Jump to content
IGNORED

Are there any Atari 2600 sprite animation tutorials?


Random Terrain

Recommended Posts

Maybe something like this, but better and specifically about Atari 2600 sprites:

 

http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/tsugumo/chapter7.htm

 

 

I played around making sprite animations on the Commodore 64 and Amiga 500 back in the 1980s and 1990s, but the one color for each row limitation changes everything.

 

I haven't seen any pages online about the subject. Are there any scans of old magazine articles with tips from Atari 2600 game artists?

 

 

Thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you mean an aesthetic guide (how to make VCS animations look pretty) or a technical guide for programmers (setting up animation loops, framerates, etc)?

The second part would be useful too, but yep, I'm talking about the pretty part. How to draw the best looking animated creatures, people, ships and so on with the limitations of a multicolored batari Basic Atari 2600 sprite (tips for single-color sprites wouldn't hurt either).

 

Any tips to go from plain and clunky to something that would make the artists and programmers of Imagic and Activision proud.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess some of the first things to keep in mind when drawing for the 2600 is know your boundaries and how to exploit them.

 

For example:

your drawing ratio on a 4:3 screen.

 

your own limitation can be any vertical height you desire and your horizontal can be the size width you set. Some people don't want to lose horizontal resolution so they may use both player objects for the same sprite (different parts)

 

You can set your resolution with in these realms.

 

Next up is the color palette at your disposal like NTSC, PAL, or SECAM (rarely used)

 

These things set the stage for the drawing.

 

It is also a good idea to keep in mind what your BG color will be cause this will (most of the time) show through any area in your graphic that is not colored in. This also helps to define what your graphic will look like.

 

I like to break my drawings up by a single loading per scanline.

 

Space your image out as evenly as possible. Ex: Don't try to squeeze a lot of detail into one side of an object usually top or bottom of a graphic as the default horizontal resolution is fixed at 8 bits.

 

On a single scanline basis, decide what is most important to the graphic. Ex: the outline, the color, or the detail. What would be the proper balance of the 3 attributes. Which color conveys what you want your graphic to be for this portion of it. Be sure to keep proper contrast in mind as much of the time as possible.

 

When it comes to Outline, Color, and Detail, be sure to gage this in reference to the size of the object and the size of the other graphics of your game. You don't want a big distortion where one graphic is out of proportion to the rest of your game.

 

I believe that not every area of all graphics necessarily benefits from ALL outline or ALL color or ALL detail but a balanced combination of the three and a proper transition/blend between the 3 from scanline to scanline.

 

The only times where this isn't true is if one or more of those attributes instills a theme in your game EX: every object or most are done in outline only. Every object or most deals heavy with color schemes. But detail applies in someway to both. The level of detail is up to you.

 

Advanced tricks come into play when you sacrifice one thing for another. Some examples are, flicker, sacrificing graphic objects, more colors in a small area using combinations between sprites, missle, and "blinds".

 

Always remember to that if you don't have the space to get the detail you want you may have to settle for inferring the look rather than just "spelling it out".

 

You can also get greater detail sometimes if you shade your color bands. ex: 3 consecutive scanlines could shift between dark mid and light colors.

 

Here are some of my examples which many have seen before.

post-10601-127728026583_thumb.pngpost-10601-127728031318_thumb.gifpost-10601-12772803473_thumb.gifpost-10601-127728037909_thumb.pngpost-10601-127728041521_thumb.gifpost-10601-127728047417_thumb.pngpost-10601-127728051486_thumb.pngpost-10601-127728051486_thumb.pngpost-10601-127728055032_thumb.pngpost-10601-127728057732_thumb.png

 

Hope this help some.

Edited by grafixbmp
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've always made a general shape on my object and then played with turning pixels on and off until the detail is "good enough" given the colors allowed.

 

Here are some samples of that technique in action:

http://i511.photobucket.com/albums/s352/slobu/scrshot2.png?t=1220583805

http://i511.photobucket.com/albums/s352/slobu/spitifall.png

http://i511.photobucket.com/albums/s352/slobu/scrshot2-1.png

 

One exercise is to reduce the colors on a commercial sprite and then manually edit the pixels until it feels right.

Edited by theloon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another thing that might help is to think of sprite animation in terms of old-fashioned hand drawn lightbox animation. Usually, you'd start an animation with endpoints and rough line gestures and then build it when the motion itself looks right. They still do something similar in 3D animation with what they call "wireframe" models, which have untextured surfaces, low polygon counts, etc.

 

So in complex animations, such as a person walking in profile, the first thing you might want to do is establish the number of frames in the loop and then draw single pixels where the feet, hands hips and head will be. When doing this, bear in mind these parts rarely move at a constant rate, but rather swing at varying velocity. Watch film of someone walking (or just look at them out on the street) and you'll notice that the arms and legs move most quickly during the middle of a stride, and slow up at the end when the momentum is shifting the other way, sort of like a pendulum on a clock.

 

To simulate this momentum shift, have the feet and hands move two or three pixels during the middle or last third of the swing, but slow down to one or zero towards each end of it. Relative movement speed is probably the most difficult thing to capture in low res sprite animation, but I think it looks great when done right. Other sorts of mechanical things (robots, space ships) lend themselves to more constant animation and can look quite good that way, but living things tend to look better when there's a bit of momentum shifting going on as they walk, run, hop or gallop around.

Edited by jrok
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not Atari specific but at least low resolution..

 

http://www.manningkrull.com/pixel_art/tutorials/walking.asp

 

Another thought is to prototype your sprite animation in Game Maker. Its IDE has a built-in sprite preview and an OK paint utility. You can drag-and-drop simple controls to move the sprite around in-game too.

 

Most of my time in the game those screen-shots were taken from was spent copying the previous sprite and adjusting pixel by pixel each arm, leg, tail, etc..

Edited by theloon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...