If you like this video, you'll probably enjoy this one as well: th-cam.com/video/gzeK8NKuzmg/w-d-xo.htmlsi=7QbgEuzXeu9ClmEc People have been asking about the music. Some of it was created for this video. Some of it was created a long time ago. The only released song can be found here: airfolks.bandcamp.com/album/vol-1
I've done subpixel art a LOT of time ago! I'm a microscopist and sometimes i get really bored on the lab, and i have already seen pretty much everything they have from animals or human organs under the microscope. So i kinda started doing this on my phone screen and observing it trough a stereomicroscope. Nice video and explaining btw
@@lmfao-tp4cx That sounds like an awesome job actually. The microscopic world is amazing. It's so "alien" much of the time. I did a music video job once where I stuck all sorts of things into my microfiche viewer. And while the viewer doesn't have that high of a magnification level, it was still a really fun experience: th-cam.com/video/PPa6Wrl2IVk/w-d-xo.html
waesome fun fact: in pixelart animation there is a concept known as "sub-pixel animation" which is basically shifting the color values of a sprite to give the illusion of movement instead of changing the positions of the pixels. It's a bit more complicated but this little trick is pulled off notoriously in games like Super Metroid and Metal Slug great vid, love seeing wacky retro stuff!
@@flameofthephoenix8395 The idea is that you change colors to make the internal shapes of the character move, while their silhouette stays the same. When combined with a high framerate and traditional movement, it can be extremely effective at giving the feel of subtle movements on a smaller scale than the pixel grid.
@@japhyriddle especially so because youtube re-encodes the video (so it won't be subpixel-accurate), and not everyone can properly view 1080p and higher video, e.g. I've had trouble on my previous laptops viewing 1080p on youtube, while it works just fine in normal media player
The hidden message thing at the end is cool. Real spy stuff. What I love about this video is the subtle things you threw in there. The spelling that makes you uncomfortable, "see me next time", etc. It's really great.
@@gweltazlemartret6760 Well, my face appears in the video. So you can, unless you want to argue that it's only a digital representation of me and not the actual light reflecting off of me.
That anti-aliasing thing for fonts is a nightmare when you're using a non-RGB monitor, like BGR panels (same thing but the blue and red are on opposite sides). Operating systems allow you to change this, but many programs decide to use their own settings, which was the case for all Chrome-based browsers until recently, and the result is that texts look awful.
Yes. Recent versions of Mac OS has since stopped using sub pixel aliasing which means using a newer OS on a pre retina screen looks nasty compared to El Capitan and High Sierra etc. which have beautiful text rendering.
@@japhyriddle I like my pixels chunky, I like to be able to effortlessly see them individually. Only upside I have found to higher pixel density is drawing on screen with high pixel density, and enjoying its "enlarged" look on a screen with lower pixel density. Though I do have weird tastes with screens in general 😅 I have found my love for reflective front-lit screens, and generally displays with washed-out colours and uneven lighting, is pretty unpopular. So it feels nice to see appreciation for visible pixels (and subpixels)
@@w01dnickscreen rotation and color inversion (lazy-but-efficient text selection visual) were a mess back in the days. Now mostly everything is handled by the os, those subpixel aliasing errors don’t show up anymore. And I turned off antialiasing and ClearType wherever I can because it’s too blurry for my eyes.
One thing that might help with readability on monitors, don't use maxed out values for R and G, but lower the brightness of the green and red subpixels to match the perceived brightness of the blue pixel.
Wait... that's brilliant. Why didn't I think of that. You're so right. Actually, now I remember. I did try that. It looks good for sub-pixels hanging out by themselves, but it makes white areas too purple for obvious reasons. You win some, you lose some.
I gurantee that if it hasn't been done already, that someone at some point will do an A.R.G. and have a hidden message for it using that last use case. Very cool video! the rgb lines on crts always intrigued me, so i was excited to see you craft a lil video talking about it! cool stuff 👌
in theory, they could, but remember, the point of an ARG is to be SOLVABLE without needing a lot of prerequisite knowledge, more or less anyone should be able to solve them, otherwise you just end up with an unsolved game but yes, if you figure out how to properly hint at this being the case, then it would be pretty cool
The stripes on the (Trinitron) CRTs actually aren't pixels! Technology connections made a nice video about this (you can search for "Technology connections CRT pixels), but basically the CRT electron beam can actually show a higher resolution than what the "aperture grille" would imply
About that: I actually wrote a program that can encode and decode messages written in a similar fashion! However, what I did was essentially write each letter as a 3x3 pixel grid before coloring the columns red, green, and blue. Then I overlap them, so the second letter's left column (red) overlaps the first letter's middle column (green) and so on. I suppose the equivalent for subpixels would be "take this column, then the one 4 to the right, then the one 4 to the right of that".
Stop teasing us with "I don't want to spend a lot of time on the Apple II video modes - there are a lot of other videos that do that" and not leave a link
This reminds me of iPhone wallpapers 10 or so years ago that had a quite convincing metallic looking effect. I think it worked by glitches caused by sub-pixel rendering on the iPhones Retina display. Something like „pseudo-dynamic wallpapers“ or something along that line. There was a German experimental music label that kinda discovered the effect and a Japanese guy who took inspiration from them to create more images.
