The Darkwing Duck game came out in 1992, while the others came out between 1985 and 1987. So it's not surprising developers became better at pixel art in those years (or recognizing the need for actually hiring an artist instead of leaving it to a programmer).
After seeing the final comparison, I cannot help but imagine how cool it would be to play a revamped version of these old games with double the resolution and reworked sprites. Awesome and inspiring work you just did there. 10/10.
It is totally possible, with the mesen emulator you can use hd packs. But the issue is the animation frame count, though I think that has been fixed recently.
Thanks! 😊 For Mega Man especially I'm curious what it'd be like to go further with more shading/highlights - looks like there's an even better sprite in there, I just held back to keep it somewhat in line with the original styling
i love how the final megaman sprite turned out, the second megaman was probably my least favorite of the second batch of sprites but then the third one made it my favorite
That initial step of doubling the scale and then basically smoothing the sprite is something I've done before, and it's a LOT of fun. What's also interesting is doing the step twice, smoothing it out again and again until you have these really strange looking characters.
There are actually emulators which can do exactly this type of upscaling automatically. It looks interesting on system with very few colors, like NES and Game Boy (Color).
I like how your videos sorta take you through a journey or a thought progress. Not just like "I did a sketch, then i did the colors"-way, but like "I took the first step from A to B, then tried going from B to C and ended up at D"-way
It's incredible how little it seems you've changed on the darkwing duck sprite and how amazing it looks. I really think that speaks to how well the original sprite was made! Awesome video, Mario is so much cuter 😊
In around 1989 to 1992 or 93, there were Nintendo calendars that had this very kind of thing happening. It wasn't quite SNES graphics, but they were similarly "enhanced" sprites in the calendar. I remember in particular that the page for Metroid has a distinctly 3d Samus, very low-polygon and large.
Samus definitely benefited the most from the doubled resolution. Her original character design kinda had a lot of intricate mechanical details that couldn’t be conveyed that well with the limited resolution.
I hate to say this, but out of the five, I think Darkwing Duck got the best touch-ups, and possibly the best original sprites. Then again, with Disney characters, that might be a given.
great video - and an excellent example of why it's important to establish full-resolution reference art before creating assets (and in this case, upgrading existing assets)
Those are actually fire! I always loved the Darkwing duck sprite, really shows the skill behind the sprite work of that game and you only made it better
I'm always impressed not only by your art skills, but also your commentary/analysis! I feel like it helps me understand the idea so much better and I try to carry that logic over into my own art. Great video as always Mr. Greer!
The lil Mario and Link are so cute, love the artstyle! I also like the face you gave Megaman, like he’s in the process of being a lil gremlin haha Also you’re right, that original Darkwing Duck sprite is so cool, the linework and color usage are superb.
Have you ever done sprites for 2.5D? Like the original Doom? I’d be interested in how you would approach sprites that have a turnaround with several different angles and one or two animations.
ID Software made clay models for monsters and they scanned them in various poses and angles. Some DOOM-clones did the same with 3D models. Just like in Donkey Kong Country. 3D models were rendered in various positions and then artists cleaned the sprites.
@@Leeki85 That’s true, but it’s not strictly necessary that 2.5D sprites be scanned that way. That was done for those projects partly because of the level of detail required for the project would have been ridiculously hard to freehand. It’s a great look, but 2.5D need not be that complicated for every project.
I mean, he makes mostly still images. The only real difference between 2D and 2.5D sprites are the way they are animated I think, so I guess there would be no difference if he's going to make the images static anyways
It'd be interesting looking at alternate universe - where resolution increases, but color amount does not - I was thinking during this video about what fun dithering you could incorporate for added lighting and stuff.
man i love these. it's so fun seeing artists work within all the constraints of pixel art, and your videos are presented so nicely it's like a brain massage
This is exactly the kind of effort I want to see when these old games get remade. Those old sprites were drawn for low-res CRT screens, so we weren't meant to be seeing each individual pixel like we do now, cause the games are being scaled up x4+ just to be properly visible on our HD screens. So I'd love to see games remade with higher res pixel art like this, to accommodate our bigger screens and such. The PSP remakes of Final Fantasy 1, 2 and 4 did this, and they are still the most gorgeous versions of those games ^^.
