Its totally 'shopped.
March 25, 2013 5:05 PM Subscribe
Watch Deviant Art's Elemental79 remaster classic game screen caps of Metroid, Contra and Doom into stunning HD works of art.
[via Gizmodo]
Wow. Who'd've thought rhinoceros butts would come in so handy?
posted by Sys Rq at 5:31 PM on March 25, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Sys Rq at 5:31 PM on March 25, 2013 [1 favorite]
Man, I really like that Contra one. I wish there were a way for me to play a remastered Contra. It would have to be exactly the same game, but look like that (no other crazy extras).
Instead, i'll have to settle for playing normal 8-bit Contra, which I will gladly do right now. Thanks for posting these, they all look great.
posted by King Bee at 5:44 PM on March 25, 2013
Instead, i'll have to settle for playing normal 8-bit Contra, which I will gladly do right now. Thanks for posting these, they all look great.
posted by King Bee at 5:44 PM on March 25, 2013
That's just what Contra looks like on my Nintendo NES-9 powered by its MOS 58518 CPU.
posted by localroger at 5:55 PM on March 25, 2013
posted by localroger at 5:55 PM on March 25, 2013
As a person with zero artistic ability, I genuinely mean no disrespect to this person's talents, which are considerable, but I couldn't stay interested in that Doom one for the length of the video, let alone how long it must have taken them to actually do it.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:12 PM on March 25, 2013
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:12 PM on March 25, 2013
b1tr0t, they used the version of original Doom music that had already been musicshopped.
posted by localroger at 6:17 PM on March 25, 2013
posted by localroger at 6:17 PM on March 25, 2013
King Bee: I wish that for so many of the video games of my childhood. Or I find old copies, start playing, and then stop, disappointed that the graphics aren't what I 'remember'.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 6:19 PM on March 25, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by spaceman_spiff at 6:19 PM on March 25, 2013 [1 favorite]
Really cool to see the process involved in making these. What I find really interesting is that if you wanted to do something like this and you weren't already familiar with the dozens of different Photoshop tools and techniques shown in the videos, there's no way you could even visualize the final image. There seems to be a strong feedback loop between the artist's vision and his tools.
Are there any good references for learning to do something like this?
posted by archagon at 6:25 PM on March 25, 2013
Are there any good references for learning to do something like this?
posted by archagon at 6:25 PM on March 25, 2013
I would like to see this done to Elevator Action.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 6:41 PM on March 25, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 6:41 PM on March 25, 2013 [1 favorite]
I can sympathize, archagon. At this speed, it's difficult to pick out any specific techniques, unless one is already familiar with them. But the project itself is so complex, it would take many hours to explain them all.
I see a lot of copying/ pasting photographic elements, editing them to fit, then smoothing them out, and adding highlights to give them a "painterly" look. Also lots of time spent just adding light/shadow to show contours, as well as lots and lots of tiny highlights, likely done with a tablet.
Really, the strengths on display here strike me as being mostly related to pure "painting and drawing" skills, as opposed to special photoshop techniques.
posted by ShutterBun at 7:15 PM on March 25, 2013 [4 favorites]
I see a lot of copying/ pasting photographic elements, editing them to fit, then smoothing them out, and adding highlights to give them a "painterly" look. Also lots of time spent just adding light/shadow to show contours, as well as lots and lots of tiny highlights, likely done with a tablet.
Really, the strengths on display here strike me as being mostly related to pure "painting and drawing" skills, as opposed to special photoshop techniques.
posted by ShutterBun at 7:15 PM on March 25, 2013 [4 favorites]
"King Bee: I wish that for so many of the video games of my childhood. Or I find old copies, start playing, and then stop, disappointed that the graphics aren't what I 'remember'."
It was so weird trying to play Gradius and finding out that it was both uglier and much, much harder than I remembered it.
posted by klangklangston at 7:15 PM on March 25, 2013 [1 favorite]
It was so weird trying to play Gradius and finding out that it was both uglier and much, much harder than I remembered it.
posted by klangklangston at 7:15 PM on March 25, 2013 [1 favorite]
I liked the flashes of random source images. Raw meat! Frog! Rhino! Sports equipment! Motorcycles! Nuts and bolts! Brain! Water polo!
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 7:39 PM on March 25, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 7:39 PM on March 25, 2013 [2 favorites]
So many greebles
posted by device55 at 7:54 PM on March 25, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by device55 at 7:54 PM on March 25, 2013 [1 favorite]
meh, the ribs of the 44 gallon drums in the doom effort are too pronounced and close together. Do it properly or not at all I say.
posted by mattoxic at 7:54 PM on March 25, 2013
posted by mattoxic at 7:54 PM on March 25, 2013
Every generation gets the Jeff Koons it deserves.
