Animations using palette cycling: mind-blown. Day/night cycle using palette cycling: Mind melted

He is the last pixel-bender.

No applauding? I'd be loosing my balls if I was watching this live haha. This is amazing.

It's amazing to have the privilege of an in-depth view of a master's process. He seems incredibly humble for someone who is undoubtedly an important figure in the development of artwork, media culture, and video games as we see them today. I'm so glad we live in a time where we can still have conversations with artists and creators that formed such a crucial part of our culture.

Those 8 bit animations of the waterfalls and such are AMAZING!

I would pay five times my tuition if I could get art teachers as nice and factual as this guy.

This was amazing, gave a whole new insight into the work and thought that goes into designing 8 Bit art.

I’m not a visual artist, but watching this presentation was a delight. Always a special occasion to hear a master discuss their craft.

" I don't know why that's happening but it's really annoying" -Anyone who ever used Photoshop.

That pallette shifting is AMAZING - from trees to a cityscape by only changing the pallette? I'm sure it's basic, but still!

This is awesome. Thank you, GDC, for putting this up online! And thanks to Mark for giving the talk that's so chockful of information!

This is very interesting and all, but I read the title as "8 British Graphics" and kept waiting for him to explain what the fuck he meant

Wtf? Is he a wizard? Must be.

This is truly not just "commercial work". This is art grown out of limitation and necessity.

Being 40 yo now, i played most of those games, and this guy is a genius.

This guy's mind is terrifying. Unbelievable.

Mark's art is so atmospheric. I love the warmth and lived in feeling he brings to some of these scenes from Thimbleweed Park.

13:50 That just completely blew my mind.

Student: I feel like we're watching a Master of his time! Mark: WHERE??? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I am continually impressed at how everyone who worked on Lucasfilm Games is just an amazing person and a joy to listen to. Probably the reason why their games were so amazing as well.

Holy shit, some of that 8-bit art from the slide show is just gorgeous. I'm focused on pixel art myself, and you just blew my mind, sir.

51:40 - 59:57 Waterfall color cycling tutorial 38:18 Everythhing except the sky is 3-7 colors, whatever the structure is. 39:21 Sky is 16-32 colors max; Half the palette is used for color cycling FX

My eyes can't believe what they're seeing. This man has produced some of the most beautiful art in gaming I've ever seen. Not just 8-bit, but in general. So much color and movement. Creating environments like these in a 3D space would take unbelievable amounts of resources and wouldn't be as high quality. Mark Ferrari is TRULY AN INSPIRATION for game artists. Thank you GDC for having him talk at the event.

Give this man a million dollars.

Someone needs to tell Mark Ferrari about Graphicsgale! Its got a dither pattern brush, you pick a pattern, two colors and go nuts! Saved me so many hours of tedious dithering work. So much more handy than a dither fill tool, its more like actually painting the pattern.

i hope this art style never dies or is at least regarded in the future, it is really quite amazing

It's so rare to see someone who's not only insanely talented but also a great speaker! It's such a pleasure to watch this talk.

46:12 This was really inspirational, actually. One of the best presenters I've ever seen, even with the technical difficulties. Incredibly engaging, charismatic, and knowledgeable. I only wish I had teachers like this when I was in school

after paying attention for 40 minutes i was hooked. inspiration started flowing all over me. i just *sobs* love youtube.

Hands down best talk I've ever seen at GDC.

This is absolutely incredible. I'm so blown away by what you were able to accomplish, truly breathtaking work.

**Wipes a tear** Mark, if it's not already obvious, you're my hero.

What a priceless gift it is to have such a lecture(specially one this long!) avaible on youtube, thanks GDC and MarkFerrari!

By far my most enjoyed GDC talk. Glad I subscribed and I'm glad to see this on here. Thanks!!!!!

I love this man! This was so fascinating. I've never had a clear idea of how old 8 bit pixel art games were made. There's a certain quality of fantastical realism to this art style. My mind gets drawn into the pictures and starts to imaging and feel what the place must be like, in a very different way that newer graphics can't do.

This is pure gold. Thanks for the talk!

Absolutely awesome! Just imagine how much beautiful content can be made this way, and with so little system resources involved...

ive always loved these art pieces, I'm glad this guy got to do a talk on them

Beautiful art! The process of making it is really interesting. I have a new appreciation for it - I had no idea how much work went into this stuff.

OMG! This is so interesting! I've seen these piece of art a long time ago, but seeing Mark Ferrari discussing the process is wonderful!

Did a tree once that went through all the seasons with palette shifting.

For anyone that enjoyed this talk and hasn't checked out his demos yourself, I highly encourage you to do so. Load up those color cycle demos on your own PC - they're pretty wild. There's a few more tools for understanding them than shown in the talk.

One of the best GDC talks this far. Brilliant! Tks, Mark!

You are an inspiration Mark, I returned to that video accidentaly, and want to rewatch it, amazing work, and amazing approach and lesson, Thanks.

I love that he's as organised as I am when it comes to presentations.

This is the most amazing and insightful GDC talk I've seen.

That man just making games art again. So cool

Best GDC talk I've come across, woah!

I keep coming back to this one. It's so good.

That artwork is insane. I can't believe those pictures are possible to exist.

questions in the middle is awesome. sometimes questions are super valuable for these talks

I like that people still have love for this Artstyle. personally i was mesmerised by the sheer dedication, creativity and love from this person for the 8-bit art.

I LOVE the way these look! I went to that website with the 8bit art and have not been disappointed. I wish there were more 8bit games with this level of art in them! Incredibly impressive!

MIND BLOWN! Next level pixel art

this talk is superb. my mind is blown and the inspiration is flowing hard.

i loved his art back in the 90s, it was a great talk and i watched it from start to the end

This is amazing. Needs more recognition.

Simply amazing I was really blown away by this.

many many valuable advices. Loved what he says about the background light

Great video, had to re-watch parts of it. thanks GDC!

Man, what do I say? This is a treasure to watch all these techniques. This is the pinnacle of pixel art.

Lovely talk, just lovely!

Amazing!!!

This video should have more videos. This is actually amazing to see the skills applied to the pixel art.

Wow the day- and nightlight effect with the palette shifting is awesome!

Great talk, for the retro art and also for the mention about how too much choice can slow you down.

Such a likable person, i enjoyed my 80 minutes here a lot!

31:00 This is very, very insightful, definitely the most useful part of the talk for me.

Came back here after searching about that mans' life and the color cycling tool. What a beautiful journey and story. So many cool and unknown stories out there. Thanks for sharing your art and your love for it.

This dude is a true artistic master. A modern-day genius. A beautiful inspiration to work harder and be better.

I absolutely loved this talk and am truly inspired. Can't wait to get started making some '8 Bitish' art!

This guy is so humble and is really fun to listen to.

My favourite GDC video of all time!

Amazing. Kudos to Ferrari and GDC for the upload. Please add subtitles.

What an incredible artist. So glad these people exist

I am learning pixel art and this vide is GOLD. Thank you very much, Mr. Ferrari, and thanks to GDC for uploading it.

Absolutely amazing talk

such beautiful artwork.

Thanks Mr Ferrari, I come back here often, to both admire the mastery of the tool, and to just watch the sun rise over the canyon. Pushing one angle so far, can get one very far.

This is so great. And it makes me feel soooo old. I started doing palette animation on the Mac, after seeing the wonderful Satori screen saver. It was very hard work, technically, and it would have been just as hard for the artists like Mark.

Great talk. Thanks for this amazing content!

For me, it's the limitations of a medium that makes it an art-form. A true artist transcends those limitations to create something special. This man is a true artist.

This is a feel good video. Thank you, Mark Ferrari et al, for your contribution to humanity :)

Wow! Those limited resources really resulted in some great ideas. Using palette shifting as animation device or daytime-to-image mapping itself is absolutely brilliant. Really good talker too.

5 minutes in and I can tell this will be a great video. Love the bit about limitations and creativity. The presenter is the palette master! Holey moley the change from trees to city near 14 minutes - wow

It sucks so much games are still largely not taken seriously. Like there are no Oscars or Grammys or Pulitzers or Nobel prizes for games. This guy should get all the prizes.

Thought I would only watch the first 5 minutes, stayed to watch the whole thing. Amazing artist.

What an amazing talk... The best of these are the ones that help me realize how insanely brilliant the artists were that made the games from the early years with the limitations they had. While modern games are incredible, and the achievements are no less great, it's these early pathfinder who truly made the gaming world what it is today. We are blessed that they existed and put their genius to work in scenes thst might babe literally been seconds on screen.

One of the patron saints of digital graphics. I spent a lot of time reverse engineering his techniques for a project I was working on two years ago ("Bone Rattle", it's on Tumblr). 8-bit color is absolutely more fun to work with, but color cycling is still a relevant technique for animation today. It makes animating fluid volumes so much easier (water, gas, fire, etc.). You can actually cycle 24-bit images in After Effects using the Colorama effect, which is basically a circular gradient map with keyframable color rotation. I wish more people saw the utility in this technique. Good on that one guy for mentioning Grafx2- Pro Motion is my go-to program for indexed color art, but Grafx2's feedback painting feature combined with looping in shade mode allows you to paint cycles in realtime, which is super fun. Gotta run that by Huckaby to make sure it gets into whatever he's working on. SO hyped for that.

Amazing stuff. I miss those days for sure.

13:55 Was the audience really quiet or did they fail to understand what they where seeing? How can there be no reaction to that?

Thank you so much for carrying the torch of detailed pixel art.

This is the third time I'm beginning to watch this (not in row obviously, throughout a span of 1 year) And this time I realised I actually recognized that Spyro forest, man that game was quite fun to play. First 2 times I was too stunned by the art to even realise it was a game familiar to me. So amazing work.

These pieces of art are incredible!

This guy is great. I really like these arts and this color pallet shifting is a really great idea and it looks really cool.

A genius in his right place, this is really amazing! If only I could be there in the audience. I wish there were more new adventure games made with this gfx style.. have to play Loom yet again.

I love his little boxes containing so much emotions

An absolute beast. I played all the monkey islands and I can vouch that this man's art in combination with everything else was one of the reasons I kept coming back. So much to learn.

man i remember playing around with deluxepaint on the amiga 500 as a kid good stuff!

This pixel art is just insane, I love it so much