Dark wing Duck over here was _so_ good to begin with that he almost feels unchanged in comparison to the others. MAN they did a good job with that sprite
the intermediate stage reminds me of those hd redraws of old NES games (which I guess makes sense because that is what you have done) Darkwing Duck is my favorite of the set
Video idea: you take an object and redraw it a various sizes just a few pixels bigger than each other so we can see a smooth zoom in and out animation at the end!
They all look so cool! But I think when the resolution is that high, it might as well not be pixel art anymore, because you’re not really working with limited space anymore, and it’s more like a normal drawing, downscaled to a lower res. Still, they look great though!
Very interesting. There's a few arcade games of the 70's that did it with that most common typeface used in games (8x8), writing information all in 16x16 pixels.
Here's a less than fun story. I did this with a bulbasuar sprite about 10-15 years ago and handed it in to a pixel art review for some guy who reviewed fan made pokemon themed pixel art. They had this running gag of upscaling gone wrong, so I made it because I knew how to upscale properly: like this! But he was so behind on entries that he never got to mine afaik, and I held off uploading the image to deviantart at the time because I didn't want him finding it there thinking I'd stolen it because the names were different. Anyway, I've since uploaded it because I was pretty proud of how well it went
very impressive on all fronts, it feels like Mega Man was the hardest since there's so little detail to expand upon. Samus was very impressive, since it's the opposite problem of having a lot of potential details that could easily become confusing. I will say my personal favorite is Mario just cuz he looks so cute
I gotta say, the way the Samus sprite turned out is my favorite of the bunch! More so than the others, it really feels like you just took the original sprite and yelled "Enhance!" and magicked it into a higher resolution, while very much keeping the original aesthetic of it intact. The only part that actually feels "changed" would be her left hand, since it appears to be facing up in the new one instead of (seemingly) downward like the original sprite.
Watching this, it becomes clear that the style logic really only makes sense in the context of the limitations of the medium. When an increase in technical fidelity happens (Bit-Depth on SNES, as it shared the same pixel resolution as NES) the art style should be redone to fit the newer specifications. Edit: Like an idiot I forgot to say what a great job you did and that I’ve subscribed ❤
Darkwing Duck sprite at 2x the size makes him look like he's suffering from linework suffocating him, my goodness, get him to the nearest sprite reworker (that's you, Brandon James)!
Now I want to see an episode where you take 16 bit and 32 bit sprites and down scale them. That would be interesting to see what can be done with less space but all these colors.
I used to do this in Minecraft when I was little, I had a super flat world just filled with pixel art. I would sometimes draw something, then double it in size, and smooth it out, and repeat until I had a cool piece of pixel art.
interesting! I remember doing this once, for a zelda fangame project that never ended up happening. A lot of the enemies I'd scale it up to the desired size, then redo 16-bit-style pixel art on top of it. Others got original sprites... or recolored 16-bit zelda sprites. wasn't much, but it was the first game work I ever did.
Here's one I'd love to see double-sized: Sonic from the Sonic 3D Blast 5 NES bootleg! It's based off of Sonic 1's sprites, but it's still really charming with the limited palette and size
I would love to hear you review that Earthworm Jim HD remake of the old SNES/Genesis game they made a while back. Did they do a similar technique when upscaling the sprites for that?
I'd kind of love to see a remastered version of these games where the resolution is "doubled" and everything is just a faithful doubled resolution version of its original work.
this is what those 32x minecraft texture packs look like
this is real
no, that actually looks good
@@TeeArCreep there are good ones
faithful
@@TeeArCreep 32x can look good if it's made from scratch. However most are just "upscaled" default textures, like faithful.
What the initial upscaling and smoothing step revealed to me is how brilliantly made that darkwing duck sprite is
for sure, the detail is already in there, he just brought it out into a higher resolution, very impressive on both parts!
The Darkwing Duck game came out in 1992, while the others came out between 1985 and 1987. So it's not surprising developers became better at pixel art in those years (or recognizing the need for actually hiring an artist instead of leaving it to a programmer).
I think that for Megaman the black inner linework was a great choice. It helps sell the idea that he's a robot and not a guy in a leotard
Oh yeah, that’s a strong point.
As a person who's never played Megaman, sometimes I do forget he's not just a man in a leotard
My parents always tell me I’m a leotard
After seeing the final comparison, I cannot help but imagine how cool it would be to play a revamped version of these old games with double the resolution and reworked sprites. Awesome and inspiring work you just did there. 10/10.