posted by Ian A.T. at 8:18 PM on March 25, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by Ian A.T. at 8:18 PM on March 25, 2013 [3 favorites]
These are pretty awesome. Reminds me of Hurrican, which is an actual game. (these are prettier, of course)
posted by ropeladder at 8:31 PM on March 25, 2013
posted by ropeladder at 8:31 PM on March 25, 2013
I'm most impressed with the painter's ability to find the random hardware fittings they need for the little fiddly bits in the background on that Metroid painting. Half the time I can never figure out what Google Image Search terms will even get me close when I try to do something like that. In your head you're looking for "some kind of chrome bracket thing with some mounting hole bits for screws sticking out of the sides that looks sort of like a dog bone with one end bigger than the other" and that's not a particularly helpful search query. That's the point where I end up searching for "engine parts" or "large hadron collider" in the hopes of spotting something in the mess o' mechanicals.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:46 PM on March 25, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by jason_steakums at 9:46 PM on March 25, 2013 [1 favorite]
That's some wicked Photoshop chops, but in the end the graphics lose their 8-bit charm. Kind of like when you load a high definition texture pack in Minecraft and the game all of a sudden looks wrong.
posted by monospace at 9:52 PM on March 25, 2013
posted by monospace at 9:52 PM on March 25, 2013
ShutterBun - I came to the opposite conclusion about the technique. I think the artist is a Photoshop master but this video doesn't display especially strong painting and drawing skills. Not saying the artist doesn't have those skills, but they didn't choose to use them in this work.
The Photoshop skills are everywhere though: warp/liquefy tools, masking and transparency, blend modes, color tweaking, effects. Almost every sharp edge or 3D volume comes from a photo, bezier path, or a carefully composed selection instead of a freehand brush stroke. The tablet is used to draw loose shadows and highlights, with well chosen blend modes hiding the brush strokes. Blend modes are also combined with the Curves tool to create convincing lighting effects without getting the right color gradations from scratch. The Doom one uses the bevel tool with a partial selection in a really clever way to get oblique highlights on the walls.
This person is extremely talented and I'm not doubting that, but they basically sidestep traditional painting and drawing techniques with Photoshop. It is fascinating to me.
posted by scose at 10:49 PM on March 25, 2013 [2 favorites]
The Photoshop skills are everywhere though: warp/liquefy tools, masking and transparency, blend modes, color tweaking, effects. Almost every sharp edge or 3D volume comes from a photo, bezier path, or a carefully composed selection instead of a freehand brush stroke. The tablet is used to draw loose shadows and highlights, with well chosen blend modes hiding the brush strokes. Blend modes are also combined with the Curves tool to create convincing lighting effects without getting the right color gradations from scratch. The Doom one uses the bevel tool with a partial selection in a really clever way to get oblique highlights on the walls.
This person is extremely talented and I'm not doubting that, but they basically sidestep traditional painting and drawing techniques with Photoshop. It is fascinating to me.
posted by scose at 10:49 PM on March 25, 2013 [2 favorites]
jason_steakums, I bet a lot of the images came from texture packs for games.
posted by scose at 10:58 PM on March 25, 2013
posted by scose at 10:58 PM on March 25, 2013
Horace Rumpole: but I couldn't stay interested in that Doom one for the length of the video, let alone how long it must have taken them to actually do it.
In the blurb it says 35 hours over 8 days...
It's a shame DA don't show sales stats, it would be interesting to see ~ what he made per hour for that.
posted by titus-g at 11:12 PM on March 25, 2013
In the blurb it says 35 hours over 8 days...
It's a shame DA don't show sales stats, it would be interesting to see ~ what he made per hour for that.
posted by titus-g at 11:12 PM on March 25, 2013
Ice Cream Socialist: "I would like to see this done to Elevator Action"
Pong!
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:15 PM on March 25, 2013
Pong!
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:15 PM on March 25, 2013
Didn't want to be the first to comment and just poop on this guy's work, but I don't like it at all. It's extremely... dead. His technique in "remastering" these shots is less like a painting of the same character in the same pose and more like a taxidermied version of the original. It looks wrong, and not because of the detail, but because everything has been sort of epitomized. I certainly couldn't do this, but I get the same vibe from this as I would at, like, the Natural History Museum, where you look in through the glass at the jungle cat in idealized mid-lunge, birds eternally escaping its grasp, and every bit of flora painstakingly orientated to present their best face to the viewer. The end result is, compared with the incredibly crude original sprites, depressingly lifeless.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:42 AM on March 26, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:42 AM on March 26, 2013 [3 favorites]
I watched the Contra one. It was absolutely transfixing. My favourite part was at about 4:24 when he takes the hose out of a photo of a vacuum cleaner and uses the rest to make part of the robot's leg armour.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 3:14 AM on March 26, 2013
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 3:14 AM on March 26, 2013
ShutterBun - I came to the opposite conclusion about the technique.
Interesting points, and totally justified. I think (in my case) it comes down to "being more impressed by the stuff I can't do well," as opposed to "photoshop techniques I take for granted, but which might be totally impressive to others."
This guy's got talent on both sides, so there's something for everyone to be impressed by.
posted by ShutterBun at 2:08 PM on March 26, 2013
Interesting points, and totally justified. I think (in my case) it comes down to "being more impressed by the stuff I can't do well," as opposed to "photoshop techniques I take for granted, but which might be totally impressive to others."
This guy's got talent on both sides, so there's something for everyone to be impressed by.
posted by ShutterBun at 2:08 PM on March 26, 2013
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posted by jkaczor at 5:19 PM on March 25, 2013