How is pc98 art made? is it possible to replicate with modern hardware?

How is pc98 art made? is it possible to replicate with modern hardware?

  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I have 0 knowledge on the subject so take it with a grain of salt, but I remember some years back this exact same discussion and anons mentioning they used a software called multipaint. You can try and run it in a pc98 emulator I believe, but I was too low IQ to make it work myself. I did find an archive for it on japanese internet but can't find the link anymore.

    It's 100% possible to make with modern hardware- It's not technically pixel art, it's just illustrations using pixel brushes and dithering for soft shadows. At least that's what the pixel nerds here would say. You would have to nail the 90's art style first and foremost.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      i am trying to steal certain things from 90s anime, mostly the three-dimensional look it used to have and the crazy hairtsyles. Modern anime feels too flat.

      I found this interesting tutorial here http://danfessler.com/blog/hd-index-painting-in-photoshop
      It might be possible to replicate this in other programs.
      It also might be possible to do this kind of dithered artwork in Aseprite.

      that is amazing, i gotta try it. CSP has some dithering brushes on their asset store, but i haven't tried them yet

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        https://i.imgur.com/yEaeJra.png

        How is pc98 art made? is it possible to replicate with modern hardware?

        I found this interesting tutorial here http://danfessler.com/blog/hd-index-painting-in-photoshop
        It might be possible to replicate this in other programs.
        It also might be possible to do this kind of dithered artwork in Aseprite.

        Making a chromatic aberration filter that works on an indexed palette would have been difficult I imagine
        If someone wanted an effect like that back then they most likely would have just painted it.
        But it was before people thinking "VHS looks cool and retro and I want to introduce glitches into my art on purpose".

        For lineart you can use PaintSai2 and works well using binary vector lines, for coloring use CSP for its brushes.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >It's not technically pixel art, it's just illustrations using pixel brushes and dithering for soft shadows.
      Oh fuck off

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I know reading is hard, but I mentioned that's what the pixel nerds would make you believe. I personally don't see a distinction between the two, but pixel artists tend to be anal about the so-called "rules" of what makes art "pixel art".

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        literally all digital art is made using “pixel brushes”

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I found this interesting tutorial here http://danfessler.com/blog/hd-index-painting-in-photoshop
    It might be possible to replicate this in other programs.
    It also might be possible to do this kind of dithered artwork in Aseprite.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I have heard before it was started as sketches that were then scanned in and touched up digitally.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >How is pc98 art made?
    It's pixel art.
    >is it possible to replicate with modern hardware?
    Absolutely.
    The question is not if the hardware can do it, it's can you do it? It takes a lot of skill to make pixel art this level. There's probably no one on /ic/ who can do this. I can do pixels but I ain't an expert on drawing 80s style manga and you would need to be a master in both.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      no, it’s definitely a matter of tools in this case, pc98 wasn’t made the way it looks, the look is the result of dithering, they didn’t autistically put down pixels
      you’re being retarded and saying the equivalent of hurr durr just paint the chromatic aberration bro

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Autistically dithering things manually is how I work and done since the 90s but yes it's possible they used automation for that, such as by getting it from the scanners they used to digitize physical artwork.
        Either way would work.
        Dithering by hand isn't as tedious as you may think when you remember tools like DPaint supported custom brushes.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >you’re being retarded and saying the equivalent of hurr durr just paint the chromatic aberration bro

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Making a chromatic aberration filter that works on an indexed palette would have been difficult I imagine
            If someone wanted an effect like that back then they most likely would have just painted it.
            But it was before people thinking "VHS looks cool and retro and I want to introduce glitches into my art on purpose".

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      wrong

      I'm pretty sure most of that shit had the dithering done by hand. No tricks, just hard work.

      wrong

      I do believe the program they used did the dithering automatically, though this was more due to limitations in the color palette at the time.
      When I was a child, my father had a version of Corel photo paint where you could reduce the number of colors in animated gifs in order to limit the file size and the program would then dither the image correspondingly. I don't know if any modern programs still have an option like that.

