[tcaudilllg]

One night I was thinking what I could do in my down time waiting for college to start that would make the world better. I realized that one of my goals was to become a better pixel artist. This was also a challenge to many other people, I thought. What then, in the age of precision computer imagery, stood in the way? The answer came to me as I tried to think of a way to create interesting visuals for my game, Paradiseo Socionica. It was then I realized: both I and the world needed inspiration.

Hence Inspragal.

http://inspragal.x10.mx/

I'm persuaded that Inspragal is legal, given that the purpose is instruction and strictly non-commercial. There are no ads on the site anywhere, so nobody is making any sort of profit. And besides, the art isn't being used in games. Inspragal's policy is that all art is derivative and therefore, one must look to the achievements of the past to create novel works of artistic excellence. I cannot fathom how this project would hurt anyone's intellectual property... particularly if the property holders themselves choose to use it as a resource for their own further inspiration. This is not a tile ripping station... it is a library.

[XMark]

Nice! This will be a good reference guide for making tilesets (of course I won't be actually copying anything, just getting basic ideas)
_________________
Mark Hall
Abstract Productions
I PLAYS THE MUSIC THAT MAKES THE PEOPLES FALL DOWN!

[tcaudilllg]

I added FFIV Tower of Zot and Crystal Room rips.

[tcaudilllg]

Going to be adding Bahamut Lagoon tiles soon. BL is the gold standard in "oil" spriting.

[tcaudilllg]

I added a bunch of tiles from Sega system games, including Lunar and Phantasy Star. Bahamut Lagoon will have to wait... I counted at least six different tiles for grass at one location (other locations have different grass tiles).

[tcaudilllg]

I uploaded a number of Bahamut Lagoon tiles. These are the prettiest tiles ever to grace the SNES -- the entire palette consists of oil pigments selected by a specialist. Learning BL's technique will raise your tiling to unheard of levels.

[tcaudilllg]

Gonna be adding tiles from Eternal Filena. These are kinda FF5-like, but slightly more detailed. A step between FF5 and FF6. There are also high tech tiles and computer displays.

[tcaudilllg]

Still ripping my Eternal Filena shots. Playing Metal Max Returns now. The graphics are detailed but the palette kinda sucks.

One thing I've been observing in these SNES games are that their tile sets are fundamentally small. The VRAM was sorely limited (the games had 64k of RAM to share between both maps and tiles), and this is a major expressive handicap. Also, budgets came into play: games were made very quickly in the SNES era (the production cycle was 2 months at most for all but a few games), and the demands of sprite work would consume companies' limited pixel art staff in short order. I know as well as anyone the time problem when making graphics... even small sprites take at least 20 minutes to draw a frame for.

I remember QB games also had limited tile sets, mostly on account of the 640k barrier. Of course you could use EMS and XMS but who in this scene actually did that? Today tile sets have unlimited memory, so there is little justification for not making lots and lots of tiles to prevent players from observing patterns in supposedly random phenomena like dirt and mud. I gotta be honest... I have a lot of affection for 2x-scaled art.

But I think Inspragal will give all of you a little more confidence in your art, although I realize too that most of you are accomplished already. Still yeah exposure matters.

[tcaudilllg]

Almost finished with Bahamut Lagoon. I've also been ripping tiles from some old projects here on RPGDX which I mean to post to Inspragal. Legend of Grimtold in particular probably has some of the best EGA graphics ever.