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My Little Pony, Hussiefied. For an MSPFA.
Tidbit: The “Posterization” Effect of Panels Due to the Consequences of GIF Color Quantization (and Increased Contrast (And Also The Tangential Matter of Dithering))
There’s this misconception that the color banding and patterned dithering found in panels is an entirely deliberate, calculated effect Hussie manipulated the image into looking with some specific filter, but this isn’t the case, exactly. It wasn’t so much a conscious decision he took but rather an unavoidable consequence of the medium he partook in: digital art in an age where bandwidth and storage was at a premium.
Not to delve too deeply into the history and technicalities of it, but the long and the short of it is back in the early nineties to late aughts (and even a bit further into the 10s), transferring and storing data over the web was not as fast, plentiful, and affordable as it is now. Filesize was a much more important consideration than the fidelity of an image when displaying it on the web. Especially so when you’re a hobbyist on a budget and paying for your own webhosting, or using a free service with a modest upload limit (even per file!). Besides, what good would it be to post your images online if it takes ages to load them over people’s dial-up Internet? Don’t even get me STARTED on the meager memory and power the average iGPU had to work with, too.
The original comic strip’s resolution was a little more than halved and saved as a GIF rather than a large PNG. That’s about an 82.13% reduction in filesize!
So in the early days it was very common for people to take their scans, photographs, and digital drawings and scale them down and publish them as smaller lossily compressed JPEGs or lossless GIFs, the latter of which came at the cost of color range. But it had a wider range of browser support and the feature to be used for animations compared to its successor format, PNG (“PNG’s not GIF”).
You’d’ve been hard-pressed to find Hussie use any PNGs himself then. In fact, I think literally the only times he’s ever personally employed them and not delegate the artwork to a member of the art team were some of the tiny shrunken down text of a character talking far in the distance and a few select little icons.
PNGs support semi-transparency unlike GIFs, which is why Hussie used them to preserve the anti-aliasing on the text without having to add an opaque background color.
While PNGs can utilize over 16 million colors in a single image, GIFs have a hard limit of 256 colors per frame. For reference, this small image alone has 604 colors:
For those who can’t do the math, 256 is a pretty damn small number.
Smaller still were the palettes in a great deal of MSPA’s panels early on in its run. Amazingly, a GIF such as this only uses 7 colors (8 if you count the alpha (which it is)).
Not that they were always strictly so low; occasionally some in the later acts of Homestuck had pretty high counts. This panel uses all 256 spots available, in fact.
If he had lowered the number any smaller, the quality would have been god-awful.
To the untrained eye, these bands of color below may seem to be the result of a posterization filter (an effect that reduces smooth areas of color into fewer harsh solid regions), but it’s really because the image was exported as a GIF with no dithering applied.
Dithering, to the uninitiated, is how these colors are arranged together to compensate for the paltry palette, producing illusory additional colors. There are three algorithms in Photoshop for this: Diffusion, Pattern, and Noise.
Above is the original image and below is the image reduced to a completely binary 1-bit black and white color palette, to make the effect of each dithering algorithm more obvious.
Diffusion seemingly displaces the pixels around randomly, but it uses error diffusion to calculate what color each pixel should be. In other words, math bullshit. The Floyd-Steinberg algorithm is one such implementation of it, and is usually what this type of error diffusion dithering is called in other software, or some misnomer-ed variation thereof.
The usage of Pattern may hearken back to retro video game graphics for you, as older consoles also suffered from color palette limitations. Sometimes called Ordered dithering because of the orderly patterns it produces. At least, I assumed so. Its etymological roots probably stem from more math bullshit again.
True to its name, Noise is noisy. It’s visually similar to Diffusion dithering, except much more random looking. At least, when binarized like this. Truth be told, I can’t tell the difference between the two at all when using a fuller color table on an image with a lot of detail. It was mainly intended to be used when exporting individual slices of an image that was to be “stitched” back together on a webpage, to mitigate visible seams in the dithering around the edges.
To sate your curiosity, here’s how the image looks with no dithering at all:
People easily confuse an undithered gif as being the result of posterization, and you couldn’t fault them for thinking so. They look almost entirely the same!
Although I was already aware of this fact when I was much younger, I’m guilty of posterizing myself while editing images back then. Figured I may as well reduce the color count beforehand to help keep the exported GIF looking as intended. I view this as a complete waste of time now, though, and amateurish. Takes away a bit of the authenticity of MSPA art, how the colors and details are so variable between panels. As for WHY they were so variable to begin with, choosing the settings to save the image as requires a judicious examination on a case-by-case basis. In other words, just playing around with the settings until it looks decent.
It’s the process of striking a fine balance between an acceptable file size and a “meh, good enough” visual quality that I mentioned earlier. How many colors can you take away until it starts to look shit? Which dithering algorithm helps make it look not as shit while not totally ruining the compression efficacy?
Take, for example, this panel from Problem Sleuth. It has 16 colors, an average amount for the comic, and uses Diffusion dithering. Filesize: 34.5 KB.
Then there’s this panel right afterwards. It has 8 colors (again, technically 7 + alpha channel since it’s an animated gif), and uses Noise dithering this time. Filesize: 34.0 KB.
The more colors and animation frames there are, and the more complicated dithering there is, the bigger the file size is going to be. Despite the second panel having half the color count of the first, the heavily noisy dithering alone was enough to inflate the file size back up. On top of that, there’s extra image information layered in for the animation, leaving only a mere 0.5 kilobyte difference between the two panels.
So why would Hussie pick the algorithm that compresses worse than the other? The answer: diffusion causes the dithering to jitter around between frames of animation. Recall its description from before, how it functions on nerd shit like math calculations. The way it calculates what each pixel’s color will be is decided by the pixels’ colors surrounding it, to put it simply. Any difference in the placement of pixels will cause these cascading changes in the dithering like the butterfly effect.
Diffusion dithering, 16 colors. Filesize: 25.2 KB
This isn’t the case with Noise or Pattern dithering, since their algorithms use either a texture or a definite array of numbers (more boring nerd shit).
Noise dithering, 16 colors. Filesize: 31.9 KB
Pattern dithering, 16 colors. Filesize: 23.1 KB
There’s a lot more I’d like to talk about, like the different color reduction algorithms, which dither algorithms generally compress better in what cases, and the upward and downward trends of each one’s use over the course of a comic, but since this isn’t a deep dive on GIF optimization, I might save that for another time. This post is already reaching further past the original scope it was meant to cover, and less than 10 images can be uploaded before hitting the limit, which is NOWHERE near enough for me. I should really reevaluate my definition of the word “tidbit”… Anyway, just know that this post suffers from sample selection bias, so while the panels above came from an early section of Problem Sleuth that generally had static panels with diffusion dithering and animated panels with noise dithering, there certainly were animated panels with diffusion later on despite the dither-jittering.
Alright, time to shotgun through the rest of this post, screw segueing. Increasing the contrast almost entirely with “Use Legacy” enabled spreads the tones of the image out evenly, causing the shadows and highlights to clip into pure black and white. The midtones become purely saturated colors. Using the Levels adjustment filter instead, moving both shadow and highlight input level sliders towards the middle also accomplishes the same thing, because, you know, linear readjustment. I’m really resisting the urge to go off on another tangent about color channels and the RGB additive color model.
Anyway, there aren’t any examples in MSPA that are quite this extreme (at least in color, but I’ll save that for a later post), but an image sufficiently high in contrast can be mistaken for being posterized at a glance. Hence the Guy Fieri banner. In preparation for this post, I was attempting to make a pixel-perfect recreation of that panel but hit a wall trying to figure out which and how many filters were used and what each one’s settings were, so I sought the wisdom of those in the official Photoshop Discord server. The very first suggestion I got was a posterization filter, by someone who was a supposed senior professional and server moderator, no less. Fucking dipshit, there’s too much detail preserved for it to be posterization. Dude totally dissed me and my efforts too, so fuck that moron. I spit on his name and curse his children, and his children’s children. The philistines I have to put up with…
In the end, the bloody Guy Fieri recreation proved to be too much for me to get right. I got sort of close at times, but no cigar. These were some of the closest I could manage:
You might be left befuddled after all this, struggling to remember what the point of the blogpost even was. I had meant for it to be a clarification of GIFs and an argument against using the posterization filter, thinking it was never used in MSPA, but while gathering reference images, I found a panel from the Felt intermission that actually WAS posterized! So I’ll eat crow on this one… Whatever, it’s literally the ONE TIME ever.
I can tell it’s posterization and not gif color quantization because of the pattern dithering and decently preserved details on the bomb and bull penis cane. There would have had to have been no dithering and way fewer colors than the 32, most of which were allotted to the bomb and cane. You can’t really selectively choose what gets dithered or more colors like this otherwise.
Thank you for reading if you’ve gotten this far. That all might have been a lot to take in at once, so if you’re still unclear about something, please don’t hesitate to leave a question! And as always, here are the PSDs used in this post that are free to peruse.
Thinking about what this means for the guardian Strilondes' age.
edit: I've made a follow-up to this post.
Homestuck5plus is a tool to format Homestuck style dialogue. Entering homestuck style dialogue in the left text area will generate formatted
Introducing Homestuck5plus! An upgrade to the original homestuck5 by itsdave. Ever been bothered writing Homestuck dialogue takes so many colours and formatting? Make Homestuck writing easy with this automatic formatter! Homestuck5plus makes it easy to export your logs to:
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Dialogue written by @classpectpokerap
prospit and derse dreamer blinkies i made!! please credit if using!
I'll fix those links in the foreseeable future
The Mind Aspect and its God Tiers/Classpect Roles
Keywords: Rational Decisions, Reason, Logical, Thoughts, Unbiased and Impersonal, Apathetic, Indifference, Blending In, Equal Weight on Every Possibility
Symbols: Disguises/Glasses, Brains, “Outer Self” Your False Pretenses
Mind is one of the 12 Aspects of Homestuck. Its Opposite is the Aspect Heart. When I think of Mind, I think of the Outer Mask that covers every person when they hide who they really are. Your Mind is the different Roles you play in different situations in order to Blend into the Crowd. It is the Reasonable Decision to be Logical about something, no matter what else happens. Mind is Rational, since it is driven by pure Thought. Mind is Impersonal, It’s Apathetic and it’s Indifferent in all things. It’s Hiding who you are, being totally Unbiased in order to Blend in. Mind may not always stand strongly behind all of its decisions, humming and hawwing and changing its Mind, but they are always able to justify their end decisions. Mind will always give equal weight to every possible choice or possibility, but will not give any special favor to any single outcome, whether ‘morally right or wrong’ or not.
Keep reading
The Blood Aspect and its God Tiers/Classpect Roles
Keywords: Unity, Connection, Commitment, Compassion, Attachment, Obligation, Promises, Dependence, Stable, Responsibility, Inflexible, Earthy, Material, Tangible
Symbols: Flesh, Metal, Shackles/Chains, Ring
Blood is one of the 12 Aspects of Homestuck. It’s Opposite is the Aspect Breath.
Extended Zodiac Quoted Canon: “Those bound to the aspect of Blood draw their strength from bonds, from the trust and camaraderie that blooms among a group of people who all share a single vision. Blood-bound are absolutely leaders, but they inhabit more of an inspirational role than a commanding one. They are prophets, rather than generals, giving others the strength and motivation to keep fighting. The Blood-bound can dispense excellent advice even when their own lives and interpersonal relationships are disasters. They can be very “do as I say, not as I do” types. A Blood-bound can often be found on a sinking ship, forcing an endeavor forward with sheer stubborn force of will. No matter how bad things go, a Blood-bound can always count on friends and allies. At their best, they are charismatic, uplifting, and magnetic. At their worst they can be sullen, unkind, and set-in-their-ways.”
Dahni Expansion: This means that Blood is very Down to the Earth, entirely focused on their Groups interests and forgetting Themselves in the process. Blood is essentially the core concept of Group Unity. Blood’s strength lies in their ability to bond, link or connect any number of things and solidify them all into a group that works together for a common purpose. When I think of Blood, I think of the Intimacy of Interconnection, the Decision to remain a Committed and Bonded Community, and the idea of Personal Obligations, as well as the Restraint to hold back any flights of fancy. But it can also be Stubborn, Dependent, Bitter and Set in their Ways. Blood Magnetically and Charismatically Pulls you In, Lands you on the Stable Earth and grants you the strength of an Iron Inflexibility. Blood is what Motivates you to continue Responsibly Working Hard. Symbolically, It is the Earthy Chained world of the Material and the Tangible Flesh of the Body, Molded into a Solid Form. Blood wants to Settle, it wants to Promise and it wants to Unite Together.
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The Hope Aspect and its God Tiers/Classpect Roles
Keywords: Unconditional Love or Trust, Confirmation, Harmony, Acceptance, Naive Optimism, Belief, Positivity, Euphoria, Getting the ‘Green Light’ or a Go Ahead, YES
Symbols: Unstoppable Forces, Truth/Authenticity, 'Angels’
Hope is one of the 12 Aspects of Homestuck. Its Opposite is the Aspect Rage. When I think of Hope, I think of Undying Faith and Belief that everything around you is perfect and is going to be okay, one way or another. Everything will turn out just fine, if not perfectly wonderful in the end. Hope is Unconditional Love and Trust, it is warm open accepting arms to anything or any person. It is the underlying thought that what is here is right and true. It is the thought that where there’s a will there’s a way! No matter how dark, there is a light at the end of the tunnel! It’s the truth! It must be! Hope is always perfectly agreeable and optimistic that nothing will go wrong, so their answer is always a big enthusiastic YES! But don’t think of Hope as just a calm and peaceful encouraging nudging force, Hope is also like the Angel that grabs you on the run, flying you forward at breakneck speed to your rewards and eternal happiness. It is the Drive, the Unstoppable Force of Will that pushes you forward against all odds.
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The Space Aspect and it's God Tiers/Classpect Roles
Keywords: Biological, Variation, Femininity, Creation, Beginnings, Destiny, Ambiguity, Patience
Symbols: Objects, Dimensions, Frogs, Art/Fashion
Space is one of the 12 Aspects of Homestuck. Its Opposite is the Aspect Time.
True Canon: “Those bound to the aspect of Space are, as the name suggests, concerned with the big picture. They are patient, masters of the art of ‘wait-and-see’, and are inclined to take things as they come. That isn’t to say that they’re pushovers or willing to let injustice lie-they just choose their battles wisely, understanding that sometimes you have to let something burn to the ground in order to build it back better and stronger than before. To this effect, they tend to be innovators, concerned with creation and redemption. Catch them recycling the old to make the new, the fresh, and the beautiful. For the Space-bound, the journey is as, if not more, important than the destination; how they do something is as important as what they do. At their best, they are steady, impartial, and creative. At their worst, they can be detached, apathetic, and vague.”
Dahni Expansion: This makes it so Space is grand and can look at things at a higher perspective than others. It is run much more by a strong sense of intuition, and inner knowing of how things are meant to be, without being able to express the specifics in clear detail. They paint things with broad strokes and without clear lines between differences. Considering each difference to actually be a subtle variation of the same thing. Space is also very grounded in the present, very focused on the here and now, and can seem very unconcerned with the future consequences of any decisions they may or may not make. Instead relying on their inner understanding that things are happening the way they are meant to happen and even if small details are different, the larger expression of the idea remains the same.
Symbolically, Space is a work of art. Meticulously and patiently crafted by the artist in order to express their grand idea or vision. Tiny details and different materials may be used or change slowly here or there, be grafted or evolve naturally, mutating like a living organism, but the overall vision of art remains the same, born from the artist’s intuitive act of creation. When I think of Space, I think of how our exact futures isn’t set in stone, but how the vision of our overall role in this universe is both grand abd broadly shaped. I think of how our every present moment changes, and through its changes our multitude of possible futures are crafted as well.
“Space grows like a plant, or an organism, evolving and mutating in a variety of ways along the way, but always predestined to end up being a certain thing regardless of variation. For Space, the journey twists and turns like branches of a tree, but every journey has a singular predestined end point, every tree has its roots. Your personal Ultimate Destiny is vague in the beginning, because Space is looking broadly at the grander scale, where the general direction of where things are going is more important than who exactly ends up where or when.”
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Cruxite Artifacts Guide
So it’s been said by Hussie that each artifact for the Beta kids was a symbol of departure, probably from childhood. John biting into the Apple of Eve, Dave hatching the Egg, Rose christening with the Wine Bottle and Jade breaking the Bec Pinata, a traditional birthday celebration. But I noticed each of these Objects, and more importantly the way they interacted with them, could be associated with their Aspect in some way.