      correct

      you don't need pixel art brushes and you don't need pixel art skills, although the latter is recommended for touching up
      all you really need is to understand "16 color indexed palette", "4x4 ordered dithering", and "18 bpp color depth" and be able to set up whatever program you're using to replicate those limitations at some point in the workflow (not necessarily the whole way through)
      pic related, top background shows strong knowledge of pixel art techniques while bottom background is at the level of basic intuition
      note that any character art that's not significantly integrated into the background is almost certainly done standalone at a higher color depth and then crushed down afterwards

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Just because you can use all sorts of tools and cheats to make it doesn't mean it's not pixel art or that you couldn't use regular pixel art techniques make it.
        My main point was you have to know how to draw that retro manga shit otherwise it's not going to look the same no matter how good or efficient you are at pixel art or how good your tools are. That's what you should focus on if you want to learn this. OP is really asking how to draw retro manga.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        so was this part of the process done automatically?

        The line art seemed to be made manually but the program has tools that makes dithering automatic.

        If you want, here is the working version of multipaint system. Overall, it's the complete same with the Amiga art programs.

        https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mdoY1IhX4n3PbSVx0v99zZsWvXETOONG/view?usp=sharing

        doesn't seem to have tools for dithering

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous
        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Do you have dosbox?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          In this video there are tools for dithering.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        What a beautiful nurse. Can you tell me the name of this game?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          JACK ~背徳の女神~

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Wrong. You're talking about the 90's. There weren't tools to automatic dithering. They really did it pixel by pixel. You want to use Graphics Gale today or Aseprite because they have tools to help you with this. And it IS pixel art. It's a full illustration instead of a tiny animated sprite but it's pixel art.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          retard

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >They really did it pixel by pixel.
          You really swallowed that pill.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >there weren't tools to automatic[sic] dithering
          They literally had image dithering in the 70s retard

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            dont like that style of dithering, i work with some guide from the web to have uniform dither.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Not to mention modern tools like Photoshop can also do dithering, so...

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I'm pretty sure most of that shit had the dithering done by hand. No tricks, just hard work.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I do believe the program they used did the dithering automatically, though this was more due to limitations in the color palette at the time.
    When I was a child, my father had a version of Corel photo paint where you could reduce the number of colors in animated gifs in order to limit the file size and the program would then dither the image correspondingly. I don't know if any modern programs still have an option like that.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Could you please upload the original non soeedy gonzales version that isnt just this one speed down, somewhere else?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Gimp can do that, but the choice of dithering algorithms is quite limited. I don't think you can get the authentic PC98 look.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    PC-98 art is really cool, anon, thanks for pointing me towards it.

    ?t=198
    Check this out, this is gorgeous.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Several years ago I was very interested in this type of art. PC-98 games typically run at 640x400 resolution with 16 colors (although in practice there are often only 15 colors because one is indexed as transparent). There are actually rules as to which color values can be used, but there's no need to be so hardcore because the color choices are *practically* unlimited and nobody would be able to tell whether or not your colors would truly be possible on a PC-98 without analyzing the RGB values for each one.
      There isn't one way these images were made. some artists sketched line art on paper, scanned, touched up and colored in a paint app. Some drew their lines directly in the paint app. What's needed from the paint app is:
      1. Indexed painting mode, which assigns each pixel in your image to an index of your palette. If you change the color at that index, all the pixels in the image assigned to that index also change color.
      2. Dithering tools. At a bare minimum, you need the ability to paint and fill using different patterns. Usually the standard dithering patterns are included but you can also create your own (helpful for doing textures, etc.). Some apps let you create custom gradients from your palette and automatically have dithering applied between each color.
      Probably the two best Windows apps for doing this type of art are ProMotion and GrafX2. ProMotion is sort of the pixel art equivalent of Photoshop, as in being feature-rich and "industry standard" among serious pixel artists. It has everything you need, but can be overwhelming to use because of all the stuff you might not need. GrafX2 is simple and lightweight (and FREE) but its interface is a holdover from the 1990s and lacks some of the quality-of-life features people nowadays are used to having in their software. Both of these programs are based on Deluxe Paint 2, a very different paradigm from Photoshop that will take some getting used to if that's your frame of reference.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        You could also use Aseprite, which is easier for those familiar with Photoshop. It's lacking in some ways compared to the other two apps mentioned (or it was last time I used it, it's regularly being updated) but you can definitely make it work.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Can one replicate this with MS paint?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      all images are just pixels, you can replicate anything in paint if you’re retarded enough to waste time doing it

