Link

[bladespark]

Well, I wanted to do a Card Saga Wars Link, but I lack a shade of green I really need, and I'm waiting for it to come in the mail. And I can't do the chocobo for similar reasons, as I'm out of dark brown.

So here's a quickie Link that didn't need any colors I didn't have, because he had just three. I added white, the sword was originally flesh tone, and black, it was originally without an outline, which I don't really like. (Why the flip is the sword flesh tone anyhow? The original Zelda didn't have that problem, why does the sequel?)



He's from the second Zelda game, "The Adventure of Link" which I (and most other Zelda fans) disliked. He's in the "getting hit" pose because I saw that one an awful lot while playing. :P

Comments

[derakon.livejournal.com]

The sword is fleshtone because NES sprites could only support 3 colors (plus alpha) for their sprites. That's also why he doesn't have an outline. The original Zelda didn't have this problem because the sword is a separate sprite, but they couldn't easily do that in this game because of all the different angles it's displayed at.

[derakon.livejournal.com]

Oh, and looks good! I might've chosen his downstab pose instead, but this is fine too -- just has a different tone to it. :)

[harliquinnraver.livejournal.com]

a flesh tone sword on Link in THAT pose would look....perverse.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

*dies laughing* You are so very right. (And yet so very wrong... heeeeeeeeee!)

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

I thought about the downstab too, actually.

Do you know why the three color thing? It seems very odd to me.

[derakon.livejournal.com]

I don't know for certain, but if I had to hazard a guess, the sprites are using a length-4 palette: [color1, color2, color3, transparent]. That feels right because it gets a power of 2 involved.

[derakon.livejournal.com]

I just realized after posting that this doesn't really answer anything, does it? Anyway, the NES does not have very powerful hardware at all, so its sprites are going to be color-limited to the fewest number of colors they can get away with while keeping the palette size to a power of 2. 8 would be too many colors, and 2 too few, so they went with 4.

(I guess this LJ post is where I respond to myself a bunch)