Creating Sprite-Based Cutscenes (For AKIRA)

[matsuda123]

In 1994, an AKIRA game was in development for the SNES, Genesis, Sega CD, Game Boy, and Game Gear. Up until this year, the most information we had about the game was from scanty gaming articles and screenshots. However, recently a new video of gameplay was discovered, uncovering how the games levels would look, and most importantly for this post, how the animated cut scenes would look like. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfHOynqolOQ

The version shown is of the Genesis version. at the 27-40 seconds mark is where we see the first cutscenes for the game. Since the Genesis could't run FMV without the CD attachment, the company painstakingly made these amazing scenes by pixel for the game. Pretty well animated for 16 bit limitations!

Since the ROM does not exist online, I was interested in recreating at least a few of those frames myself by spiriting, but I am unsure of where to start. Has anyone attempted something like this before? Any ideas would be very much appreciated.

[Red Haired Bastard]

You're probably posting this in the wrong board. but hey i'll throw you a bone.
i think its pretty much like drawing, except with pixels instead of a pencil. so start how you would with a picture i guess.
get some lineart, flesh it out, and color it in, and then shade it.

Thats the best advice i can give you.

[matsuda123]

You're probably posting this in the wrong board. but hey i'll throw you a bone.
i think its pretty much like drawing, except with pixels instead of a pencil. so start how you would with a picture i guess.
get some lineart, flesh it out, and color it in, and then shade it.

Thats the best advice i can give you.

Yeah probably so :/ I should look around more.  I see... well, for now I guess that's what I'll try lol. I guess my issue is trying to figure out the dimensions of those cutscenes. The Genesis's screen resolution is 320x324, but I'm not really sure of what that means exactly. Is it like when I open up an image in Paint or gimp, and make the picture 320x324 pixels?

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

Considering that this is based off the film, I think they probably used footage from that, reduced it, and polished it.
If you want something close to these, that's what my approach would be!

So yeah, I'd make a few screen caps, reduce their size, then colour reduce them using a Genesis palette (you have to work with indexed colours rather than 24bit RGB), and then clean the result so it's not too grainy.

[matsuda123]

Considering that this is based off the film, I think they probably used footage from that, reduced it, and polished it.
If you want something close to these, that's what my approach would be!

So yeah, I'd make a few screen caps, reduce their size, then colour reduce them using a Genesis palette (you have to work with indexed colours rather than 24bit RGB), and then clean the result so it's not too grainy.

I see... Yeah That's probably quite possible. Though with what technology back then, i have no idea... Although a screens have to be custom made, since they didn't appear in the film, like at the beginning with Kaneda at the bar, Tetsuo is in the bar with him instead on another character named yamagata.

I hadn't thought of that (somehow), but it's not like cheating right? in the spiriting community people would't frown on  the method for using a preexisting image right? I'd feel bad it it was...

thats another thing i need to ask about, what exactly is a genesis palette? or a snes one for that matter, is there a place where i can see each color that was available to the systems?

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

Yeah, that could've happened too.

Well, it is cheating, it's an efficient shortcut. It's up to you, you could otherwise eyeball a screencap.

Megadrive/Genesis Palette:

More info on the specs

Hope it helps!

[matsuda123]

Yeah, that could've happened too.

Well, it is cheating, it's an efficient shortcut. It's up to you, you could otherwise eyeball a screencap.

Megadrive/Genesis Palette:

More info on the specs

Hope it helps!

Lol well, I'll slightly reduce my cheating by outlining the characters in gimp on one layer above the frame, then color it in myself, so I'll be cheating slightly less.

That does help quite a bit. Seems the Genesis favors red... Thank you very much.  Quite frankly, I'm very interested to learn about the Genesis palette, SNES palette, and see how greatly the Sega Cd impacts the Genesis, graphically and otherwise. I mean I know it's less powerful than the playstation, but i wonder how well it could compete against it, and how well it does against a SNES.

Maybe I'll make these screens for an AKIRA game based on this knowledge... That would be nice

[Gors]

Do not care about cheating. Do care about making a high quality piece instead.

Devs don't care about cheating on pixelarts. They will use any available means to make a good looking piece, and im sure they wouldnt even bother with pixelart if the consoles didnt have such limitations.