It is totally possible, with the mesen emulator you can use hd packs. But the issue is the animation frame count, though I think that has been fixed recently.
@@lolcatit's been fixed for a while, but yeah
I was thinking the same thing
Mario all stars?
@@mustbge0 No, that does rework the sprites but the resolution is still the same.
Link, Mario and Megaman look so freaking cute upscaled! 😍
Thanks! 😊 For Mega Man especially I'm curious what it'd be like to go further with more shading/highlights - looks like there's an even better sprite in there, I just held back to keep it somewhat in line with the original styling
@@BJGpixel Held it back for your next video, more like. 😉
It’s surprising how much better Mario looks than the actual Nintendo sprite. 😅
i love how the final megaman sprite turned out, the second megaman was probably my least favorite of the second batch of sprites but then the third one made it my favorite
Yeah, totally, new Blue Bomber looks dope AF!!!
I never understood why he's called the blue BOMBER when bombs aren't his main thing, lemons are @@rkharper
@@cherricake1796when life gives you lemons...
@@cherricake1796 Well, Sonic the Hedgehog is basically never a blur whenever you're playing as him in the game, either. It's just representative.
Finally someone who doesnt just upscale and put a smoothing pixel filter on it
That initial step of doubling the scale and then basically smoothing the sprite is something I've done before, and it's a LOT of fun. What's also interesting is doing the step twice, smoothing it out again and again until you have these really strange looking characters.
Example? I'd love to see that.
There are actually emulators which can do exactly this type of upscaling automatically. It looks interesting on system with very few colors, like NES and Game Boy (Color).
I like how your videos sorta take you through a journey or a thought progress. Not just like "I did a sketch, then i did the colors"-way, but like "I took the first step from A to B, then tried going from B to C and ended up at D"-way
Mario and Darkwing Duck definitely worked out the best. Amazing pixelwork as always Brandon!
It's incredible how little it seems you've changed on the darkwing duck sprite and how amazing it looks. I really think that speaks to how well the original sprite was made!
Awesome video, Mario is so much cuter 😊
In around 1989 to 1992 or 93, there were Nintendo calendars that had this very kind of thing happening. It wasn't quite SNES graphics, but they were similarly "enhanced" sprites in the calendar. I remember in particular that the page for Metroid has a distinctly 3d Samus, very low-polygon and large.
😁 mfw when he makes a picture out of tiny squares
Same
the universe ends when he no longer makes pictures put of tiny squares
Samus definitely benefited the most from the doubled resolution. Her original character design kinda had a lot of intricate mechanical details that couldn’t be conveyed that well with the limited resolution.
I hate to say this, but out of the five, I think Darkwing Duck got the best touch-ups, and possibly the best original sprites. Then again, with Disney characters, that might be a given.
I would love to see a challenge where you see how far you can push making the sprites smaller before they become totally indistinguishable!
Reminds me a lot of how Cave Story Plus worked- doubling the resolution but keeping the palettes the same.
great video - and an excellent example of why it's important to establish full-resolution reference art before creating assets (and in this case, upgrading existing assets)
Those are actually fire! I always loved the Darkwing duck sprite, really shows the skill behind the sprite work of that game and you only made it better
I'm always impressed not only by your art skills, but also your commentary/analysis! I feel like it helps me understand the idea so much better and I try to carry that logic over into my own art. Great video as always Mr. Greer!
The lil Mario and Link are so cute, love the artstyle! I also like the face you gave Megaman, like he’s in the process of being a lil gremlin haha
Also you’re right, that original Darkwing Duck sprite is so cool, the linework and color usage are superb.
This is what I first did when I got into pixel art, it's a lot of fun and can be tricky sometimes.
You should have scaled the highres sprites down by half to see what they would look like!
Great video , the duck sprite is really impressive
They're all good but you really knocked it out of the park with Megaman
Agreed! Ironically, it's better that he looks less robotic in the edit
I wouldnt have expected that such a simple topic could be THIS interesting. you did an amazing job absolutely love the mario and darkwing duck one
If you ever do a follow up on this video I would love to see your take on upscaling the big Mario sprite. This was a treat, thanks!