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It's called Oekaki

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Buy (or torrent) Pro Motion NG on Steam. It was basically made for drawing this, and is pretty swell for other pixel art shit. I am sure you could also do this with photoshop or whatever, but I'd rather save the hours of my life using a more specific tool. It has all kinds of fancy dithering shit. Learning curve isn't the best tho.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Or you could download ChibiPaint. It's design for making oekaki art on windows & it's complete free.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >How is pc98 art made?
    Artists would first draw the image on a physical piece of paper.
    The paper would be scanned through a contemporary scanner.
    After that, imperfections would be fixed and artists could begin with color and shading.
    >is it possible to replicate with modern hardware?
    Yes.
    There are plenty of "pixelator" filters in modern software that can give you a good template.
    Use a 16-color palette to block in your colors, then for rendering apply your dithering knowledge using specialized pixel art brushes.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Yes. Just buy a time machine and go back to the 90s.

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Just learn how to draw moron

    Expect shitty aesthetic games on itch io this year

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The line art seemed to be made manually but the program has tools that makes dithering automatic.

    If you want, here is the working version of multipaint system. Overall, it's the complete same with the Amiga art programs.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mdoY1IhX4n3PbSVx0v99zZsWvXETOONG/view?usp=sharing

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      anyone know how to fix this?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        ready your temp drive first so it can auto fix

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    in csp you can do it with layer properties

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      In what regard? Not memes.

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    does this help?

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    multipaint, it has a lot of nice features and automatic pattern/dither tools

    if i remember correctly, you could only have rgb colors in multiples of 17 from 0-255, and one mode was 16 color palette the other 8 color. you'd have to look up the specs to confirm for actual emulation

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I wonder if limited palette usage kinda helps with pixel art examples in the thread

      >you could only have rgb colors in multiples of 17 from 0-255
      Huh, very interesting, thanks for the post anon

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I wonder if limited palette usage kinda helps with pixel art examples in the thread

      >you could only have rgb colors in multiples of 17 from 0-255
      Huh, very interesting, thanks for the post anon

      That's not correct. Color depth was 18 bits per pixel, or 6 bits each per R, G, and B values. 2^6 = 64 so it would be the equivalent of only having multiples of 4 from 0 to 252.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        that doesn't make sense. the specs i see show 4096 colors to choose from which is 12-bit color. that's RGB444 where 16^3 = 4096. 18-bit color would need at least 3 bytes compared to using only 2 for 12-bit color. if you use pc98 painting software like multipaint, the choices you get for colors are 0-15, ie 4 bit

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I'm guessing they scanned the lineart, then did touchups, coloring, & shading with PC98. Pic-related was probably the method of choice for most oekaki artists.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      PC-98 art is a bit older than oekaki boards and I don't think it was extremely common for artists to use pen type controllers back in the 90s and they would have usually taken the form of a "light pen" that you use to draw directly on the computer monitor than a separate tablet.
      Try as I might I can't find information if PC-98 supported light pens so chances are they just used mouse to draw or scanned pencil drawings.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        artists had drawing tablets back then on the pc98

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          "pc98 drawing tablet" brings up nothing for me except some reddit post that says "There were tablets in production, such as the ones produced by NEC, but they're incredibly rare due to a mix of age and mass-destruction of recalled units."
          Which might as well say they didn't exist.
          They probably drew using mouse just like people did on Amiga.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            retardbro..... there weren't tablets specifically made for pc98, just normal graphic drawing tablets

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              You still haven't produced any evidence that these were adopted to any significant degree. I could believe that there was a widely used technology that I never personally encountered but hell I don't remember even the magazines writing about those.
              My understanding is graphic tablets didn't start taking off until in the 00s.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                here you go bro
                https://aucview.aucfan.com/yahoo/v1047807229/

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >My understanding is graphic tablets didn't start taking off until in the 00s.
                You wot m8?
                I spent my childhood in the 90s lusting after graphics tablet in CompUSA lol. Would go play with them drawing in paint in windows 95. Even got a wacom knockoff in the later 90s.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              You are moving the goalpost mate.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Tablets have been around since the 80s, including touch screen tablets. It's not new technology. It was just more expensive to own back then.

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    https://doodad.dev/dither-me-this/

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      They look like shit.

