style of the time for Nintendo. Do you think the mouth is meant to be lips or a big smile?
Yeah, I think that the thing that really slipped under the radar is that they only had so many pixels for the entire game, so clever re-use of sprites by mirroring them or swapping the colours around really was a necessity. I feel like there's a chance that her arms are actually Mario's mouth re-coloured, as they're almost 1-1.
@@casanovafunkenstein5090 Her arms are their own distinct sprite. They could've freed up another sprite for the dress by getting rid of the "80" score sprite and upping a couple scores from 800 to 1000 to make it unnecessary. But yeah, there was definitely a tight pixel limit on that game.
I want this to become an actual Mario character. It reminds me of that Powerpuff Girls episode where the three criminals disguise themselves as the Powerpuff Girls. Or the fake Straw Hat pirates (aka "Chunky D. Luffy" and co.) from One Piece.
They remade it on SNES in the all-star collection that version is as good as you will get. If they wanted to do a remake to show off technology they would do 3D like Arc-Sys
They remade it on SNES in the all-star collection that version is as good as you will get. If they wanted to do a remake to show off technology they would do 3D like Arc-Sys
One thing I don't think was mentioned (unless I just missed it!) is that, artistic differences aside, most of the redesigned sprites (including justin_cyr's) aren't possible with the NES constraints as I understand them. It could only have 3 colours in each 8x8 sprite, and the redesigned version uses 4 - sorry, can't have the white in the eyes & crown, or the black on the belt. Someone else also noted that the original sprite uses 7 memory slots, while the redesign needs 8 and would also need more for leg animation (did you notice that the dress and hair/upper face can be reused, and it's just the middle sprites with the mouth and arm that would need to change?). I'd also note that while it undeniably has more appeal, justin_cyr's redesign really doesn't fit with the style of the game or early 80s sprites in general... But both technical points are kind of nitpicky, and the general art advice is great. :)
The original had black eyes as well, achieved by putting the scene in front of a black background and using the transparency color, as many games did back then.
@@stevethepocket Yeah, any "black" part of Peach's sprite is actually transparent, which isn't really an issue as long as she stays against a solid black background. But if she were to move around the "holes" in her sprite would be quite obvious.
@UltraCenterHQ Truly doind that with limited space on the nes. Besides, I wouldn't give credit on saying their designs are better, considering they copy it from an already concept.
You know, I think these original sprite artists don't get credit for the fact that they didn't have graphics editing software to do these on. They were literally just programmers drawing sprites on grid paper and then hand encoding that into what you'd see on the screen. The process you use nowadays where an artist can draw and erase and try again just wasn't even an option.
This. And even if they had artist support it was the same issue. At best they had a digitizer board to transfer the grid paper design instead of hitting it in ju number. And on top of that. They really only could see how the designed looked in reality when it was put into the game. (Smaller/crt blurry ) And this loop to get the design from paper into the game could take hours or more
i mean... if you wanted to optimize it, you could have colored cutout squares for you to place in a grid to sketch how the sprites would look like, peach looks ugly just because they rushed it as there were more important elements to make
People who say that you don't teach anything don't understand what you teach. It's a common mistake to confuse specific skills or tools with the principles that need to be implemented with their help. The latter is much more difficult and requires a certain level of thinking. You need to understand the essence of an abstract thing in order to successfully apply it specifically. The funniest thing is that thanks to you, I learned several functional things in step-by-step guides on isometry or shaders in Unity. So these people are doubly wrong. Thanks for your videos, good luck with the game. You are one of those who inspired me to solo development in my free time.
@@NoldoWalker yeah but even so. Doesn't make any sense to me. He's clearly top notch, as for the ways he does things, everybody's different and chooses a way to do things. Idk it's weird
Everyone is talking about how it was designed and meant to be from a distance on a CRT. But so far I've seen no one talk about the actual limitations the NES had, and also the super Mario bros game in general. The designers clawed and fought to get as much as they could out of the limited space of the cartridge and NES sprites are typically subdivided into smaller sprites to work with. They have a pallet of 4 colors, two of them being white and black. And overall this was one of the first famicom games. The designers had very little room to work with, they were trailblazers and just starting out on the platform and were still figuring stuff out. There is a massive improvement between super Mario bros and super Mario bros 2/ super Mario USA, they ended up learning more and getting better for their platform and its limitations.
Firstly, they didn't have to use white and black in the palette. They could use all four colors, but usually only used three for sprites so the fourth could be transparent. Secondly, the Famicom already been out more than two years before Super Mario Brothers was released. There were over sixty Famicom titles that predated SMB.
I can imagine that the princess sprite was not high on their priority list. Teams were made of a handful of people, they were working with something still new, with lots of constraints due to hardware, levels to design, gameplay mechanics, sound, music, etc. Can't be perfect in everything.
I was a professional pixel artist when I was a teenager and in my early 20’s. Got to work on licensed gba, nds, and cell phone game titles. It’s so fun trying to cram detail in 16x16 or 32x32 pixels.
What I think is getting lost in this discussion is that the NES was still very early in the history of color pixel art, the original SMB was one of the first games on a completely brand-new platform bashed out in a year by a bunch of programmers, not artists. Shiggy and company didn't really have any existing gorgeous 32x32 pixel artwork to draw upon for inspiration either, unlike the VERY obviously Shovel Knight, Shantae, and Cave Story inspired redesigns shown here. It's the same reason Toad is flipping the bird rather than waving or cheering as intended, they didn't have the experience and retrospect we have the benefit of.
I dont agree. I don't think it was a lack of inspiration. There was a lot of memory restrictions 8kb for game grpahicswhich didn't allowed to have more complex designs additonal to the palette limitations
I would say it was not that early. Around the time there was plenty really amazing arcade games (like just check out ghost and goblins) Key thing is that NIntendo Themselves did not have so good arcade hardware compared to the others. Basically same as NES so the artists at Nintendo was a bit behind skill wise so to speak. Mario look like a previous gen game compared to say ghost and goblins. As it uses previous gen hardware. So they where not pushing any artstyle really. What they did was push the memory and technical limits at the time
@@artumgsi think this so. Plus the fact that Nintendo had their art style of rather flat non shaded sprites. So Mario also fits in this art style. 1-2 years later however when more arcade games having found new styles through better hardware. Those styles of course affected Nintendo and was “backported” to NES tech. Just look at all arcade games from say 82-84 majority of it looks in style similar to SMB Natrually as it was similar hardware specs. And then look at the arcade games from 85-88 (16 color sprites etc) and then look at NES games from around 86-88 and how much more how they looked like the arcade games even if they had less colors.
It's her key feature. We could say peach shaped bangs too. In their defense, its so hard to convey details in such small canvas, they had to compromise.
@@charlesabju907 Yeah but they just made a redhead Rosalina in like most of these!!! There's so many peek-a-bangs that it makes me angry and wanting to sit them down with my NES and SMB2 cart and make them play the entire game as Peach. THERE WAS A WAY. THIS WAS NOT IT.
@@charlesabju907 you're not wrong about the difficulty in that original look, but I think I see it decently enough. Her current self is such a departure from the original still so it's fine lol. I was just being goofy.
Now I can't unsee Peach giving Mario the finger gun 😂😂😂 All these years, I thought she was holding her hands together and the "thumb" pixel was her shoulder, but now it really does look like Mario the Italian American Brooklyn plumber went to go rescue his Italian American Brooklyn neighbor's mom, and she's saying "Heyy it's-a Mario!!!! 👉👉"
Great video, instructive while still being laid back and fun. I've been doing pixel art for a year or so and am basically teaching myself from the ground up, so learning about these foundational art concepts is really helpful.