I am always doing that exercise with the sprites, it is very fun to complete or reimagine spaces
Totally, it's cool to see what changes at different sizes. Really love your style by the way, some of the best sprites! ✌️😎✨
Have you ever done sprites for 2.5D? Like the original Doom? I’d be interested in how you would approach sprites that have a turnaround with several different angles and one or two animations.
ID Software made clay models for monsters and they scanned them in various poses and angles. Some DOOM-clones did the same with 3D models. Just like in Donkey Kong Country. 3D models were rendered in various positions and then artists cleaned the sprites.
@@Leeki85 That’s true, but it’s not strictly necessary that 2.5D sprites be scanned that way. That was done for those projects partly because of the level of detail required for the project would have been ridiculously hard to freehand. It’s a great look, but 2.5D need not be that complicated for every project.
I mean, he makes mostly still images. The only real difference between 2D and 2.5D sprites are the way they are animated I think, so I guess there would be no difference if he's going to make the images static anyways
It'd be interesting looking at alternate universe - where resolution increases, but color amount does not -
I was thinking during this video about what fun dithering you could incorporate for added lighting and stuff.
if nes could output in 480p
the sprites look like they have some kind of smoothing filter on em, that's pretty funny to look at good job with the final sprites!
the mario one is so adorable!!
These honestly look so cool dude, great job!
Double the size, double the retro! If Mario, then only bros! 🔥
One thing that I noticed that I thought was kinda funny, is that you made them all happier.
I love doing this kind of exercise with sprites, it's always fun to see what kind of results you can achieve.
man i love these. it's so fun seeing artists work within all the constraints of pixel art, and your videos are presented so nicely it's like a brain massage
The upscaled and revamped Mario is one of the coolest Mario artworks I've seen.
NEW BRANDON JAMES GEER VIDEO
DROPPED LETS GO
Do more bro, those sprites are sick! 😎🔥
This is exactly the kind of effort I want to see when these old games get remade. Those old sprites were drawn for low-res CRT screens, so we weren't meant to be seeing each individual pixel like we do now, cause the games are being scaled up x4+ just to be properly visible on our HD screens. So I'd love to see games remade with higher res pixel art like this, to accommodate our bigger screens and such. The PSP remakes of Final Fantasy 1, 2 and 4 did this, and they are still the most gorgeous versions of those games ^^.
That was a fun little exercise to watch! Very cool
These look great! I especially love the Mario, he looks so adorably charming with the classic colors but the more modern body shape.
Whoever made that original Darkwing Duck sprite is a master of their craft.
resizing sprites is kinda cool feature that should be in more pixel art edits and 2D games specificaly
The devs would have to double the artwork (and triple the storage taken by it) for a feature almost no one would use
Dark wing Duck over here was _so_ good to begin with that he almost feels unchanged in comparison to the others. MAN they did a good job with that sprite
the intermediate stage reminds me of those hd redraws of old NES games (which I guess makes sense because that is what you have done)
Darkwing Duck is my favorite of the set
These are so cool!
I kind wish you made this for every animation sprite so we could put this in the actual games! These looks really good, especially Mega Man!
Video idea: you take an object and redraw it a various sizes just a few pixels bigger than each other so we can see a smooth zoom in and out animation at the end!
those final versions are absolutely stellar
the darkwing duck is such a good upscale. definitely how I imagine it
I used to do this in highschool with pokemon sprites when I was bored
It's impressive just how much smoother the sprites can appear to get just with 2x scaling.
That Darkwing Duck is legit excellent! I think for Samus, reworking the helmet shape a little would have helped.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate how good the opening theme is
It’s not fair! Everyone of your drawings make me audibly awwww!
Very cool idea!
They’re all great, and I’m more a Zelda, Mario, and Metroid fan, but damn, that Megaman remake is amazing.
They all look so cool! But I think when the resolution is that high, it might as well not be pixel art anymore, because you’re not really working with limited space anymore, and it’s more like a normal drawing, downscaled to a lower res. Still, they look great though!
That original darkwing duck sprite is honestly amazing. And of your remakes, i think i like megaman the best - though mario is a close second.
Megaman and link look stunning! GJ on all of them
Very interesting. There's a few arcade games of the 70's that did it with that most common typeface used in games (8x8), writing information all in 16x16 pixels.
