MSX Pixel Art Collection vol.2 - Art converted or enhanced by FRS
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Two concepts were drivers of this collection:

1) Arrangement

This is a Pixel Art Collection composed by images created by other artists that
were "arranged" to the MSX video modes.

"Arranged" is used here as an analogy to the music arrangements that we see
being released for the MSX all the time. They're usually tracks composed by
other artists, and arranged by a 3rd party for a specific MSX soundchip. The
person who does the arrangement adds his personal touches to the composition
in the process.

I liked this concept very much, and decided to try the same for Pixel Art.

Please keep in mind that these are not your typical "run off the mill" image
conversions, just blindly throwing the images into some converter and saving
the output. This rarely yields good results, so the conversions required a lot
of careful pre and post edition.

2) The renegaded MSX screen modes

While I was composing the 1st MSX Pixel Art Collection, I noticed that the
vast majority of MSX pixel art was targeted at the screens 2, 5 and 7, with
very few examples coming out for the screens 3, 8, 10 and 12, and absolutely
nothing published for the screen-6.

There seems even to have been some prejudice against the screens 8, 10 and 12,
mostly relegating those to show digitized photos. It was even worse for the
MSX2+ screen modes. Maybe this was caused by the fact that the vast majority of
what has been produced for the screen-8 and 12 was just some poorly digitized
images. To make things worse, even many games that had those for loading/title
screens had such low quality work. 

In this collection, I tried to mend this up, and prioritized these screen
modes. The collection was originally meant for personal viewing only, but after
some talk about Pixel Art in the MSX.org forums, I decided to release this
as a specific collection.

3) Visual tricks

From what I've learned from the vol.1 and by analyzing some impressive Pixel
Art images for the C64, Speccy and Amiga, the creation of Pixel art for legacy
machines is an art of creating an illusion. I tried to replicate those
illusion tricks for the conversions done here. For example:

- For the screen-2, I applied a number of tricks I learned to hide the color
  bleed by analyzing the screen-2 images of the vol.1 and ZX-Spectrum Pixel Art
- For the screen-8, I used some color illusion tricks learned from the C64
  Pixel Art images that try to trick the brain to perceive a greater number
  of colors, hues and gradients on screen.
  BTW, on the screen-2 I also used this trick on the SUNSTCIT.SC2 and YACHT.SC2
  images.
- For the screen-12, I used the same kind of colorbleed tricks used for the
  screen-2, effectively treating it as a "super screen-2". I really hope
  this proves that the screen-12 can be great to produce some incredible
  Pixel Art.
- Screen-10 is on another league itself. It's like having a screen-5 overlaid
  on top of a half-the-colors-screen-12. So both techniques must be combined.
  The main problem is that I couldn't find any decent image editor to do the
  post-processing in this mode. So I have very few images for this one.


For the credits of the authors of the original images, please check the
Credits_vol2.ods spreadsheet.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Special thanks:

- I'd like to thank both Louthrax and Markku Reunanen, authors of MIFui and
  Pixel Polizei respectivelly. Without their applications, I'd  have spent way
  more time to complete this project. 
- Piotr Fusik, Adrian Matoga and the rest of the RECOIL crew. This wonderful
  library allows images from classic computers to be viewed without a hassle.
  Piotr took special care to add very precise support for the MSX image
  formats.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Attention:

All files inside this collection are copyrighted by their respective authors.
My work here was to convert the images the best as possible for the constraints
of the selected MSX video mode and a good dose of visual tricks.

No commercial transaction of any kind is allowed for the collection or for
the images it contains without personal authorization of the respective authors.
For the files that no known artist is known, no commercial transaction of any
kind is allowed until the real author is found, then the real author must
give his/her personal authorization.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact:

If you have any questions or requests, please contact me at sdsnatcheralpha
at that big mail service from Google.


