Thimbleweed Park artist will share 8-bit art tips at GDC 2016

GDC 2016 is happening this month, and organizers would like to quickly let you know about a cool talk from longtime game artist Mark Ferrari about neat ways you can create 8-bit and "8-bitish" graphics for your game. 

Ferrari has created art for everything from Lucasfilm Games' Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders to veteran adventure game designer Ron Gilbert's Thimbleweed Park, and he'll share what he's learned from all that work in "8-Bit & '8-Bitish' Graphics -- Outside the Box."

Check out this talk to see Ferrari demonstrate some of his techniques for drawing 8-bit game graphics, including his celebrated methods for use of color cycling and pallet shifting to create complex and realistic background animation effects without frame-animation.

He will also discuss his ongoing work on Ron Gilbert's retro adventure game in deeper detail and demonstrate techniques for using Photoshop to create what he calls '8-bitish' graphics for retro games today.

Sound good? There are lots of other great talks taking place on the Visual Arts track at GDC 2016, including Campo Santo's Jane Ng talking about "Making the World of Firewatch," "Animating Quadruped Characters in The Flame in The Flood" from The Molasses Flood's Gwen Frey and Naughty Dog's Andrew Maximov's session on the "Technical Art Culture of Uncharted 4."

For more details about these and other announced GDC 2016 sessions, check out the GDC Session Scheduler. 

GDC 2016 itself will take place March 14-18th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. For more information on GDC 2016, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

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