Found an example, that's pretty cool... so this is a Moiré effect between the graphic's pixels vs the screen's pixels or something along those lines? th-cam.com/video/RwMeDzD_krI/w-d-xo.html
@ That’s the label! the website in the description is gone but it is on the Internet Archive and there are the wallpapers from that video and more insights… Thanks for bringing this up!
Gotta love how I discovered this channel from a 6 year old video, and was worried that this channel died long ago, so I checked the channel Thank God this channel is doing well. Keep it up man!
5:37 this is a novel enough approach to steganography that could absolutely warrant a defcon talk.... keep exploring computers! you're going to go far :)
How to do it for anyone that's confused: 1. View at 1x scale and take a picture of the monitor 2. Desaturate the picture 3. Squish the picture vertically I cant do it myself since I'm on mobile, but there you go! Timestamp for this tutorial if you need it visually: 5:40
@@FranticErrors I don't think it's possible with the actual video. There isn't a clean 1X scale version of any of the text. It has to be recreated. This video compression doesn't allow for full resolution reds and blues.
@@japhyriddle i was able to take a screenshot, bound it as tight as I could, then count the pixels and rescale accordingly in photoshop using nearest neighbor scaling and photoshop actually successfully produced a document where each pixel represented really correlated 1:1 to a real pixel in the document! and decoded it that way :-) so in a way yes I did sort of need to "recreate" it, but not pixel by pixel by hand. curious what other people's techniques were? @mikoroonii
I started programming back in the 80s on Radio shack and Apple ][. It's been a looonng while since I hear of anyone doing optimisation like this. Thank you for this video. Liked and subbed.
I could be wrong, but I believe this was used a lot in very old games to make more round shapes. For instance, I'm pretty sure Sonic 1 uses sub-pixelling on the edges of his silhouette to make him look more round, based on the sub-pixel configuration that was commonly used at the time that game was released. There are complex crt filters for certain emulators that actually showcase this to give the most authentic feel for this game. All in all, developers at the time that understood how pixels were rendered actually used sub-pixelling to their advantage to make pixel art look more detailed.
Sonic 1 came out when CRT tvs were standard. And the phosphor dots on colour CRTs are not aligned to the scanlines of the tv nor the pixels of the image the console is sending. So you can't do any sub pixel shenanigans on a CRT.
CRTs don't do pixel anything, they have three electron beams that move over a slot mask and hit a bunch of phosphors due to the spread of the electron beam. That spread is what makes sprites on CRTs look softer than they actually are, and is also what allows rudimentary blending of colors or "anti-aliasing" for the early 3D titles.
Games on those 16-bit consoles would often make deliberate use of the composite video output and interlaced video to blur adjacent pixels into new colours. Shadows were a classic example, rendered using either a black checkerboard pattern, or solid black plus even/odd interlacing to blend them temporally. For this reason, some games actually look worse in S-Video or RGB than they do with composite video.
All colors only exist in our brains. What makes magenta special is that it requires at least two different wavelengths of light to enter our eyes in order for our brains to experience it, whereas most colors can be experienced with a single wavelength.
@@Pingwn It's also true for any color that is not fully saturated. Pink, for example, requires red, green, and blue, where the red component is strongest and the green and blue components are roughly equal to each other. Really, the vast majority of the colors we experience require at least 3 different wavelengths of light. The pure hues that only require a single wavelength are actually pretty rare.
That is so cool! I animated a subpixel Autobahn some time ago, and recently made subpixel heraldry. I really look up to you, so seeing you present this niche thing, that I didn't even know other people did, feels very special to me
This video is wonderful! You do a great job narrating and animating this and it felt really informative! I sincerely look forward your future productions!
4:3, the music, the narration, how the video's directed. I was getting a weird feeling in my stomach telling me I've seen this before even though it's only 7 days old. It was actually reminding me of old video essays. If you've ever watched an old Vsauce video it's like this. I love it.
Because of how picky I am about lighting, I reasoned it would be easier to make a simple sub-pixel talking face than to film myself, ha ha ha. Thank you.
I actually had this idea one time as a way of like storing black and white images in a third of its size. It can be done with full depth grayscale too not just with 1-bit images
@@japhyriddle The 1 bit thing is a happy accident I think then, the sort of stippling effect that you got when you converted the image at 4:09 I think is very well served by the medium. I tried this process on a different image while maintaining grayscale and it was cool too but I think it works better 1 bit
@@Canyon_Lark Oh that's good to know. Maybe 1-bit just works better for this type of thing. I think the greyscale would work better with a little brightness equalizing. You know how our eyes have different sensitivities to different colors? I don't know the exact numbers, but greens should be turned down a lot, and reds a little bit too.
This video is a gem. I love how you use subpixel art to make a character speak at the same time as you do, making this video feels "premium". It doesn't feel like a tutorial on something, but rather a neat way for you to explain something cool you've found with your art style and soul onto it. Great job! Thanks for the work!
I love to see that there's another person that thought of doing this. I've been a pixel artist for years and I've seldom played with the concept of sub-pixel art, but I eventually did make something about half a decade ago that *ATTEMPTED* to play with subpixel spacing. Long story short though, I got some f the coloring wrong and messed it up. XD
Left a comment mentioning fonts, but you cover that in the video. It’s rather neat that we exploit the hardware of our screens to render better-looking fonts!
One thing I'm curious about is if modern fonts still use the same font-smoothing patterns. The pixel density on screens is so high, and the sub-pixel patterns are less standardized, so I wonder if that concept is getting abandoned.
This is one of the single greatest TH-cam videos I’ve ever seen. Not exaggerating. Try to contact JacksFilms and see if you can get this vid featured in his “best TH-cam videos of 2024”. This is definitely of high enough quality to make the list.
1:46 fun fact: Pixel Animator are actually talking about this for sometimes! it just that it kinda PseudoSub-Pixel as it still animate in full pixel. but it called "Sub-Pixel" because it Illusion perceiver to think it move pixel, even though it isn't (in some level :p)!
Good point. It's a different meaning of the word 'sub-pixel'. The same idea as anti-aliasing pretty much. In programming, sub-pixels of this sort also play a role. For example, collision detection for sprites is sometimes calculated at a more precise level than the pixels themselves. Super Mario Bros. does this.
Sometimes, if only rarely, the TH-cam algorithm makes an awesome recommendation. I'm happy that happened today and I discovered your channel. Keep it up! Subscribed.
What a beautiful, informative video. I've tried incorporating subpixelling in CRT oriented pixel pieces I've made, but this is such a good breakdown that's reframed my view of how to do so
I remember being 7 and pressing my face against the glass of our super old rounded-screen TV and being absolutely fascinated by the rainbow patterns that were invisible till you got super close. My parents were very confused when they caught me with my face pressed against the screen idling in Mario 64 so I could see the colors brighter
@justarandomfrozenpotato I don't know. You can't really manipulate them individually with a raster beam. Some people are very opinionated about this. I'm indifferent on the matter.
that is because our eyes are primarily sensitive to green light, so we use more green sensors to take more information on the green channel, and produce a higher quality image to our eyes
Given we evolved on a planet with foliage that's green, the human eye is the most sensitive to that color. Each "pixel" on a camera's image sensor needs four subpixels, but we only have 3 primary colors to choose from - red, blue, and green. Because we're most sensitive to green light, we can take advantage of that and practically double the amount of detail for the green channel of an image, while effectively using all of the color channels of an image.
This video was recommended to me by the algorithm, and I'm so glad for it. I'm already in love with your amazing content. As a fellow artist who likes to play with creative ways to make art using computers, I feel seen. Thank you so much, honestly.
Man I really enjoyed this video! Your creativity with the visuals and sound design allied with the informational content really digs deep and differentiate your content from other in this site.
It's not really a completed song. It was part of an experiment a decade ago that involved a tape loop of drums wrapped around a cylinder on a spinning turntable with a tape head mounted against the tape loop.
I love the calm-and-pleasant just-kinda-excited-to-talk-about-this-thing-that-they're-interested-in vibe of the narration. Reminds me a bit of Sebastian Lague, who has a wonderful narration style where you can just hear them smiling. I always love videos like this.
i found this incredibly amazing, and just hearing the concept came to my mind so familiar, and i didn't even hear of i anywhere, i just assumed what it was and i like it! I wouldn't use this casually, or in any means, but it is something i find amusing to have in my knowledge! i'm even surprised you just got 39k subs, let's get to 40k!
When I saw the result I was thinking Apple 2 and then you immediately mentioned it. I'm very happy that this was mentioned. This video is _very_ complete on the subject!
Hi, the human eye is more sensitive for green, then blue and lastly red. You can see this translated in the brightness of the subpixels. I wonder how the images llook when adjusted for this. Is that feasable in your programming?
That's a good point. Although eyes are more sensitive to red than blue, but I get your point. Someone else pointed out that I could have decreased the brightness of my colors accordingly to even them out. A very easy step to include, yes.
@japhyriddle Ah ok got the order wrong. But yes that's the idea. Might make the images more crisp. Very cool work, does me remind me of the demoscene of old 👌
If you like this video, you'll probably enjoy this one as well:
th-cam.com/video/gzeK8NKuzmg/w-d-xo.htmlsi=7QbgEuzXeu9ClmEc
People have been asking about the music. Some of it was created for this video. Some of it was created a long time ago. The only released song can be found here:
airfolks.bandcamp.com/album/vol-1
I've done subpixel art a LOT of time ago! I'm a microscopist and sometimes i get really bored on the lab, and i have already seen pretty much everything they have from animals or human organs under the microscope. So i kinda started doing this on my phone screen and observing it trough a stereomicroscope. Nice video and explaining btw
@@lmfao-tp4cx That sounds like an awesome job actually. The microscopic world is amazing. It's so "alien" much of the time. I did a music video job once where I stuck all sorts of things into my microfiche viewer. And while the viewer doesn't have that high of a magnification level, it was still a really fun experience: th-cam.com/video/PPa6Wrl2IVk/w-d-xo.html
question
what software did you use to do the cat animation/the show off in 2:51
sooo.... where is the hidden arg in this video
@@japhyriddle Now you can make 1x0.3333333333… pixel art of Garfield
fun fact: someone has made a subpixel font years ago, and it's literally THE smallest font you can possibly use
If you used sub pixel with 3x3 font that would be as small as possible, I wonder if this is what the font you described is like. 👍😎
i want it
How to search for it?
@@Daniel_VolumeDown just lookup sub pixel font (possibly add reddit at the end)
@@techtinkerin 3x3 is physically impossible to represent, since many patterns will overlap
waesome
fun fact: in pixelart animation there is a concept known as "sub-pixel animation" which is basically shifting the color values of a sprite to give the illusion of movement instead of changing the positions of the pixels. It's a bit more complicated but this little trick is pulled off notoriously in games like Super Metroid and Metal Slug
great vid, love seeing wacky retro stuff!
Well, that's how all movement is done on computers, simply change the colors of the pixels.
@@flameofthephoenix8395 though subpixel animations places less load on processors, making a lot more animating possible on software back then
@@flameofthephoenix8395but without changing the actual position of any of the parts of the object
@@flameofthephoenix8395 The idea is that you change colors to make the internal shapes of the character move, while their silhouette stays the same. When combined with a high framerate and traditional movement, it can be extremely effective at giving the feel of subtle movements on a smaller scale than the pixel grid.
@@yasink331 The object doesn't really exist is the thing, it's just a concept and can't really be moved.
Your subpixels are being rendered by MULTIPLE, WHOLE pixels on my screen :(
Ha ha ha. It would be a very difficult video to watch if I'd left everything at 1x scale.
@@japhyriddle especially so because youtube re-encodes the video (so it won't be subpixel-accurate), and not everyone can properly view 1080p and higher video, e.g. I've had trouble on my previous laptops viewing 1080p on youtube, while it works just fine in normal media player
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO ❌ NO 👎 NO 😭 NO 🚫 NO 😭🙏 NO NO NO 😨
@@japhyriddle you didnt even give us a chance
@jan_harald there is a browser plugin called "h264fy" that changes playback format of TH-cam videos it might help
The hidden message thing at the end is cool. Real spy stuff.
What I love about this video is the subtle things you threw in there. The spelling that makes you uncomfortable, "see me next time", etc. It's really great.
Ha. Thanks. Yeah, it felt dishonest to say "See you next time", because I can't see the people watching my videos.
@@japhyriddleas you're not facecamed here, we (as the audience) can’t see you either, aha.
@@gweltazlemartret6760 Well, my face appears in the video. So you can, unless you want to argue that it's only a digital representation of me and not the actual light reflecting off of me.
@@japhyriddle I thought I was funny, whilst not having paid attention enough. 😅
@@gweltazlemartret6760 I'd never hold it against you : )
That anti-aliasing thing for fonts is a nightmare when you're using a non-RGB monitor, like BGR panels (same thing but the blue and red are on opposite sides). Operating systems allow you to change this, but many programs decide to use their own settings, which was the case for all Chrome-based browsers until recently, and the result is that texts look awful.
I've been wondering about that. I assume the whole thing is becoming moot since pixel density is getting so high.
Yes. Recent versions of Mac OS has since stopped using sub pixel aliasing which means using a newer OS on a pre retina screen looks nasty compared to El Capitan and High Sierra etc. which have beautiful text rendering.
@@japhyriddle I like my pixels chunky, I like to be able to effortlessly see them individually. Only upside I have found to higher pixel density is drawing on screen with high pixel density, and enjoying its "enlarged" look on a screen with lower pixel density.
Though I do have weird tastes with screens in general 😅 I have found my love for reflective front-lit screens, and generally displays with washed-out colours and uneven lighting, is pretty unpopular. So it feels nice to see appreciation for visible pixels (and subpixels)
Or vertical RGB/BGR, e.g. when using rotated screen.
@@w01dnickscreen rotation and color inversion (lazy-but-efficient text selection visual) were a mess back in the days.
Now mostly everything is handled by the os, those subpixel aliasing errors don’t show up anymore.
And I turned off antialiasing and ClearType wherever I can because it’s too blurry for my eyes.
The closest I’ve seen to sub pixel art is ‘loss’ made with sub pixels that was posted on twitter a couple weeks ago.
Def not a loss
| ||
|| |_
I. Ii.
II. I _
-:.|:;-
it truly is
:.:;
As a subpixel enthusiast, this is actually the first I've heard of subpixel steganography. Neat!
We need a sub-pixel art game with sub-bit music now.
Gasp! What would sub-bit music be!?
@@japhyriddle Thats actually a good question, i have no idea
Well sub bit doesn't exist for audio, but you can use oversampling for extra smoothness. Only heard of this on some audiophile channel.
music thats either *always* on or always off?
@@TheSunOfficial-en frequencies outside our range of hearing or smth idk
One thing that might help with readability on monitors, don't use maxed out values for R and G, but lower the brightness of the green and red subpixels to match the perceived brightness of the blue pixel.
Wait... that's brilliant. Why didn't I think of that. You're so right.
Actually, now I remember. I did try that. It looks good for sub-pixels hanging out by themselves, but it makes white areas too purple for obvious reasons. You win some, you lose some.
@@japhyriddleDo you think making it scale according to how bright the perceived color is would help?
I gurantee that if it hasn't been done already, that someone at some point will do an A.R.G. and have a hidden message for it using that last use case.
Very cool video! the rgb lines on crts always intrigued me, so i was excited to see you craft a lil video talking about it! cool stuff 👌
Ha. You're probably right. That seems like a good use.
Thank you. Glad you find this interesting.
in theory, they could, but remember, the point of an ARG is to be SOLVABLE without needing a lot of prerequisite knowledge, more or less anyone should be able to solve them, otherwise you just end up with an unsolved game
but yes, if you figure out how to properly hint at this being the case, then it would be pretty cool
The stripes on the (Trinitron) CRTs actually aren't pixels! Technology connections made a nice video about this (you can search for "Technology connections CRT pixels), but basically the CRT electron beam can actually show a higher resolution than what the "aperture grille" would imply
About that: I actually wrote a program that can encode and decode messages written in a similar fashion! However, what I did was essentially write each letter as a 3x3 pixel grid before coloring the columns red, green, and blue. Then I overlap them, so the second letter's left column (red) overlaps the first letter's middle column (green) and so on. I suppose the equivalent for subpixels would be "take this column, then the one 4 to the right, then the one 4 to the right of that".
I hope Daniel Mullins doesn't find this video then
Stop teasing us with "I don't want to spend a lot of time on the Apple II video modes - there are a lot of other videos that do that" and not leave a link
I think the 8-Bit Guy's video on the subject is a pretty solid resource for that: th-cam.com/video/VStscvYLYLs/w-d-xo.htmlsi=ZzbbFE6KFzMsWjPZ
@@japhyriddle thank you ❤
@@japhyriddle Thank you!
@@japhyriddle remove the ?si= at the end thats a hwid
@@japhyriddleany other recs that aren't…such controversial figures?
This reminds me of iPhone wallpapers 10 or so years ago that had a quite convincing metallic looking effect. I think it worked by glitches caused by sub-pixel rendering on the iPhones Retina display.
Something like „pseudo-dynamic wallpapers“ or something along that line.
There was a German experimental music label that kinda discovered the effect and a Japanese guy who took inspiration from them to create more images.
Found an example, that's pretty cool... so this is a Moiré effect between the graphic's pixels vs the screen's pixels or something along those lines?
th-cam.com/video/RwMeDzD_krI/w-d-xo.html
Ah, yes, the "mysterious iphone wallpaper" website. The pseudo animated ones worked through the moire effect, if I recall correctly
@ That’s the label!
the website in the description is gone but it is on the Internet Archive and there are the wallpapers from that video and more insights…
Thanks for bringing this up!
The editing on this is just beautiful
That was like a bite-sized Tom7 video
Which is a very good thing
Yes, you are so right
Gotta love how I discovered this channel from a 6 year old video, and was worried that this channel died long ago, so I checked the channel
Thank God this channel is doing well. Keep it up man!
Aw. Thank you. Yes, it's alive and well.
my heart feels full after watching this. thank you so much for making it; it tickled my brain
5:37 this is a novel enough approach to steganography that could absolutely warrant a defcon talk.... keep exploring computers! you're going to go far :)
And here I kept accidentally making this art when learning to program on an Apple Ii and didn't even realize.
6:08 yes, i did decode it, and yes, i am awesome B)
Hee hee. That's so cool. I wish I had an actual award to give you.
How to do it for anyone that's confused:
1. View at 1x scale and take a picture of the monitor
2. Desaturate the picture
3. Squish the picture vertically
I cant do it myself since I'm on mobile, but there you go!
Timestamp for this tutorial if you need it visually: 5:40
@@FranticErrors I don't think it's possible with the actual video. There isn't a clean 1X scale version of any of the text. It has to be recreated. This video compression doesn't allow for full resolution reds and blues.
@@japhyriddle oh. aw shucks
@@japhyriddle i was able to take a screenshot, bound it as tight as I could, then count the pixels and rescale accordingly in photoshop using nearest neighbor scaling and photoshop actually successfully produced a document where each pixel represented really correlated 1:1 to a real pixel in the document! and decoded it that way :-) so in a way yes I did sort of need to "recreate" it, but not pixel by pixel by hand. curious what other people's techniques were? @mikoroonii
oh I love this video so much. I've been a fan of a subpixel typefaces for years now
I started programming back in the 80s on Radio shack and Apple ][. It's been a looonng while since I hear of anyone doing optimisation like this. Thank you for this video.
Liked and subbed.
Thank you. Much appreciated.
This is the most nerdy stuff, I have seen for a long time. Great job!
Mission accomplished.
this is genuinely the most underrated channel on youtube. thank you
Your videos are so thought provoking. Very cool.
Thank you. I'm glad they're stimulating.
I could be wrong, but I believe this was used a lot in very old games to make more round shapes. For instance, I'm pretty sure Sonic 1 uses sub-pixelling on the edges of his silhouette to make him look more round, based on the sub-pixel configuration that was commonly used at the time that game was released. There are complex crt filters for certain emulators that actually showcase this to give the most authentic feel for this game. All in all, developers at the time that understood how pixels were rendered actually used sub-pixelling to their advantage to make pixel art look more detailed.
I guess whole pixels became smaller with time and we forgot a bit about sub-pixel tricks because they were less needed
Sonic 1 came out when CRT tvs were standard. And the phosphor dots on colour CRTs are not aligned to the scanlines of the tv nor the pixels of the image the console is sending.
So you can't do any sub pixel shenanigans on a CRT.
Hmm I just thought it was anti aliasing
CRTs don't do pixel anything, they have three electron beams that move over a slot mask and hit a bunch of phosphors due to the spread of the electron beam. That spread is what makes sprites on CRTs look softer than they actually are, and is also what allows rudimentary blending of colors or "anti-aliasing" for the early 3D titles.
Games on those 16-bit consoles would often make deliberate use of the composite video output and interlaced video to blur adjacent pixels into new colours. Shadows were a classic example, rendered using either a black checkerboard pattern, or solid black plus even/odd interlacing to blend them temporally.
For this reason, some games actually look worse in S-Video or RGB than they do with composite video.
All colors only exist in our brains. What makes magenta special is that it requires at least two different wavelengths of light to enter our eyes in order for our brains to experience it, whereas most colors can be experienced with a single wavelength.
Depending on definitions, that's very true. I probably should've worded it differently for this video.
The same is true for white.
@@Pingwn It's also true for any color that is not fully saturated. Pink, for example, requires red, green, and blue, where the red component is strongest and the green and blue components are roughly equal to each other.
Really, the vast majority of the colors we experience require at least 3 different wavelengths of light. The pure hues that only require a single wavelength are actually pretty rare.
That is so cool! I animated a subpixel Autobahn some time ago, and recently made subpixel heraldry.
I really look up to you, so seeing you present this niche thing, that I didn't even know other people did, feels very special to me
This video is wonderful! You do a great job narrating and animating this and it felt really informative! I sincerely look forward your future productions!
Aw. Thank you. I'm glad you like it.
2:35 Red is being described with the white configuration of sub-pixels.
Probably an accident as white is listed as itself
yes xD i also saw that
4:3, the music, the narration, how the video's directed. I was getting a weird feeling in my stomach telling me I've seen this before even though it's only 7 days old. It was actually reminding me of old video essays. If you've ever watched an old Vsauce video it's like this. I love it.
That's actually so cool! I love how you used it for when you talk throughout the video!
Because of how picky I am about lighting, I reasoned it would be easier to make a simple sub-pixel talking face than to film myself, ha ha ha. Thank you.
@@japhyriddle No problem! The concept of Sub-Pixel's is quite innovative on it's own as well.
I am so happy I subscribed to you! This is the sort of thing I want to see. Interesting, fun, well-presented. Thank you!
Yay. Thank you so much.
I actually had this idea one time as a way of like storing black and white images in a third of its size. It can be done with full depth grayscale too not just with 1-bit images
Yeah, that's so true. I don't why I kept everything 1-bit. I think just because it's really easy to see.
@@japhyriddle The 1 bit thing is a happy accident I think then, the sort of stippling effect that you got when you converted the image at 4:09 I think is very well served by the medium. I tried this process on a different image while maintaining grayscale and it was cool too but I think it works better 1 bit
@@Canyon_Lark Oh that's good to know. Maybe 1-bit just works better for this type of thing. I think the greyscale would work better with a little brightness equalizing. You know how our eyes have different sensitivities to different colors? I don't know the exact numbers, but greens should be turned down a lot, and reds a little bit too.
This video is a gem. I love how you use subpixel art to make a character speak at the same time as you do, making this video feels "premium". It doesn't feel like a tutorial on something, but rather a neat way for you to explain something cool you've found with your art style and soul onto it.
Great job! Thanks for the work!
I love to see that there's another person that thought of doing this. I've been a pixel artist for years and I've seldom played with the concept of sub-pixel art, but I eventually did make something about half a decade ago that *ATTEMPTED* to play with subpixel spacing. Long story short though, I got some f the coloring wrong and messed it up. XD
i saw the title and i immediately knew it was a japheth video. that’s a good sign. keep it up my fellow creative, ur amazing
"Japheth"? I feel so royal.
Beans, beans, beans
Japhy ate some beans
He was happy, happy, happy
And he ate some beans
This is amazing. I love your artsy, sciency mind!
Aw. Thank you : )
I truly love this video and this channel so much. More long form stuff please! Everything here is so high quality!!