  21. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    This website lists some of the software they used on the PC-98 for drawing. Further research may reveal how they drew back then further.
    http://www.ateliermw.com/cglib/software.html

  22. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Spin a dosbox VM find the software and try it out.

    Looks like it is a combination of, dithering, color quantization and edge analysis.

    https://dosbox-x.com/wiki/Guide%3APC%E2%80%9098-emulation-in-DOSBox%E2%80%90X

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Too complicated and unorthodox to be worth using Dosbox if ya ask me.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I agree, but its a good way for OP to see that either is too much effort or there isnt too much magic to that other than breaking things into smaller things and get gut.

  23. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They did scan. This is Sakaimichi without color from the PC-98 game guide YUNO. The game guide includes concept/hand drawn art from the game. A 1:1 scan with manual edits.

    Even Mark Ferrari said in a gdc video that the Japanese had "automated" some of the work in the 90s, though I'm not sure if he's referring to this.

  24. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Takuya's house

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >slanted roof with a flat roof coming through it
      What did Japan mean by this?

  25. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Kanna Hatano

  26. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It's obvious that in-game, watercolor material is used

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I know notjing about where this is from but this doesn't look anything like watercolour to me, I'm pretty sure this was done with copics or other alcoholbased markers.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      they'd scan in the work and then trace over it with pixel programs. they could only display at most 16 colors at most at a time.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        They scanned it w/o colors. Their palettes are listed on paper

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      https://i.imgur.com/tvREvsX.jpg

      Yuki

      https://i.imgur.com/pup3xeP.jpg

      This is from another elf game kakyusei

      https://i.imgur.com/SB71fJ9.jpg

      Kanna Hatano

      SOVL. I miss the anime artstyles of the 90s

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >droopy eye frogs
        cant wait for ai to replace u boomers

  27. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Yuki

  28. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    This is from another elf game kakyusei

  29. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I remember I saw some pc98 threads on Wyato and was inspired so I spent a few hours finding all the files and got multipaint working but my my tablet wasn't working properly so I drew something with a mouse. If you wanted to draw pc98 art I would just recommend using whatever drawing program you like, look up the limitations and stick by them in your program of choice. The era appropriate multipaint has no layers, I think saving images is a bit cooked due to the emulator, tablets don't work properly, the UI is way worse than what you have now. The only thing it had going for it was the dithering brush and I'm assuming most modern programs will have something similar.
    Basically if you want to do some "experimental history" you can try and get it all working but it also comes with the authentic frustration of using old computers, if you want to draw in that style just use a modern program, limit the resolution to 640x400 and use full black, full white, and only 16 other colours.
    https://twitter.com/PC98_bot I'm sure there are also other places to find images made on the pc98

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Agreed, just get ready to do lots of manual cleaning on lineart if you dont wanna jump around programs, SAI2 has a perfect binary becel brush but STILL LACKS A LOT of CSP shortcut keybinds, all the brushes are tied up to a single stabilizer range unlike CSP, no easy cut/copy/paste layers without selection, no liquify tool (NOT MEMEING FUCK DAT DOG), and NONE of the 3 on pic raleted had color indexing and NEVER will., coming frpm someone eho has wired itself to CSP and its interface and tool binds

      https://i.imgur.com/XXBX7tG.png

      does this help?

  30. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I was experimenting w/ this style a couple of months ago using Krita. Just make normal black and white shading (no need to pixelate, just make sure some areas are blended/soft) then add a gradient map filter layer with pixel dithering.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      could something like that be acomplished on CSP?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        look up dither stuff on clip assets. that kind of thing could work too, a lot of times it's just loading a pattern for the brush
        https://assets.clip-studio.com/en-us/search?tag=dither&order=new

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I don't have CSP but from what I know, it does support normal gradient maps but not patterned gradient maps. Krita is free and available for PC, not sure about iPad or other platforms

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Can you do a tutorial on this?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        sure, enjoy

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Thank you anon

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Thank youz33z

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Souless

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          I wonder how hard this would be to replicate in csp.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      https://i.imgur.com/mJcRZTz.png

      sure, enjoy

      BLESS

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      https://i.imgur.com/mJcRZTz.png

      sure, enjoy

      Really cool tutorial anon, thanks for sharing!

  31. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *