#crt filter

[tofupixel]

CRT pixel art - download the filter here

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[capsyst]

There’s a user over on Twitter (X) that uploads images showcasing how CRT displays helped pixel art look smoother and more detailed than it actually was. Please check them out here.

A great example of what I mean is this image here where the raw pixel data looks really rough and flat, but the image displayed on the CRT television screen looks detailed and smooth.

I’ve seen this be described as “designing for the strengths of the technology at the time” and I couldn’t agree more. It’s fascinating how much better a lot of older video game sprite art looks on CRT screens.

Another great example (and probably the most well known) is this image of Dracula.

Yes, it’s a very detailed sprite to begin with, but what’s important are those single red dots in the eyes and how it looks on a CRT display. That one red dot in each eye gets blurred across the screen in such a way that it looks like Dracula is glaring at you. Knowing how those red pixel dots would look on a CRT is very much the epitome of designing your art for the limitations of the technology.

As I’ve been working on these 80’s inspired Zelda commercials, I’ve been feeling the same sort of way. I purposely went into this project with the intent to recreate animation for how they would look on an old run down VHS tape. And while I’m not adding scanlines or anything like that, the VHS filter does a lot of heavy lifting in crunching down and smoothing out the details.

As you can see, a lot of the finer detail gets lost. That’s in part by design. I am intentionally using a type of brush for the lineart that cracks and breaks, resulting in the flat paint colors poking through here and there. Some of the painting is really rough and doesn’t stay within the linework. Extremely fine details like the collar of Link’s tunic become amorphous shapes. The rough brush outlines get smoothed out a lot too. And sometimes the darker colored ink outlines result in looking like deliberate shading when it’s not.

It’s always a treat to get to the point where I can run the final animation through the filter and see how it looks.

A lot of people have asked me to post the full non-filtered versions of these commercials and I am a little hesitant to do that. Since I am deliberately creating them for the VHS filter they are EXTREMELY rough looking in HD. To me a lot of the magic of the animations don’t appear until after the filter is added. Maybe someday I’ll post them sans filter when I’m no longer feeling so attached to them.

I don’t really have much a point to this post. I just really find it fascinating how working with limitations and deliberately trying to create art that mimics old technology yields such interesting results.

[luciluck2046]

Creatur

Made myself a lil filter for krita lmao (it's so basic oh god would i ever be able to make this work in gamemaker?)

[donutboxers]

🏥Erratic🏥

🔪REVENGE🔪 on Valcster

[chuunibyoucatgirl]

i have determined that upscaling from 480p to 1440p is the wrong idea. just. use a CRT filter that shit. this is what god intended you to do with your garbage xvid rips downloaded from stage6 in 2007

[shredgatto]

I drew human Shadow and Rouge <3

Yes, this is a snapcube reference.

CRT filter by Mattias Gustavsson on Itch

[falgaia]

Artfight Attack Roundup #8: Revenge on HappyMealEnjoyer on Artfight. Unedited version after the Read More.

[dat2ndaccount97]

So Kotobukiya announced they're doing BISHOUJO Figures/Statues of Optimus Prime and Megatron, and Personally I think these look great.

Also got the weird compulsion to add some kind of CRT filter to this art, and after finding a VHS Action for Photoshop I did just that, and I think it came out great (I made it my desktop wallpaper).