So I did a little thinking about the Cruxite Artifacts in Homestuck and what purpose they serve, what do they mean, how to tell what kind of object you’d most likely have and that kind of thing, and I came up with this
Keep reading
The Heart Aspect and its God Tiers/Classpect Roles
Keywords: Irrational Impulses, Instinct, Emotional, Feelings, Biased and Personal, Empathetic, Passionate, Showing Off, Strong Weight on Single Possibility Symbols: Hats, Souls, “Inner Self” Your True Uniqueness
Heart is one of the 12 Aspects of Homestuck. Its Opposite is the Aspect Mind. When I think of Heart, I think of the Inner Soul that exists within every person that makes them who they are. Your Heart is what is “You”, what makes you Unique and Separate, standing out from the Crowd. It’s the Instinctual Impulse to feel Emotional about something, no matter what else happens. Heart is Irrational, since it’s driven by pure Feeling. Heart is Personal, It’s Empathetic and Passionate in all things. It’s Showing who You are, embracing your Biases and being Unique. Heart might not always have a justification for what it feels strongly about, but the strength of their Emotion means they are not easily wavered from their point of view. Heart will never give equal weight to every possible choice or possibility, because they give special favor to any single outcome they consider morally the ‘right’ thing to do. Heart has a strong sense of self and will always know itself. It has a strong moral compass to boot, never being lost or confused about what’s right or wrong.
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Heir of Heart
Heir: Passive manipulation class. One who is changed by their aspect or inspires change in their aspect.
Heart: Control over emotions and the soul itself. Metaphorically it represents one’s inner self.
The Heir of Heart is one who inspires change in the emotions and souls of others. They cause people’s emotional state to change for the better. Bringing out good emotions and allowing people to express their inner and true selves.
The Heir of Heart is someone who is very willing to express their true thoughts. They don’t like to keep things buried and like to express what they really feel. They leave their inner self in the open for all to see and look to get others to do the same. Trying to help people be open and true to themselves and others. Not hiding their emotions or lying about how they really feel. Someone that just wants everyone to be happy with themselves.
In turn they are also heavily influenced by the emotions of others. They get sad when others are sad, feel happy when they are, get mad when those around them are. The Heir’s emotional state is very easily swayed to the groups if they aren’t careful. An Heir of Heart has to watch themselves to make sure they don’t get caught up in a wave of emotion and end up off track.
As a God Tier the Heir of Heart could pretty much turn their influence over emotions into a weapon. Being able to sway their opponents emotions rapidly and suddenly to throw them off. Making them unable to fight because they keep switching between being happy and sad or depressed and ecstatic. In addition (and this is a pretty cool power) they could turn themselves into a soul. Pretty much become a ghost. Being able to slip through opponents and have attacks phase through them. Possibly even able to enter the bodies of others or of inanimate objects and control them.
Think something like Danny Phantom’s powers.
Expanded Aspect Quiz
So, if you’re anything like me you were left a bit unsatisfied by the canon aspect quiz. It’s too short, meaning that it’s hard to know how accurate it is and ties happen quite frequently.
What I did was simply expand it. Some of the questions are literally just from the site. All of the questions still take information from the canon descriptions, they just have more pieces.
Also, it should be much harder to tie.
Take the expanded quiz here.
@dahniwitchoflight I don’t know if this is something you’d find useful? I’d be interested in what you thought.
very nice! very well written, I like this expansion you’ve done
On November 27th, 2017, while waiting for Act 2 of Hiveswap to come out, WhatPumpkin released an Extended Zodiac with 288 symbols you can find here: http://hs.hiveswap.com/ezodiac/index.php This Extended Zodiac came with a Personality Quiz to pin-point the person's True Sign, by determinin
Homestuck Class Quiz
As I mentioned a few days ago, given WhatPumpkin published the Aspect test last week, I had thought of making a Class test to go along with it! This one is 40 Questions long and will determine which one of the 14 Classes you’re more aligned towards! At the ending, you will be also able to see which other Classes you scored high on.
If you want to check the Classes and their descriptions individually, check these:
Role of the Creator - Sylph / Maid
Role of the Giver - Knight / Page
Role of the Visionary - Seer / Mage
Role of the Innovator - Heir / Witch
Role of the Taker - Rogue / Thief
Role of the Destroyer - Bard / Prince
Role of the Master - Muse / Lord
Kudos to @revolutionaryduelist for the Class Cards and most of his analysis, and to homestucking-girl for their Mage Sprite!
feelin productive again