Left a comment mentioning fonts, but you cover that in the video. It’s rather neat that we exploit the hardware of our screens to render better-looking fonts!
One thing I'm curious about is if modern fonts still use the same font-smoothing patterns. The pixel density on screens is so high, and the sub-pixel patterns are less standardized, so I wonder if that concept is getting abandoned.
i personally love these styles of videos, thank you for taking time out of your day to create this!
This is one of the single greatest TH-cam videos I’ve ever seen. Not exaggerating. Try to contact JacksFilms and see if you can get this vid featured in his “best TH-cam videos of 2024”. This is definitely of high enough quality to make the list.
I hope this catches on such a cool concept that hasn't been done yet to my knowledge thanks for sharing such a great idea and how to do it!
:) I once made a moving colored image where I moved it 1/3 pixels each steps. So it moved much smoother.
Wow, JUST when you thought your videos couldn't get any more interesting, you go and publish THIS one! Amazing!
Yay. I'm glad you like it : )
0:56 I can't see the blue one
Edixplanation: I had night mode on.
Get your eyes checked, you might be colorblind
Tritanopia
Might be colorblind
Uh Oh...
Maybe you have a blue filter on
This video is awesome, love your whole style. Music, commentary, visuals, all uniquely perfect.
1:46 fun fact: Pixel Animator are actually talking about this for sometimes! it just that it kinda PseudoSub-Pixel as it still animate in full pixel. but it called "Sub-Pixel" because it Illusion perceiver to think it move pixel, even though it isn't (in some level :p)!
Good point. It's a different meaning of the word 'sub-pixel'. The same idea as anti-aliasing pretty much. In programming, sub-pixels of this sort also play a role. For example, collision detection for sprites is sometimes calculated at a more precise level than the pixels themselves. Super Mario Bros. does this.
This video was yesterday.
Sometimes, if only rarely, the TH-cam algorithm makes an awesome recommendation. I'm happy that happened today and I discovered your channel. Keep it up! Subscribed.
Thank you. I'm glad you like my work.
Tetra Bit Gaming reference: 0:47
No
@@TinyLiamMichael 😢
What a beautiful, informative video. I've tried incorporating subpixelling in CRT oriented pixel pieces I've made, but this is such a good breakdown that's reframed my view of how to do so
0:46 music name?
"Swimming Pools at the Airport". Can be found here: airfolks.bandcamp.com/album/vol-1
this is so unique, never in a million years would i have thought of this
1:37 fun fact if you shake your screen here it looks white
Nah, looks more like a green-ish white
I remember being 7 and pressing my face against the glass of our super old rounded-screen TV and being absolutely fascinated by the rainbow patterns that were invisible till you got super close. My parents were very confused when they caught me with my face pressed against the screen idling in Mario 64 so I could see the colors brighter
Ha ha ha. The shadow masks, while I guess technically don't count as sub-pixels, are rather enticing.
@@japhyriddle Those don't count as subpixels? they had that square rgb look you were talking about in the video though
@justarandomfrozenpotato I don't know. You can't really manipulate them individually with a raster beam. Some people are very opinionated about this. I'm indifferent on the matter.
They don't count as sub pixels because they cannot be individually addressed; and also because they are rarely lit up in their entirety.
Man this is probably gonna make a new era on pixel-art!
This is incredibly cool and creative. Thanks for being you, dude, it's highly entertaining.
Ha. Thank you.
This video will be referenced in thousands of PhD Theses in the future
Amazing video, dude! Can't wait to see more digital and analog shenanigans
1:42 If you unfocus your eyes on this then the sides look like pink, purple, or yellow
or CMYk
@@FrederickCrockettminus the k lol
This screwed up my vision but it’s true.
@@potatoman3219 well you may need to get glasses (let’s hope not) but at least you got a sweet minor reward!
@@F4nmade I’m good now. I may need glasses though irregardless. But it might just be me overthinking things.
This is so cool! I really appreciate you not only explaining the topic, but also showing us how to make sub-pixel art ourselves. 🙏
5:20 free him
Free him
free Him
Free him
Him free
This video itself looks absolutely like a piece of art. The music, the visuals, the overall atmosphere. I fucking love artistic approach like that
The sensor pattern at 5:27, why is it primarily green?
that is because our eyes are primarily sensitive to green light, so we use more green sensors to take more information on the green channel, and produce a higher quality image to our eyes
@ makes sense! Good for spotting predators in foliage lol
@@tasteyfooodI spotted your moms foliage last night
Given we evolved on a planet with foliage that's green, the human eye is the most sensitive to that color. Each "pixel" on a camera's image sensor needs four subpixels, but we only have 3 primary colors to choose from - red, blue, and green. Because we're most sensitive to green light, we can take advantage of that and practically double the amount of detail for the green channel of an image, while effectively using all of the color channels of an image.
This video was recommended to me by the algorithm, and I'm so glad for it. I'm already in love with your amazing content. As a fellow artist who likes to play with creative ways to make art using computers, I feel seen. Thank you so much, honestly.