Here's a less than fun story. I did this with a bulbasuar sprite about 10-15 years ago and handed it in to a pixel art review for some guy who reviewed fan made pokemon themed pixel art. They had this running gag of upscaling gone wrong, so I made it because I knew how to upscale properly: like this! But he was so behind on entries that he never got to mine afaik, and I held off uploading the image to deviantart at the time because I didn't want him finding it there thinking I'd stolen it because the names were different. Anyway, I've since uploaded it because I was pretty proud of how well it went
Very happy to have found your channel. I loved your work, even more so with Darkwing Duck. It's like day and night lol
very impressive on all fronts, it feels like Mega Man was the hardest since there's so little detail to expand upon. Samus was very impressive, since it's the opposite problem of having a lot of potential details that could easily become confusing. I will say my personal favorite is Mario just cuz he looks so cute
WOAH so cool!! I love how you did mario!! They should have made the og big mario look like yours
You just earned a new subscriber :D !!
These all came out fantastic!
I gotta say, the way the Samus sprite turned out is my favorite of the bunch! More so than the others, it really feels like you just took the original sprite and yelled "Enhance!" and magicked it into a higher resolution, while very much keeping the original aesthetic of it intact. The only part that actually feels "changed" would be her left hand, since it appears to be facing up in the new one instead of (seemingly) downward like the original sprite.
I did something similar a few years back! I took that same NES link sprite and re-imagined it as a 64 pixel high sprite. 😊
This upscaling makes gives me vibes of if they made these on those high resolutions PCs from Japan at the time like the PC88/98, cool stuff for sure!
That Darkwing Duck sprite is amazing
Nice. Love it. I remember doing the same kinda thing with a Pikachu on MS paint 25 yrs ago. Love your work. Keep it square
Watching this, it becomes clear that the style logic really only makes sense in the context of the limitations of the medium.
When an increase in technical fidelity happens (Bit-Depth on SNES, as it shared the same pixel resolution as NES) the art style should be redone to fit the newer specifications.
Edit: Like an idiot I forgot to say what a great job you did and that I’ve subscribed ❤
I love what you did with Mario and Megaman
Darkwing Duck sprite at 2x the size makes him look like he's suffering from linework suffocating him, my goodness, get him to the nearest sprite reworker (that's you, Brandon James)!
I would love to see more of these
That megaman looks awesome!
I call it doubling the _scale,_ and quadrupling the "size".
The Mario was my favorite! Great work, subscribed 👍🏼
the mario sprite is so cute lol
Now I want to see an episode where you take 16 bit and 32 bit sprites and down scale them. That would be interesting to see what can be done with less space but all these colors.
I used to do this in Minecraft when I was little, I had a super flat world just filled with pixel art. I would sometimes draw something, then double it in size, and smooth it out, and repeat until I had a cool piece of pixel art.
Really like how much personality you gave to Mario
Amazing idea! So expressive!
It looks awesome! I'd love to see your take on Mario 1's princess Toadstool and princess Zelda!
I'd love to see more of this
I'd like to see a Part 2 with an expanded color palette and take that 3rd row a step or two further.
I think Mario's my favourite here, the final one looks like a rubberhose cartoon. Though it does lose the deadpan stare the original sprite has lol
Mario is perfect! With some richier animations would totally make me want to replay the original.
interesting!
I remember doing this once, for a zelda fangame project that never ended up happening. A lot of the enemies I'd scale it up to the desired size, then redo 16-bit-style pixel art on top of it. Others got original sprites... or recolored 16-bit zelda sprites. wasn't much, but it was the first game work I ever did.
mario and mega man revisions are so good
Here's one I'd love to see double-sized: Sonic from the Sonic 3D Blast 5 NES bootleg! It's based off of Sonic 1's sprites, but it's still really charming with the limited palette and size
the darkwing duck one is really good! grats!
0:29
Mmm, Square Cube Law, my favorite.
I REALLY wanna play a double-sized remake of Super Mario Bros. The style is adorable!
I would love to hear you review that Earthworm Jim HD remake of the old SNES/Genesis game they made a while back. Did they do a similar technique when upscaling the sprites for that?
wowza that darkwing duck edit is beautiful.
I'd kind of love to see a remastered version of these games where the resolution is "doubled" and everything is just a faithful doubled resolution version of its original work.
Excellent work! Megaman's expression looks a bit unhinged tho, but it's not ugly or anything xD