Thumbs up for the after-dark one. I like how you make anything wholesome, even showing a bit of ankle. Love your stuff, bro, you always inspire me to write!
This is the exact thing I feel about pixel art. Small scale to me is so much more interesting. Large scale can have mind boggling details but at some point the difference between it and “regular” digital art starts to get blurred, and the main difference is more in technique than in medium. Small scale pixel art is by far my favourite because I love seeing how people try and work within these tight limitations. This isn’t to discredit pixel artists who work with much larger canvases mind you, it’s more of a personal preference thing.
Yeah, it's pretty weird to me that most of them is throwing away the big smile to look more 'good looking', splitting her dress for no reason and while having a big chest in itself doesn't mean anything, but when you take a character with ready proportions and inflate them like that, it's just like. Unecessary, it doesn't do anything except seek out to the male gaze, which I think if unfurtunate. Princess peach can't just look like an avarage person, she has to look like a smeggsy model with a pouty look at all times. I really appreciated the redesigns keeping the dress comfortable, but the complete neutralizing of her happy mouth was still sad because it's supposed to be a celebratory moment, not just a monotone stand. Even an 0 mouth that could be interpreted as suprise, but still keeping it small, would've been nice
@@Noone-hp8zm I’m not really bothered by all that male gaze stuff, but I really do wish people could dial back their horniness. I can’t think of a single time Peach wore a dress that showed off her thighs or her chest.
It’s kinda nuts just how much better they’re able to make a theoretically very similar pixel character look but the boobs and legs feel ridiculous. It’s really making me wonder why the original sprite is so lacking, they definitely could’ve made it much better without getting to intensive for the NES
@@AdamCYounis More than you might think. It has layers, and primarily scanlines render nothing like pixels. For example: pixels on CRT aren't square (there is no pixels, they're just a part of the video signal that defines scanlines) so peach was thinner on console. Between pixels, the colors would blend together based on their difference (more contrast = less blending) because of composite video signals. Insert intense debate here about if this is what the developers intended, or if the developers actually wanted you to use s-video which is sharper with no blending but instead the console makers saved a buck shipping composite cables. Regardless, many many games used blending effects more or less intentionally. Finally, there's size, distance, and resolution. The max vertical resolution you'd use for pixel art on CRT is 240p. The average screen by the 2000s would've been between 24 to 32 inches in 4:3, and viewed from about 6 feet~ away. So for reference on my 32 inch CRT, adult Mario in Super Mario World would be about the size of my thumb if I pressed it on the screen. CRT TV's had a softer image than CRT monitors, so anything you draw you have to keep in mind it will look softer on the TV and viewed from further away. CRT's also could hit pure black like oleds and have perfect horizontal motion clarity (meaning you worried much less back then about things in movement being harder to see) Despite all of this, the real limitations for pixel artists was console hardware. Palette restrictions and lack of ROM space are 99% the look of the NES. If you try a 320x240 palette you'll have access to the same screen resolution as artists of the time, and there's a ton you can do with that space, especially since you can change it up to 60 times a second
BTW, it's not just the screen, but the video cable connecting the c9nnsole to the TV as well. The NES had both an RF port and an RCA, with the latter giving sharper image quality than the former.
@@LostInNumbers Having played it both by screwing in the coax every time I wanted to play and having to memorize red-white-yellow because I had the misfortune of my dad having a TV that didn't color its ports, just writing "video" and "audio L" and "audio R", I can definitely say that it didn't really make much of a difference on the NES. The SNES, yes, but NES looked just as sharp to me on both. Maybe on higher end CRTs instead of cheap TVs?
MASSIVE. There's a youtuber that covers animation and sprite work in old games (particularly FF) and goes over a lot of how artists would have to consider CRT in every design choice.
The one directly in the middle really pops out, it's realistic but simple, it has really, really good color contrast. I'm talking about the one by PuppiesandAnime btw
Also, it's one of the only one that fits the original game's style, and doesn't fall in the traps of "needs more boobs", "needs more legs" or "needs more anime eyes"
Very important to note that 1. Old sprites were made for CRT displays. If you viewed some of the redraws with a CRT filter, especially with a composite filter you would suddenly see that they're much harder to read, and in fact become straight up hideous, and 2. Those old sprites were made also with reused tiles to save rom/ram space.
DonMarramiau's version is the best, I think. It's nicely detailed and Peach's femininity is clearer than some of the others, and the use of color blending shows that the artist has a solid grasp of how to make the most out of the limited palette. Making a layered sprite with some additional detail and color is well within this artist's skill, and I have no doubt that they could make it look great even with such a small area to work with.
The base reason behind the difficulty of limited grid it's so simple to undestand, but seeing the amount of control you and the other artists can have in such a limited space is mindblowing. Also, I think your take is really one of the best, amazing work and very interesting video!
Something I also find missing in the discussion here is how much room there is for interpretation with original sprite, while being unmistakably a princess with a puffy dress and long hair. To me that speaks to the fact that the sprite is doing it's job well, not against it. I would be extremely surprised if anyone actually did see that sprite in game and imagined the character to look like the "literal Interpretation" you showed. Regarding the CRT discussion 10:58 would probably be a very good example of looking better on a CRT, because all that detail blending together and making the simpler parts like the sword and face pop just a little bit more. And to be clear, I do like a lot of what's being said here, but I feel these are 3 different approaches and putting them against each other without context doesn't do any of them justice.
The way you explain and your process of drawing pixel art is so different from how I look at things! I should try this sort of style some time, I tend to really struggle with anything other than very basic organic or mechanical shapes
less than a minute into the video i was inspired to pick up pixel art again after a couple years and make my own version of peach... finished it, resumed the video, and a couple minutes later i realize i actually did mine at HALF the resolution of the original. guess i took the lesson to heart lmao. great video, thanks for the inspiration! :)
Great video! Another thing I think that needs to be mentioned is the scale of the sprite compared to its environment. Those sprites look great, but they might look like a smudge in a full game picture (specially if it's something in movement you get to see for a second).
And apparently art trends like this last about a week. I want to know all these others that happen. The only large scale ones I know are Bowsette and the Anhka dance.
the main one I know of is the subreddit r/pixelart. it has 2.3 million members (tho it’s pretty old so i think most users are inactive), and I’ve seen quite a few peach redesigns (filter for top of this month!).
Ahoj, jsem z Česka a amatérsky se věnuji pixel atru. Ráda se dívám na tvá videa. Prosím více tutoriálů ;) Ráda bych vytvořila nějakou malou hru, ale třeba animace mi dělají pořád problém... Máš příjemný projev a vysvětlení jsou srozumitelná. Pokračuj v dobré práci :) Hi, I'm from the Czech Republic and I'm an amateur pixel artist. I love watching your videos. Please more tutorials ;) I'd like to create a small game, but animations are still a problem for me... You have a pleasant speech and the explanations are understandable. Keep up the good work :)
Wow your princess Peach versions were very beautiful, both of them. Though Peach has a very characteristic "peach" shaped bangs on her forehead, in the afterdark version the idea is there but it was totally missing from the first one.
That's the remix of Dire Dire Docks on the Gamechops album "Mario & Chill", by Helynt. Almost all of the music you hear on the channel is licensed through Gamechops, whose artists produce free music based on game franchises (links always in the description)
I love this video, good breakdown of representing a lot of detail within limitations. A lot of this applies to my use of PS1-style Low-Poly 3D modelling and how I apply the textures as well.
I am a very new artist. Not sure if this video was done differently from your normal ones, but I can say that this has been one of the MOST informative and helpful videos I've seen. Thanks for this style.
Been learning how to do pixel art for a freelance project, I was already making a lot of these choices, but I appreciate you putting into words what i was trying to process.
Wow... all those different interpretations of the same character using only the same 4 colors in the same meager 16 by 24 box. Sprite art, even with old-school limitations really can be so amazing, and makes me want to see what some of these artists could do if they resprited the entire game.
Fun fact: Mario 2 (lost levels) actually redesigned her sprite and made it looked better yet nintendo loves using the smb1 version a lot for some reason
Something I feel that this video should have covered is how these drawings look on a CRT, since this is a reimagining of the pixel sprite for the game from the 90s, i feel like it would be approriate to judge how that looks as well in the redesigns!
Any minecraft builder understand these points so, so well. The higher resolution of a larger build is just so much simpler to get right because the defects are A: less noticeable or B: easier to spot because so many blocks are out of place.
People just NOW are seeing that peach had an encounter with a bee hive in SMB 1? I've been messing with pixel art for most of my life and one thing that's always fascinated me was how artists have to design characters around the limitations of what the game's graphics could allow. Mario himself was designed to look as distinct as possible using only 3 colors in a 16x16 sprite.
I swear, this all sounds like a class I had at Columbia college chicago! My professor went over all this stuff! Great video learned a lot about pixel art
Years ago I realized this same thing regarding Pixel Art, when you start you try fewer pixels and then expand your canvas because you realize you cant give it the detail you want, heck, my first OC was designed around that and did give it a pretty cool and dynamic pose to use more of the space because standing up didn't allow it to use the corners of the canvas, after that I started making more excersises regarding the canvas size, such as makin a ton of 16x16 sprites doing the exact same gesture but with different variants, an example that I remember the most is when I drew a wizard extending his hand as if it was throwing a spell then someone told me "Hey, it looks like he is dancing" because it looked like an animatic XD Guys, try something like that, and after you are confortable with different things then try expanding the amount of colors you are using, increase your colors and change the way you use them, or start by picking any the colors but black and white then draw something and try to make it make sense
I knit colorwork patterns and usually make my own, they are knit with charts that are basically pixel art. I use pixel art techniques to draw the designs, and I've always found it harder to scale down a chart design to use less stitches than to have more. I often have to do this for putting designs on thicker weights of yarn or putting a design onto a smaller garment 😭
As someone that lacks any creative bone in his body and draws as well as a 5 year old, this was fascinating. I can't believe how much detail, emotion and/or expression these have! So much talent. I can only imagine if the OG had looked this way; it would've been incredible nearly 40 years ago, and frankly, still looks awesome today.
There actually is a fairly good understanding in neuroscience now about how vision works! And similar to the neural net in the video, the processing (at least in the occipital lobe) does start with edge recognition!
Nice explanation. I sure didn't think that there would be this kind of complexity when I chose pixel art, but that gives it some flavor too so it's okay.
9:20 Ah ha! Now I will provide a fun fact that nobody would probably bother to read but either way. I think what he really means here is "What all Vertebrates does", the architecture of the eye of the Vertebrate is different from the invertabrates (there are actually 3 types of eyes that vary significantly interms of structures: The compound eyes (e.g. the eyes of a fly), the pinhole eyes (e.g. the eyes of a nautilous) and the vertebrate eyes (e.g. our eyes)). The ability to "continue discontinued shapes", "Fill in the gap", can largely be attributed to the need to make up for the imperfections in our eyes (e.g. blind spots, and also there are blood vessels at the bottom of the eyes that should have casted a shadow, but the shadows where removed by the brains of the vertibrates when processing the image). The eyes of say a fly or an octopus does not have these flaws, and thus these animals would likely not do as much image preprocessing, hence be significantly less sensitive to the patterns mentioned in the video. (They will still need to do some, but generally speaking Vertibrates perform significantly more image processing than these animals)
BTW this is also why Octopuses are considered "Masters of disguise" capable of blending into any underwater environment, where as the camouflage of many vertibrates, especially mammals stand out so much, people sell their skin for a profit (e.g. tigers, deer): Most disguises are engineered according to the parties these disguises are meant to target (pray or predators), so it often doesn't work for species that see things differently. e.g. our eyes see color as a combination of "RGB", because our eyes only have read, blue, green light receptors. most other mammals only have Blue and Green light sensors, and most disguises in the nature target "BG" vision. This is also why Red Green color blind is the most common one: "Red" is a "newer" feature, so there are more bugs. but Octopuses' eyes works differently, and it is capable of seeing "True colors", (i.e. the true wave length of the EM wave, instead of the mix of some number of colors), combined their ability to create "True colors" (By changing the structure of their skin to reflect different light rather than using pigments), they are capable of creating disguises that are effective to all visual systems, including ours.
As a pixel artist who specializes in low res stuff, I actually partly disagree. Tiny stuff with palette limitations isn't really *harder* so much as I'd describe it as a different skill set entirely. The higher the resolution, the closer it is to more traditional forms of art but all of those skills don't translate directly to smaller stuff. But the reverse is also true! I actually have a hard time adjusting to larger resolutions because I did start small.
@@Anna-jv8xi Hm, if you mean @Sindle that one has a few deviations of the right side of the dress that aren't there on the left. If you meant two to the left of kirai on the other hand. I thought so too! However, I took it into paint and measured and unfortunately the symmetrical part of the dress is not 8 pixels tall and so a 2 pixel layer that has the non-symmetrical hands in it stops it from saving memory. There's a lot of stretched out pixels on that particular row of Peach's some of these are large enough that they look like two whole pixels!
I don't do art often but when i do i focus on large pixels. My canvas usually dosen't go farther than 64×64 and you do have to be very picky about what you decide what every pixel does especially when working around faces, you can see that almost none of the resprites you showed off have the nose represented but since the face is still facing forward it can be assumed that her nose is very small, some of them don't show off her mouth either which is done for a similar reason. It's interesting to see what artists kept and what they decided was unimportant as well as their own interpretation/spin.
The one by Xysspon is the most visually interesting to me- it's the only that really stands out as being its own thing. It's also clear what's being conveyed. You even get personality and character from it, which is impressive for a handful of still dots on a screen.
I'm currently developing an game in Unreal that uses a base of 24x24 pixels, and it's extremely difficult to make a sprite that's recognizable for what it is, has good character design elements, and looks good in that small amount of space. For me, most of my character's interesting character design aspects (notably shape and detail) are in the face. I also feel faces, or what we perceive as faces, are the most important part that most people will focus on and associate themselves with. In that, for my 24x24 character design, I went with an _almost_ superdeformed anime look, but not quite so big of a head as to be comical, but about 55% of the pixel height is dedicated to the head, and the rest is the body. The body is largely there to give a visual feedback of player inputs in the game as opposed to existing to add to the character design (though there are still character design elements in the body, but it's must more understated).
There is also those factors to consider. 1. The designed was often made to use as little data as possible. Reuse sprite tile data - flip them. Shade palettes. 2. the tools. Most art at this time was made on paper and then digitized which really added production time. And often they had tight production budgets = not possible to tweak sprites that we can much more easily do before. 3 (mentioned a bit) style at the time. Some of the design choices that look odd to use can be found in Japanese comic etc at that time. So the what we see as bad design might had been intended. 4 CRT - all art we see here I displayed on modern sharp screens. Which tbh is very bad practice for such rework. What is important is to view all those new sprite on a default average consumer tv at that time. As this will show how the sprites look in reality. And it can differ A LOT especially at those lower resolutions and few colors. Just worth remembering above things :)
100%! It is tough, because you have to choose each pixel deliberately. One or two pixels can make huge changes. Once you understand less is more, it opens a lot of doors. Currently working on a pixelated version of a real woman who is quite large (fat) and tall, and I am having a difficult time with making her look big but matches my style. I'm only used to making skinnier models, so I will try a skinnier version of her (at least in the face) then work on it later after I get her body done.
Good video, Adam! I enjoyed you talking about how smaller pixel art is not necessarily better (hard agree, 64-72 px seems to be a sweet spot for people I've taught, because it has room to express while *not* giving you enough room to overcomplicate well), and mentioning the little tricks we all use. Now, a wee temptation for you: Dithering. Doesn't sound like a temptation, does it? But I'd like you to, just for yourself, take a peek at the tiles for Gods (Bitmap Brothers) and any of the GBA/3DS Castlevania games. Because they're excellent examples of how something we consider "overuse=bad" to be a necessary "evil" (feh) in the styles of the period, and even how... It can be useful as hell at times. Plus, I freely admit I want to see the look on your face as you realise what's going on with the rough lime/sandstone blocks in Gods, pixelwise. Threw me for one heckuva loop when I understood. >:3
4:51 I can't unsee peach doing finger guns, the way I can't unsee Toad flipping us off It's like she's in the middle of saying "Aaaayyyy thank you bro for saving me"
Mostly pixel artist won't take into consideration that Super Mario uses 8KB for all the sprites, and the bottom of the Peach's dress is mirrored to save memory. It would be interesting if the people "teleport" themselves to NES age and think as game developers, to understand why this initial Peach's design could be the better solution for the NES limitations.
While true, a few of those reinterpretations do actually seem to keep the mirroring in mind while still making significant improvements.
Which isn't to say the original is bad for what it was. Of course an artist with the benefit of hindsight and no time constraints could do better. Whereas given just how little screen time she get, the original just couldn't be such a singular focused priority when they were also having to draw everysingle other sprite in the game as well.
@@EmeralBookwiseObviously if the original developers cared this much about the art direction, they would have tried to bring it to all sprites, not just Peach. Later NES games like SMB2 USA and SMB3 have much better art styles than early NES games with more utilitarian design like SMB1, though they also had more experienced developers and more advanced cartridge technology so it's hard to say how much of that is art direction
@@TheRenegade...Dokidoki Panic is also already a lot better.
The dress isn't too bad for the size. It's more the derpy face for me
There is also what is lost from viewing old sprites on modern panels. These graphics were designed for CRTs and that affects the output. Also, there is how large the image would be on a 10-13 in television at 240p. Oh and then there is the difference depending on if you are connected with RF or composite cables.
NES sprites range in how good they are, so I'm not just saying bad sprites should get a pass. Just that the modern experience is most likely not the same as what it was made for.
Aah, the psychology behind the interpretation of a princess peach pixel art sprite... Exactly what I wanted to watch on a Sunday afternoon.
i love ur videos, when you'll make more?
when i tell him to @@tevor09
Unironically true
i really like your profile image a lot
Same, but on a Friday morning.
Thats honestly a great way to learn pixel art. Just take an existing sprite and recreate it in your style and see where it takes you.
Also a good way to learn art in general, some of the most skilled artist that I met in college had been the kids that traced pictures of goku in elementary and middle school
Yeah, I even developed my own style from the classic mega man idle pose
@@parana2853 “I’ve heard your artistic skill has potential, let me fight it!”
It's crazy how our mind is able to translate so few pixels into a coherent image
Tis the beauty of pixel art
@@lipasfriends of the human brain :)
@@jonas8993 of both :3
So what is William Afton holding in his hand huh?
Brains are basically specialty pattern-recognising hardware
Something I found missing from the critique of the original sprite is how it was designed to be viewed. Unlike more modern pixel art, it was designed to be viewed sitting some distance away from a CRT TV, rather than sitting close to a high-resolution monitor. What may seem a bit odd now, could be required due to the medium of its time.
Other than that though, great video.
Tbf, most pixel artists miss this because
A) them and their audiences do not use a CRT
B) Modern Pixel art software makes it hard to view pixel art with at the 1 scanline per pixel row ratio typical in the CRT era during the drawing process.
C) 480p is your realistic minimum as that's as low as most CRT monitors go, but so much of the era was drawn at 240p, in fact pretty much all of it was until 3D gaming.
D) even if they do use CRT as a reference, they will likely reference RGB/component which loses out on blending effects. There is an active effort to hide the widespread usage of composite video effects historically in the retro-gaming community because they all use expensive HD RETROVISION cables and have an attachment to the maker, even though composite looks better for many games due to such effects.
It's funny because we all love pixel art, but I'd say the vast majority of pixel artists are disconnected from it's origins, many may have never seen a CRT before, some might even not realize there's a difference between CRT and flat screens other than resolution.
Though I probably should have paid service to this point in the video, I did take a peek at the original sprite on a CRT recording of the game and I think in this case all of the criticisms still stand.
Note, if you were a handheld gamer you've been seeing pixel art on LCD since 1989, including this sprite on the GB:C remake Super Mario Bros Deluxe in 1999, 25 years ago, without CRT artifacting.
@@AdamCYounis I certainly agree that most people are more familiar with crisp pixel art presented by LCD screens.
I was mostly explaining that the odd way the fact looks could be to capture specific elements on lower-resolution CRTs, rather than simply odd design decisions.
I don't happen to have an old 80's CRT I can test it out on though, so cannot say for sure. It is just something people don't generally bring up when criticizing older pixel art, so I wanted to mention it.
The sprite was also limited, like the skirt is symmetrical because half of it is flipped, to save 2 tiles.
That is probably why toad is looking directly at the camera.
Bowser and Mario were higher priority sprites that peach and toad.
But peach's sprites have never been that good, even the one in super Mario world feels odd
@@rex_melynas and the original sprite uses 2 different palettes, since NES sprites could only use 3 colors (4 without transparency)
That's why there's no white in the upper section (using black instead), a restriction that most reinterpretations ignored
I think even as a beginner, I definitely enjoy working with smaller sprites because it can feel less overwhelming with a smaller canvas and definitely serves as a good warmup. That’s not to say it holds little challenge.
Yeah small pixel art makes it a lot easy to make something that is at least passable. But trying to make something really good can actually be harder than traditional art.
I also think that small-ish canvases (64x64 or smaller depending on personal preference) are better for learning pixel art for two big reasons: Doing a lot of small pieces gives you more opportunities to make mistakes, learn from them, and move on than spending forever on a big piece. And every pixel is a decision you need to make, so a canvas with fewer pixels has a smaller number of much higher impact decisions, so you’ll find yourself with more opportunities to learn and problem solve
@@pigcatapult Completely agree, couldn’t of said it better myself!
I suspect that a small part of why NES peach looks a little awkward and stiff is because her lower dress is (internally in the NES) actually one 8x8 tile flipped horizontally! Her arms, hair, and hands can't go any lower than where they are. The head is still a little funny looking, but clearly intentional and the style of the time for Nintendo. Do you think the mouth is meant to be lips or a big smile?
Yeah, I think that the thing that really slipped under the radar is that they only had so many pixels for the entire game, so clever re-use of sprites by mirroring them or swapping the colours around really was a necessity.
I feel like there's a chance that her arms are actually Mario's mouth re-coloured, as they're almost 1-1.
@@casanovafunkenstein5090
Her arms are their own distinct sprite. They could've freed up another sprite for the dress by getting rid of the "80" score sprite and upping a couple scores from 800 to 1000 to make it unnecessary.
But yeah, there was definitely a tight pixel limit on that game.
Her hands could've slipped a little lower...if they were symmetrically placed by her hips, like certain sassy poses.
Also, her head couldn't use any white, as it used the colour slot for the white instead for the blue for her eye.
@@andrewwebb917what?
That "Eyyy...This guy" just cracks me up, seriously I still can't stop laughing
SAME LMAO I didn't see it coming even though i should have
I want this to become an actual Mario character. It reminds me of that Powerpuff Girls episode where the three criminals disguise themselves as the Powerpuff Girls. Or the fake Straw Hat pirates (aka "Chunky D. Luffy" and co.) from One Piece.
I can't unsee original peach as a Pelo character after that one.
I'm gonna save that one 😂
trUEEE
LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoOoOoooo🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
the finger pointing is the best
Now i want to see the whole super mario bros 1 game remade with new modern sprites but still respecting the tech limitations
nintendo might not likey likey tho 😬
@@systemerror-x8oI’d not be surprised if they take down a video because it has their ip’s, oh wait they already did that
Man do I have something for you ua-cam.com/video/E78d66iNpkw/v-deo.htmlsi=IKKcd65nUiqozfH9
They remade it on SNES in the all-star collection that version is as good as you will get.
If they wanted to do a remake to show off technology they would do 3D like Arc-Sys
They remade it on SNES in the all-star collection that version is as good as you will get.
If they wanted to do a remake to show off technology they would do 3D like Arc-Sys
One thing I don't think was mentioned (unless I just missed it!) is that, artistic differences aside, most of the redesigned sprites (including justin_cyr's) aren't possible with the NES constraints as I understand them. It could only have 3 colours in each 8x8 sprite, and the redesigned version uses 4 - sorry, can't have the white in the eyes & crown, or the black on the belt. Someone else also noted that the original sprite uses 7 memory slots, while the redesign needs 8 and would also need more for leg animation (did you notice that the dress and hair/upper face can be reused, and it's just the middle sprites with the mouth and arm that would need to change?). I'd also note that while it undeniably has more appeal, justin_cyr's redesign really doesn't fit with the style of the game or early 80s sprites in general... But both technical points are kind of nitpicky, and the general art advice is great. :)
The original had black eyes as well, achieved by putting the scene in front of a black background and using the transparency color, as many games did back then.
@@stevethepocket Yeah, any "black" part of Peach's sprite is actually transparent, which isn't really an issue as long as she stays against a solid black background. But if she were to move around the "holes" in her sprite would be quite obvious.
0:10 some of these pixel art of peach somehow looks to have more emotion and personality than the official peach
That one Bottom left definetly has alot of "personality"
You're forgetting texh limitations on the Nes back i. The 1980s. Try to respect those limitations youre not going anywhere.
@KoOk-h1d they're using the same limited colorpalettes.
and I'm talking about Peach's character in general
@UltraCenterHQ I'm talking about technological limitations on the nes
@UltraCenterHQ Truly doind that with limited space on the nes. Besides, I wouldn't give credit on saying their designs are better, considering they copy it from an already concept.
You know, I think these original sprite artists don't get credit for the fact that they didn't have graphics editing software to do these on. They were literally just programmers drawing sprites on grid paper and then hand encoding that into what you'd see on the screen. The process you use nowadays where an artist can draw and erase and try again just wasn't even an option.
you don't think they could draw a second attempt?
This. And even if they had artist support it was the same issue. At best they had a digitizer board to transfer the grid paper design instead of hitting it in ju number. And on top of that. They really only could see how the designed looked in reality when it was put into the game. (Smaller/crt blurry )
And this loop to get the design from paper into the game could take hours or more
Fun fact about that the original Mario devs, and yes, all of them still work at Nintendo. So the original developer could be watching this right now.
i mean... if you wanted to optimize it, you could have colored cutout squares for you to place in a grid to sketch how the sprites would look like, peach looks ugly just because they rushed it as there were more important elements to make
People who say that you don't teach anything don't understand what you teach. It's a common mistake to confuse specific skills or tools with the principles that need to be implemented with their help. The latter is much more difficult and requires a certain level of thinking. You need to understand the essence of an abstract thing in order to successfully apply it specifically.
The funniest thing is that thanks to you, I learned several functional things in step-by-step guides on isometry or shaders in Unity. So these people are doubly wrong.
Thanks for your videos, good luck with the game. You are one of those who inspired me to solo development in my free time.
There's people who have complaints about his work ? lol
@@jonas8993 not this. Adams`s videos in general.
@@NoldoWalker yeah but even so. Doesn't make any sense to me. He's clearly top notch, as for the ways he does things, everybody's different and chooses a way to do things. Idk it's weird
@@jonas8993 fully agree
I love the Peach trend so much, I hope we see more community trends like this
barosaros's peach is so pleasant to me, I love how close it feels to the original Mario 1 visual style while still being very unique
it feels the most true to the spirit of the original sprite as well as the poofy girliness of peach
I like Kirai and Sindles the best. They also do a good job at that.
Everyone is talking about how it was designed and meant to be from a distance on a CRT. But so far I've seen no one talk about the actual limitations the NES had, and also the super Mario bros game in general. The designers clawed and fought to get as much as they could out of the limited space of the cartridge and NES sprites are typically subdivided into smaller sprites to work with. They have a pallet of 4 colors, two of them being white and black. And overall this was one of the first famicom games.
The designers had very little room to work with, they were trailblazers and just starting out on the platform and were still figuring stuff out. There is a massive improvement between super Mario bros and super Mario bros 2/ super Mario USA, they ended up learning more and getting better for their platform and its limitations.
Firstly, they didn't have to use white and black in the palette. They could use all four colors, but usually only used three for sprites so the fourth could be transparent.
Secondly, the Famicom already been out more than two years before Super Mario Brothers was released. There were over sixty Famicom titles that predated SMB.
I can imagine that the princess sprite was not high on their priority list. Teams were made of a handful of people, they were working with something still new, with lots of constraints due to hardware, levels to design, gameplay mechanics, sound, music, etc. Can't be perfect in everything.
@@Simboissthis
@Simboiss 1. This was in the 1980s, not new tech, and 2 they could redo those sprite equal, if not better than better than us.
3. The original team was with 5 people.
I was a professional pixel artist when I was a teenager and in my early 20’s. Got to work on licensed gba, nds, and cell phone game titles. It’s so fun trying to cram detail in 16x16 or 32x32 pixels.
What titles did you work on for the GBA?
BJG and AdamCYounis videos at the same time on the same trend? Epic
Thought I was tripping at first lol
Right? We eating good today
lol how'd you know??? i watched his video juse before this!!!
I literally cannot unsee the finger guns In the og sprite now lol
heeey meiro bud
What I think is getting lost in this discussion is that the NES was still very early in the history of color pixel art, the original SMB was one of the first games on a completely brand-new platform bashed out in a year by a bunch of programmers, not artists. Shiggy and company didn't really have any existing gorgeous 32x32 pixel artwork to draw upon for inspiration either, unlike the VERY obviously Shovel Knight, Shantae, and Cave Story inspired redesigns shown here. It's the same reason Toad is flipping the bird rather than waving or cheering as intended, they didn't have the experience and retrospect we have the benefit of.
I dont agree. I don't think it was a lack of inspiration. There was a lot of memory restrictions 8kb for game grpahicswhich didn't allowed to have more complex designs additonal to the palette limitations
I would say it was not that early. Around the time there was plenty really amazing arcade games (like just check out ghost and goblins)
Key thing is that NIntendo Themselves did not have so good arcade hardware compared to the others. Basically same as NES so the artists at Nintendo was a bit behind skill wise so to speak. Mario look like a previous gen game compared to say ghost and goblins. As it uses previous gen hardware.
So they where not pushing any artstyle really. What they did was push the memory and technical limits at the time
@@artumgsi think this so. Plus the fact that Nintendo had their art style of rather flat non shaded sprites. So Mario also fits in this art style.
1-2 years later however when more arcade games having found new styles through better hardware. Those styles of course affected Nintendo and was “backported” to NES tech.
Just look at all arcade games from say 82-84 majority of it looks in style similar to SMB Natrually as it was similar hardware specs.
And then look at the arcade games from 85-88 (16 color sprites etc) and then look at NES games from around 86-88 and how much more how they looked like the arcade games even if they had less colors.
I'm sorry. A part in her hair? Princess Peach? What blasphemy is this? HEART. BANGS.
It's her key feature. We could say peach shaped bangs too. In their defense, its so hard to convey details in such small canvas, they had to compromise.
@@charlesabju907 Yeah but they just made a redhead Rosalina in like most of these!!! There's so many peek-a-bangs that it makes me angry and wanting to sit them down with my NES and SMB2 cart and make them play the entire game as Peach. THERE WAS A WAY. THIS WAS NOT IT.
@@charlesabju907 you're not wrong about the difficulty in that original look, but I think I see it decently enough. Her current self is such a departure from the original still so it's fine lol. I was just being goofy.
@@neoqwertyagreed
AHH
Now I can't unsee Peach giving Mario the finger gun 😂😂😂
All these years, I thought she was holding her hands together and the "thumb" pixel was her shoulder, but now it really does look like Mario the Italian American Brooklyn plumber went to go rescue his Italian American Brooklyn neighbor's mom, and she's saying "Heyy it's-a Mario!!!! 👉👉"
Great video, instructive while still being laid back and fun. I've been doing pixel art for a year or so and am basically teaching myself from the ground up, so learning about these foundational art concepts is really helpful.
Thumbs up for the after-dark one. I like how you make anything wholesome, even showing a bit of ankle.
Love your stuff, bro, you always inspire me to write!
This is the exact thing I feel about pixel art. Small scale to me is so much more interesting. Large scale can have mind boggling details but at some point the difference between it and “regular” digital art starts to get blurred, and the main difference is more in technique than in medium. Small scale pixel art is by far my favourite because I love seeing how people try and work within these tight limitations. This isn’t to discredit pixel artists who work with much larger canvases mind you, it’s more of a personal preference thing.
For a lot of them they aren’t even trying to make her look more like Princess Peach, they’re just making her sexier.
Yeah, it's pretty weird to me that most of them is throwing away the big smile to look more 'good looking', splitting her dress for no reason and while having a big chest in itself doesn't mean anything, but when you take a character with ready proportions and inflate them like that, it's just like. Unecessary, it doesn't do anything except seek out to the male gaze, which I think if unfurtunate. Princess peach can't just look like an avarage person, she has to look like a smeggsy model with a pouty look at all times.
I really appreciated the redesigns keeping the dress comfortable, but the complete neutralizing of her happy mouth was still sad because it's supposed to be a celebratory moment, not just a monotone stand. Even an 0 mouth that could be interpreted as suprise, but still keeping it small, would've been nice
@@Noone-hp8zm I’m not really bothered by all that male gaze stuff, but I really do wish people could dial back their horniness. I can’t think of a single time Peach wore a dress that showed off her thighs or her chest.
@@Noone-hp8zm"male gaze"- opinion on video games discarded.
@@User_5tjk42gj9 “opinion on video games discarded” - opinion discarded.
It’s kinda nuts just how much better they’re able to make a theoretically very similar pixel character look but the boobs and legs feel ridiculous. It’s really making me wonder why the original sprite is so lacking, they definitely could’ve made it much better without getting to intensive for the NES
I wonder how much of an impact CRT screens made on old design choices compared to modern pixel art
Probably a lot to be honest
@@AdamCYounis More than you might think. It has layers, and primarily scanlines render nothing like pixels. For example: pixels on CRT aren't square (there is no pixels, they're just a part of the video signal that defines scanlines) so peach was thinner on console.
Between pixels, the colors would blend together based on their difference (more contrast = less blending) because of composite video signals. Insert intense debate here about if this is what the developers intended, or if the developers actually wanted you to use s-video which is sharper with no blending but instead the console makers saved a buck shipping composite cables. Regardless, many many games used blending effects more or less intentionally.
Finally, there's size, distance, and resolution. The max vertical resolution you'd use for pixel art on CRT is 240p. The average screen by the 2000s would've been between 24 to 32 inches in 4:3, and viewed from about 6 feet~ away. So for reference on my 32 inch CRT, adult Mario in Super Mario World would be about the size of my thumb if I pressed it on the screen.
CRT TV's had a softer image than CRT monitors, so anything you draw you have to keep in mind it will look softer on the TV and viewed from further away. CRT's also could hit pure black like oleds and have perfect horizontal motion clarity (meaning you worried much less back then about things in movement being harder to see)
Despite all of this, the real limitations for pixel artists was console hardware. Palette restrictions and lack of ROM space are 99% the look of the NES. If you try a 320x240 palette you'll have access to the same screen resolution as artists of the time, and there's a ton you can do with that space, especially since you can change it up to 60 times a second
BTW, it's not just the screen, but the video cable connecting the c9nnsole to the TV as well.
The NES had both an RF port and an RCA, with the latter giving sharper image quality than the former.
@@LostInNumbers Having played it both by screwing in the coax every time I wanted to play and having to memorize red-white-yellow because I had the misfortune of my dad having a TV that didn't color its ports, just writing "video" and "audio L" and "audio R", I can definitely say that it didn't really make much of a difference on the NES. The SNES, yes, but NES looked just as sharp to me on both. Maybe on higher end CRTs instead of cheap TVs?
MASSIVE. There's a youtuber that covers animation and sprite work in old games (particularly FF) and goes over a lot of how artists would have to consider CRT in every design choice.
As someone who actually started with small pixel art I find this very intriguing yet I do fully agree on its proposed challenge
The one directly in the middle really pops out, it's realistic but simple, it has really, really good color contrast. I'm talking about the one by PuppiesandAnime btw
Also, it's one of the only one that fits the original game's style, and doesn't fall in the traps of "needs more boobs", "needs more legs" or "needs more anime eyes"
Very important to note that 1. Old sprites were made for CRT displays. If you viewed some of the redraws with a CRT filter, especially with a composite filter you would suddenly see that they're much harder to read, and in fact become straight up hideous, and 2. Those old sprites were made also with reused tiles to save rom/ram space.
That's a stacked sprite damn
DonMarramiau's version is the best, I think. It's nicely detailed and Peach's femininity is clearer than some of the others, and the use of color blending shows that the artist has a solid grasp of how to make the most out of the limited palette. Making a layered sprite with some additional detail and color is well within this artist's skill, and I have no doubt that they could make it look great even with such a small area to work with.
Right? It captures the source material so accurately
I know personally how difficult small pixel art can be, if you change a single pixel it can make the entire thing look totally off
And that's with powerful tools, these devs had absolutely horrible tools to work with back then
The base reason behind the difficulty of limited grid it's so simple to undestand, but seeing the amount of control you and the other artists can have in such a limited space is mindblowing. Also, I think your take is really one of the best, amazing work and very interesting video!
Thanks!
0:15 and OFC, I misunderstood the trend and did Metroid repaints lol
Something I also find missing in the discussion here is how much room there is for interpretation with original sprite, while being unmistakably a princess with a puffy dress and long hair. To me that speaks to the fact that the sprite is doing it's job well, not against it. I would be extremely surprised if anyone actually did see that sprite in game and imagined the character to look like the "literal Interpretation" you showed.
Regarding the CRT discussion 10:58 would probably be a very good example of looking better on a CRT, because all that detail blending together and making the simpler parts like the sword and face pop just a little bit more.
And to be clear, I do like a lot of what's being said here, but I feel these are 3 different approaches and putting them against each other without context doesn't do any of them justice.
now i wanna see it in crt... i have two CRTs here, one is a projection tv and the other is a monitor
All those people who say you don't teach, aren't open to learning. I for one learned a lot just from this one video. You do great work!
The way you explain and your process of drawing pixel art is so different from how I look at things! I should try this sort of style some time, I tend to really struggle with anything other than very basic organic or mechanical shapes
This has got to be hands down the best explanation of pixel art I have ever seen
less than a minute into the video i was inspired to pick up pixel art again after a couple years and make my own version of peach... finished it, resumed the video, and a couple minutes later i realize i actually did mine at HALF the resolution of the original. guess i took the lesson to heart lmao. great video, thanks for the inspiration! :)
Great video! Another thing I think that needs to be mentioned is the scale of the sprite compared to its environment. Those sprites look great, but they might look like a smudge in a full game picture (specially if it's something in movement you get to see for a second).
This was so cool to watch, thank you for making this video!
I was ABOUT to comment on this spirte using 4 colours... But she always appears in castles, with a black background! So Im glad I thought it over.
This was a really well made video, I learned so much and it brought me back to fundamentals in art. Thanks a bunch for making this!
2:45 statements that make men cry
I feel like I'm in a bunker... where do you find those trendy art topics?
I too would like to know
And apparently art trends like this last about a week. I want to know all these others that happen. The only large scale ones I know are Bowsette and the Anhka dance.
the main one I know of is the subreddit r/pixelart. it has 2.3 million members (tho it’s pretty old so i think most users are inactive), and I’ve seen quite a few peach redesigns (filter for top of this month!).
Reddit and Twitter. I think someone in the comments mentioned it was a big thing on the PixelArt subreddit for a week
1:25 Mario, i undestand u
Super cool video! Its interesting how much things can be further optimized. I appreciate that you actually did an after dark take too at the end haha.
Brilliant to see everyone's interpretations and how you tackled making it.
The smaller the sprite, the more each pixel counts!
Ahoj, jsem z Česka a amatérsky se věnuji pixel atru. Ráda se dívám na tvá videa. Prosím více tutoriálů ;) Ráda bych vytvořila nějakou malou hru, ale třeba animace mi dělají pořád problém... Máš příjemný projev a vysvětlení jsou srozumitelná. Pokračuj v dobré práci :)
Hi, I'm from the Czech Republic and I'm an amateur pixel artist. I love watching your videos. Please more tutorials ;) I'd like to create a small game, but animations are still a problem for me... You have a pleasant speech and the explanations are understandable. Keep up the good work :)
Wow your princess Peach versions were very beautiful, both of them. Though Peach has a very characteristic "peach" shaped bangs on her forehead, in the afterdark version the idea is there but it was totally missing from the first one.
Well this is great. Love the deep dive into the topic. And your version turned out really good!
"Negative space = Area where there's a lot of nothing" - Lol. I love this!
I just did this trend thanks to you! I'm still a baby at pixel art but I think the way you broke this down really taught me a lot!!!
Wow! Your explanation of how machine learning works is right on! You’re the first artist I’ve seen actually understand it properly!
Can we have a song id for 3:05. I know it’s Mario 64 but who made the cover?
That's the remix of Dire Dire Docks on the Gamechops album "Mario & Chill", by Helynt. Almost all of the music you hear on the channel is licensed through Gamechops, whose artists produce free music based on game franchises (links always in the description)
I love this video, good breakdown of representing a lot of detail within limitations. A lot of this applies to my use of PS1-style Low-Poly 3D modelling and how I apply the textures as well.
I am a very new artist. Not sure if this video was done differently from your normal ones, but I can say that this has been one of the MOST informative and helpful videos I've seen. Thanks for this style.
This is interesting, you showed me some new ways to look at pixel art and drawing in general
Been learning how to do pixel art for a freelance project, I was already making a lot of these choices, but I appreciate you putting into words what i was trying to process.
i hope we do this for other characters and items.. trees. ectra.! this is great. we can practice the same thing in different styles ! love it
Wow... all those different interpretations of the same character using only the same 4 colors in the same meager 16 by 24 box. Sprite art, even with old-school limitations really can be so amazing, and makes me want to see what some of these artists could do if they resprited the entire game.
Really nice video to breakdown the psychology of things. Glad you brought up Gestalt concepts, it's big in pedagogy
Fun fact: Mario 2 (lost levels) actually redesigned her sprite and made it looked better yet nintendo loves using the smb1 version a lot for some reason
love the curelapsed version!! it's so cute and happy!! sindi or kirais version maybe the most originally intended versions
Something I feel that this video should have covered is how these drawings look on a CRT, since this is a reimagining of the pixel sprite for the game from the 90s, i feel like it would be approriate to judge how that looks as well in the redesigns!
Any minecraft builder understand these points so, so well. The higher resolution of a larger build is just so much simpler to get right because the defects are A: less noticeable or B: easier to spot because so many blocks are out of place.
Your take on Peach was very cute! And your after Dark one too.
People just NOW are seeing that peach had an encounter with a bee hive in SMB 1?
I've been messing with pixel art for most of my life and one thing that's always fascinated me was how artists have to design characters around the limitations of what the game's graphics could allow. Mario himself was designed to look as distinct as possible using only 3 colors in a 16x16 sprite.
I swear, this all sounds like a class I had at Columbia college chicago! My professor went over all this stuff! Great video learned a lot about pixel art
You glazed right over the new vs old big Mario, small Mario, princess peach and toad reimaginings. Those were stellar 👍
Years ago I realized this same thing regarding Pixel Art, when you start you try fewer pixels and then expand your canvas because you realize you cant give it the detail you want, heck, my first OC was designed around that and did give it a pretty cool and dynamic pose to use more of the space because standing up didn't allow it to use the corners of the canvas, after that I started making more excersises regarding the canvas size, such as makin a ton of 16x16 sprites doing the exact same gesture but with different variants, an example that I remember the most is when I drew a wizard extending his hand as if it was throwing a spell then someone told me "Hey, it looks like he is dancing" because it looked like an animatic XD
Guys, try something like that, and after you are confortable with different things then try expanding the amount of colors you are using, increase your colors and change the way you use them, or start by picking any the colors but black and white then draw something and try to make it make sense
I knit colorwork patterns and usually make my own, they are knit with charts that are basically pixel art. I use pixel art techniques to draw the designs, and I've always found it harder to scale down a chart design to use less stitches than to have more. I often have to do this for putting designs on thicker weights of yarn or putting a design onto a smaller garment 😭
As someone that lacks any creative bone in his body and draws as well as a 5 year old, this was fascinating. I can't believe how much detail, emotion and/or expression these have! So much talent. I can only imagine if the OG had looked this way; it would've been incredible nearly 40 years ago, and frankly, still looks awesome today.
There actually is a fairly good understanding in neuroscience now about how vision works! And similar to the neural net in the video, the processing (at least in the occipital lobe) does start with edge recognition!
Nice explanation. I sure didn't think that there would be this kind of complexity when I chose pixel art, but that gives it some flavor too so it's okay.
9:20 Ah ha! Now I will provide a fun fact that nobody would probably bother to read but either way.
I think what he really means here is "What all Vertebrates does", the architecture of the eye of the Vertebrate is different from the invertabrates (there are actually 3 types of eyes that vary significantly interms of structures: The compound eyes (e.g. the eyes of a fly), the pinhole eyes (e.g. the eyes of a nautilous) and the vertebrate eyes (e.g. our eyes)).
The ability to "continue discontinued shapes", "Fill in the gap", can largely be attributed to the need to make up for the imperfections in our eyes (e.g. blind spots, and also there are blood vessels at the bottom of the eyes that should have casted a shadow, but the shadows where removed by the brains of the vertibrates when processing the image). The eyes of say a fly or an octopus does not have these flaws, and thus these animals would likely not do as much image preprocessing, hence be significantly less sensitive to the patterns mentioned in the video. (They will still need to do some, but generally speaking Vertibrates perform significantly more image processing than these animals)
BTW this is also why Octopuses are considered "Masters of disguise" capable of blending into any underwater environment, where as the camouflage of many vertibrates, especially mammals stand out so much, people sell their skin for a profit (e.g. tigers, deer):
Most disguises are engineered according to the parties these disguises are meant to target (pray or predators), so it often doesn't work for species that see things differently. e.g. our eyes see color as a combination of "RGB", because our eyes only have read, blue, green light receptors. most other mammals only have Blue and Green light sensors, and most disguises in the nature target "BG" vision. This is also why Red Green color blind is the most common one: "Red" is a "newer" feature, so there are more bugs.
but Octopuses' eyes works differently, and it is capable of seeing "True colors", (i.e. the true wave length of the EM wave, instead of the mix of some number of colors), combined their ability to create "True colors" (By changing the structure of their skin to reflect different light rather than using pigments), they are capable of creating disguises that are effective to all visual systems, including ours.
We need a pixel remaster of the smb games for the NES.
We technically have that with the Super Mario All Stars and mostly the Super Mario Advance games does improve the Sprite Works.
As a pixel artist who specializes in low res stuff,
I actually partly disagree.
Tiny stuff with palette limitations isn't really *harder* so much as I'd describe it as a different skill set entirely.
The higher the resolution, the closer it is to more traditional forms of art but all of those skills don't translate directly to smaller stuff.
But the reverse is also true!
I actually have a hard time adjusting to larger resolutions because I did start small.
Im surprised you didn't mention the sprite from lost levels, it's basicaly nintendos take on redoing of the sprite
I have had way to many people ask me, a digital artist that mostly works on 2000x2000 300dpi, why I can't make pixel art. This answers it perfectly.
14:37 That one also seems to have a mirrored bottom part. It's hard to tell though.
the one by kirai_s, two to the right of it, seems to me as though the 8 bottom rows of pixels are mirrored :)
@@Anna-jv8xi Hm, if you mean @Sindle that one has a few deviations of the right side of the dress that aren't there on the left. If you meant two to the left of kirai on the other hand. I thought so too! However, I took it into paint and measured and unfortunately the symmetrical part of the dress is not 8 pixels tall and so a 2 pixel layer that has the non-symmetrical hands in it stops it from saving memory. There's a lot of stretched out pixels on that particular row of Peach's some of these are large enough that they look like two whole pixels!
Did I somehow miss this?
Why did you and Brandon Greer put out a video on it at the same time 😂.
it was the fever of r/pixelart , so if you've been there in the last week you'd know
i really loved the part where you made your own version of princess peach. This is my first video i see of yours.
I participated in the Peach redraw too. I ended up making maybe 8 different sprites with the size and colour choices. And I had a blast doing it
I don't do art often but when i do i focus on large pixels. My canvas usually dosen't go farther than 64×64 and you do have to be very picky about what you decide what every pixel does especially when working around faces, you can see that almost none of the resprites you showed off have the nose represented but since the face is still facing forward it can be assumed that her nose is very small, some of them don't show off her mouth either which is done for a similar reason. It's interesting to see what artists kept and what they decided was unimportant as well as their own interpretation/spin.
The one by Xysspon is the most visually interesting to me- it's the only that really stands out as being its own thing. It's also clear what's being conveyed. You even get personality and character from it, which is impressive for a handful of still dots on a screen.
Good thing he explained haopanyo's version, cause to me it's just noise. I couldn't make out any features on it, it's so busy.
Love the choice of music in this video
I'm currently developing an game in Unreal that uses a base of 24x24 pixels, and it's extremely difficult to make a sprite that's recognizable for what it is, has good character design elements, and looks good in that small amount of space.
For me, most of my character's interesting character design aspects (notably shape and detail) are in the face. I also feel faces, or what we perceive as faces, are the most important part that most people will focus on and associate themselves with. In that, for my 24x24 character design, I went with an _almost_ superdeformed anime look, but not quite so big of a head as to be comical, but about 55% of the pixel height is dedicated to the head, and the rest is the body. The body is largely there to give a visual feedback of player inputs in the game as opposed to existing to add to the character design (though there are still character design elements in the body, but it's must more understated).
There is also those factors to consider.
1. The designed was often made to use as little data as possible. Reuse sprite tile data - flip them. Shade palettes.
2. the tools. Most art at this time was made on paper and then digitized which really added production time. And often they had tight production budgets = not possible to tweak sprites that we can much more easily do before.
3 (mentioned a bit) style at the time. Some of the design choices that look odd to use can be found in Japanese comic etc at that time. So the what we see as bad design might had been intended.
4 CRT - all art we see here I displayed on modern sharp screens. Which tbh is very bad practice for such rework. What is important is to view all those new sprite on a default average consumer tv at that time. As this will show how the sprites look in reality. And it can differ A LOT especially at those lower resolutions and few colors.
Just worth remembering above things :)
Minecraft pixel art taught me so much and its glad to see a video shed light on a common misconception
Anyone got a link to the collection of resprites shown at the beginning?
Makes for a nice wallpaper… 🖼
100%! It is tough, because you have to choose each pixel deliberately. One or two pixels can make huge changes. Once you understand less is more, it opens a lot of doors.
Currently working on a pixelated version of a real woman who is quite large (fat) and tall, and I am having a difficult time with making her look big but matches my style. I'm only used to making skinnier models, so I will try a skinnier version of her (at least in the face) then work on it later after I get her body done.
Good video, Adam! I enjoyed you talking about how smaller pixel art is not necessarily better (hard agree, 64-72 px seems to be a sweet spot for people I've taught, because it has room to express while *not* giving you enough room to overcomplicate well), and mentioning the little tricks we all use.
Now, a wee temptation for you: Dithering.
Doesn't sound like a temptation, does it? But I'd like you to, just for yourself, take a peek at the tiles for Gods (Bitmap Brothers) and any of the GBA/3DS Castlevania games. Because they're excellent examples of how something we consider "overuse=bad" to be a necessary "evil" (feh) in the styles of the period, and even how... It can be useful as hell at times.
Plus, I freely admit I want to see the look on your face as you realise what's going on with the rough lime/sandstone blocks in Gods, pixelwise. Threw me for one heckuva loop when I understood. >:3
4:51 I can't unsee peach doing finger guns, the way I can't unsee Toad flipping us off
It's like she's in the middle of saying "Aaaayyyy thank you bro for saving me"
Wake up honey, new AdamCYounis video dropped!!
6:53 Peach is now Paulie Walnuts