3:47 looks like the gameboy camera photos 😭
Ome of the coolest short videos I've ever seen, easy subscription
4:25 there may be other videos explaining this but I doubt they'd have as much charm :^]
Man I really enjoyed this video! Your creativity with the visuals and sound design allied with the informational content really digs deep and differentiate your content from other in this site.
There is no freaking way i actually am the first person watching this, omg hii guys!!!
I'm what you would call a "sub(pixel)scriber" i guess lol.
Heh heh. Thanks for showing up to the party on time : )
@@japhyriddle You bet whenever I see a video from you in my feed its the first one i Pix!(el)
I have thought about this potential quite a bit. I’m glad you made a video on it.
4:41 WHAT SONG IS THIS? IT MAKES ME SMILE WITH ALL MY TEETH.
It's not really a completed song. It was part of an experiment a decade ago that involved a tape loop of drums wrapped around a cylinder on a spinning turntable with a tape head mounted against the tape loop.
@@japhyriddlewhy are you posy?
@@japhyriddle thank you... thank you so much..
@@pasmoluisoYou mean The Posy? A slightly different crazy and insanely cool dude.
@@_yung_trappa_ Yes. The posy
Love your work, this makes me want to check out more of your videos. Thanks for the effort and sharing.
Thank you for your interest. I have some other videos you might like.
tiny LED art 🔥
I love the calm-and-pleasant just-kinda-excited-to-talk-about-this-thing-that-they're-interested-in vibe of the narration. Reminds me a bit of Sebastian Lague, who has a wonderful narration style where you can just hear them smiling. I always love videos like this.
Your editing is amazing! Just a little error I noticed at 2:32. The display for red should only be the red channel.
Nice catch
Ha ha ha. You're so right.
In the captions he points out his mistake
@@asserreiad and in the description
Amazing! What a wonder under the normal pixel layer. Great work on the video, BTW!
i found this incredibly amazing, and just hearing the concept came to my mind so familiar, and i didn't even hear of i anywhere, i just assumed what it was and i like it!
I wouldn't use this casually, or in any means, but it is something i find amusing to have in my knowledge! i'm even surprised you just got 39k subs, let's get to 40k!
song here? 0:16
Me also want know
yes
nah
sí
Same demand
This is so cool, hopefully a lot of people hop on this type of art cause I want to see more
1:25 imaginary technique: hollow purple
This is something that I've been doing for a while now, but it's great to see that someone else has realized this.
5:48 GET DOWN! FLASHBANG!
When I saw the result I was thinking Apple 2 and then you immediately mentioned it. I'm very happy that this was mentioned. This video is _very_ complete on the subject!
Hi, the human eye is more sensitive for green, then blue and lastly red. You can see this translated in the brightness of the subpixels. I wonder how the images llook when adjusted for this. Is that feasable in your programming?
That's a good point. Although eyes are more sensitive to red than blue, but I get your point. Someone else pointed out that I could have decreased the brightness of my colors accordingly to even them out. A very easy step to include, yes.
@japhyriddle Ah ok got the order wrong. But yes that's the idea. Might make the images more crisp. Very cool work, does me remind me of the demoscene of old 👌
As soon as i saw thumbnail and title, i knew video would be interesting and comment section even more! I was not disappointed by both!
0:29 Not me
Same same …
This is amazing! I swear I've wondered if anyone had done this in the past. I am so glad to see it brought into reality.
*## SPOILERS FOR THE HIDDEN CODE AT **6:07** IF YOU PRESS READ MORE ##*
the code is "whoa, you actually decoded this? you're awesome!" :3
I'm so impressed. You're a true sleuth!
Time for someone to add sub-pixel secrets in a horror game. For real though this is cool as heck. Well done! You need more subs!
1:02 Gay jumpscare
shut it
@@AmeriX2-c3knuh uh
lol. always love the rainbow. it's so neat and probably still would love it even if i wasn't part of the lgbt
@@AmeriX2-c3k no you shut it idiotic homophobe
@@AmeriX2-c3kits a joke chill out grumpy pants
This video was so cool, and the production value was absolutely insane!
What is the program called at 2:50? New, nu, noo?
Sorry. I guess it was hard to hear it. "Nuke" is the program. By a company called Foundry.
I just found your channel and to me it's an amalgamation of Posy, Felix Colgrave and Uri Tuchman. What a lovely find, and instant sub.
Optical illusion ! 5:13 i'ts look like all the cubes is not alligned (sorry fo my englsih, i am french 🇫🇷)
Don’t be Sorry, it’s very good!
i'm so glad you mentioned the thing about fonts. I was starting to think i was losing it.
What is the song around 1:45? It’s breaking my brain.
It's in the pinned comment.
this video is friggin awesome dude, you remind me a lot of Ahoy. Keep makin this stuff, I love to see it.
5:47 wait hold up, this could be a clever way to hide messages on a ARG
SWB08, you may be right hold tf up, our mate may have uncovered a new way of encoding shit.
This is called Millitext and already exist
this video is so posy and that's a huge compliment, love it