English Amiga Board - TRON Image I Painted This Week in DP3 to Chillax

It's great to see people use real Amigas for graphics (so I am not the only one).

It's a nice picture, too.

A few thoughts, questions and perhaps nitpicks - - first, what's the point of the photo of the cell phone?

Also, instead of a 'photo taken of a screen', could we get the actual picture? Kind of hard to judge a picture when it's a photo of a screen instead of showing what pixels are actually where.

Amiga 3000 with 16 MHz - what CPU is it? I mean, 68000 or 68010 or 68020 or..? I think it'd be more interesting to know that kind of detail than the manufacturing year of the computer..

I never understood why some people prefer the 3000 over 4000 - after all, 4000 has AGA and all - much nicer to draw when you have not only bigger palette (so you can more accurately choose the exact color/shade you want), but also more colors for your picture so you never 'run out'.

Some tips, hints or 'things I would've done differently' (sorry, I look at graphics, including my own, and always see where it could/should/might be improved, I can't help it, it's a 'graphician's eye');

- Even with 16 colors (though Amiga 3000 can do 32 and even 64 with the odd halfbrite mode, I think - let's not talk about HAM here), the logo could've used more than two shades of blue. Heck, even Commodore 64 can do two shades of blue..

- Had you used 45 degree angle, so it'd align with the pixels, it would look 'naturally sharper' (or smoother, or more 'streamlined' - hard to find the proper word), even if it might be slightly different otherwise. I reckon' that line is so close to 45 degrees anyway, might not hurt to experiment and see. In any case, I think it would look better that way - to adjust a picture to conform to the lores pixel format this way would help with the 'jagged edges' quite a lot even without any anti-aliasing done)

- There are many dithering techniques, looks like you decided upon a bit unorthodox, partially line-based chaos - with a different technique. Although it looks ok, the overall aesthetic might look a bit more exciting, and the impact might be stronger. Why not use at least three or four shades, while you're at it?

Last bit of criticism (I swear), why make something that already exists, and make a 'humbler version' of it if you're not going to add something of your own and original to it, to make it more exciting? I often make C64 images just to see "what C64 could make out of this" (whatever 'this' is), or "what a C64-version of a game might have looked like", so I understand doing this kind of thing. However, if you don't 'personalize' or 'enhance' it in any way, the end result will be a little bit 'bland', even if somewhat visually pleasing, like this picture (probably) is.

(Hard to say for sure without seeing the actual pic - a photo of a screen viewed on another screen will have three grids that basically stand in the way of seeing the pixels - first is the CRT monitor, then there's the camera's own pixel grid, and then we have the picture, and then the grid of the monitor we're viewing it on. The whole thing gets obfuscated multiple times before the eye sees it - no need to hide the pixels this way, you can show it, it's not a secret, is it?)

Anyway, please keep doing more, I love seeing people creating things on the old Amigas.

P.S. I made a couple of quick mock-ups on my Amiga 1200 ('030@40MHz, 192MB FAST RAM, Brilliance 2.0) of what I mean.

https://postimg.cc/gallery/phfJZzx

Please note that:

a) I didn't really want to create this particular picture (Tron doesn't interest me), I just wanted to show what I meant by dithering and 45 degree angles

b) This is just a quick mock-up, so the logos are not proportionally correct or to scale - I just looked at the posters and purely visually just tried to make something similar (no tracing or rotoscoping-style stuff whatsoever, just with eye - and I am really bad at that)

c) I couldn't be bothered with shading, light-effects, fixing the shapes and curves, etc. - I just wanted to give a small idea of what I had in mind, when I was talking about all that.

d) I don't usually draw in this kind of high resolution, I use 'wide pixels' á la C64 (160x240 is close enough), so it's too much work for me to try anything in this 320x256 resolution.

and

e) I didn't know how to add an image here, so please excuse the pure link to postimage.

P.P.S. I think the 'T' is supposed to be slightly fatter, and the 'O' looks almost like an oval, instead of round - and I think it'd be a good idea to make the characters a bit bigger, now the logo overshadows the characters, which are supposed to be something to marvel at. Also, with bigger characters, you can add more detail.

P.P.P.S. Now that I dabbled on this theme myself, I realize how well you have done that logo when it comes to proportions otherwise, the 'R' curve is really weird in the original logo, I couldn't get it right, you got much closer. I also really like that disc ring shading, it looks really good. I would have had a lot of trouble with that, as I mimicked the movie poster perhaps a bit too closely, whereas you used more artistic freedom to draw it from a slightly different elevation as well. You also seem to have skimped a bit on the light effects - which could be a tad brighter (look at the movie poster, everything is 'glowing' and 'shining' - very hard to do, and requires really bright colors to be used, like pure white (255,255,255) in the middle, that's then shaded)

P.P.P.P.S. Just another nitpick that came to mind - in your version, the logo absolutely DOMINATES the picture, and whatever else is there, is like a weak afterthought, or so it looks. The middle part is very messy-looking due to blue used both on the characters and the logo, especially the middle of the 'O'. Also, the characters standing in FRONT of the logo is a bad idea on my opinion, because I want to see the O (:

The light beam should be brighter and look more impressive - the thing is, in the original poster, there's supposed to be this enormous glow behind and around the characters, but your logo kind of interferes with that, making it hard to see what's even going on in the middle and the blue shading doesn't help.

Compare to the original poster, where the logo is neatly more humble, below, fully visible, and much smaller, so the eye can see it fully and focus on what's happening in the middle of the picture. You basically obfuscate that important event happening in the middle by confusing everything with the gigantic logo. I am not saying it's necessarily always a bad idea that it couldn't be somehow done, but as it stands, it doesn't quite work - the main characters are not emphasized at all, and VISUALLY are lost in the middle, together with clarity.

The viewed doesn't know what to look at, or if anything interesting is even happening. Remember that less is more, and not the full screen has to be filled with blue stuff. When you leave a lot of black space around, it emphasizes and brings nice contrast to the magical-looking main characters in the original poster. Even in my version, there's more clarity about 'something epic happening in the middle' although my version is very unfinished and only a poor mock-up.

Basically, placement and contrast work against your picture - if you consider doing something about the logo or the middle part, making the chars actually shine more and such (the tiny 'glow' just makes it look messy, and is the only thing that somewhat separates the characters from the logo).

I understand the letter "O" is the most difficult to do and shade in that logo, but you can do it, you don't have to hide it behind your characters..

Well, these were just the few pointers that came to mind when inspecting and admiring your composition. Do you have plans to release the actual pixel-version of the image?

Just to clarify, I think your picture is very cool and you have done your own, unique touch to it by changing the viewing angle and making your own version of the 'disc floor', and I think it's great - even the woman's pose (with the hands) is a bit different. I just think the picture has a lot of potential that's been obfuscated by the middle part.

Your sense of proportion is obviously better than mine, and you are great at doing shading, shadows and such. I would love to see more graphics from you - your art reminds me of the Delphine Software graphics, like Time Travellers or whateve the name of that game was.