Amiga Love ❤Jul 7, 2023

Can we all just sit here and gaze upon this mastery by Rick Parks in 16 colors? No scanning, done by hand in Deluxe Paint on an Amiga. It's almost photographic in its perfection.

Rick worked at Westwood Studios and worked on Eye of the Beholder I & 2, Dune 2, Kyrandia and other classics.

Rick died in 1996. His incredible creativity lives on.

#pixelart #commodore #amiga #80s #90s #retrocomputing

Show threadTinheadNedJul 8, 2023
@amigalove some good work with halfbrite there too I guess 😁
Show threadAmiga Love ❤Jul 8, 2023

@tinheadned It's just hi-res interlace (704x480) at 16 colors.

But Rick took exceptional draftsmanship skills combined with a deep understanding of classical painting techniques and applied them to pixel art in ways that make me bend the knee.

Show threadProfessor_Stevens

@amigalove @tinheadned

Looks like dithering, not just interlace. Which is how you typically make use of a limited color palette.

He made some judicious color choices, too. Here's the complete palette from that image:

000000
606060
704000
808080
905010
A00000
A06030
A07060
A0A0A0
B0A0A0
C00000
C07060
C08050
D0D0D0
F0B080
F0F0F0

Notice also that he is using a 12-bit color space to choose from.

Oct 21, 2024 at 12:57pmWeb
Show threadroot42Oct 21, 2024
@Professor_Stevens Yeah, but for the 480 lines you need interlace on classic Amigas. This combined with the dithering creates the illusion of more colors on a CRT. Not so much on our LCDs and OLEDs...
Show threadProfessor_StevensOct 21, 2024

@root42

I don't see how interlace simulates more colors. It's due to the fact that the original NTSC frame rate of 29.97 is below the visual flicker threshold. Alternating odd/even filled the screen with half an image 59.94 times per second, which is above the flicker threshold. But it doesn't affect color perception.

Modern displays still use dither (it's built into some paint programs, like GIMP's gradient tool). But that's because 256 shades isn't enough for them.

Show threadroot42Oct 21, 2024
@Professor_Stevens Depends on how close you sit to the monitor. First and foremost Interlace will increase vertical resolution, but if your CRT is a bit blurry, the lines will actually blend a bit. This can give more shades. On PAL machines you will have even weirder effects, like PAL mixing (not due to interlace):
https://kodiak64.com/blog/non-standard-hues-PAL-NTSC-C64.php
Show threadProfessor_StevensOct 21, 2024

@root42

Interlace and vertical resolution are not related to each other.

Show threadXenovanceOct 22, 2024
@Professor_Stevens @root42 Huh? They were very much related on the original Amiga, where the vertical resolution achievable with interlace was twice that of non-interlaced video (e.g. 512 vs 256 on PAL Amigas not using overscan). Contemporary Amiga monitors shared that limitation, as did typical consumer TVs of the time (which was of course where the idea of using interlace to double the vertical resolution originated). Interlace was optional for low vert. resolution, but mandatory for high.