1-bit Cacodemon

This is not strictly a DooM editing question but I think there are people here who can help me. I have been trying to make a 1-bit version of the front view sprite of Cacodemon. I.e. turn the multi-color version to just two colors (or one color and the lack of color). If I export the original picture to 1-bit automatically in Gimp the result is unrecognizable. So it definitely needs some hand massaging which I suck at.

I'll attach the "original" sprite as PNG.

Do the recoloring via SLADE3's "Graphic -> Color remap" feature. It's ideal for paletted graphics, as it allows you to select whole ranges of indexes in the palette and remap them to other ranges of indexes, or in your case, just one index.

Do you want to keep transparency? Because it seems to me you'll need two bits if you want two colors plus transparency. Otherwise, just use the silhouette.

Transparent background mapped to lack of color. So just 1 bit overall.

I'll try Slade3, never used it before.

Edit: Adding a bit of background: I'm going to make a physical print out of it and I can only use one color for the print. So that's why only one bit.

1 minute ago, SP_FACE1 said:

Transparent background mapped to lack of color.

Then just select the transparent background, fill it with one color, then invert the selection and fill it with another color. Any decent graphic editor should be able to do this in just few clicks.

7 minutes ago, scifista42 said:

Then just select the transparent background, fill it with one color, then invert the selection and fill it with another color. Any decent graphic editor should be able to do this in just few clicks.

That would make a silhouette. I'm trying to also preserve some details from the body, like eye, mouth, teeth

Then with SLADE you can remap the blues of the open mouth and the green of the eye to a color, that can then be made translucent. The end result can be something like this:

You're not going to be able to do something much more detailed IMO. You only have two colors to work with after all.

Alternatively you can try to blow the image up, smooth it with filters, and then use edge detection. You might be able to get the outlines drawn this way.

5 minutes ago, Gez said:

Then with SLADE you can remap the blues of the open mouth and the green of the eye to a color, that can then be made translucent. The end result can be something like this:

 

 

You're not going to be able to do something much more detailed IMO. You only have two colors to work with after all.

 

Alternatively you can try to blow the image up, smooth it with filters, and then use edge detection. You might be able to get the outlines drawn this way.

Ya beat me to it Gez.

Yeah, a lot of detail is gonna get lost but trying to keep as much of the distinct features as possible.

The converted image doesn't need to be the same resolution. Actually in the end it will be converted to vector graphics for printing so there could be a lot of detail but it needs some artistic massaging and I suck at that. Can anyone recommend a site where I can hire someone to do that?

If you don't consider translucency part of the 1-bit range, you can squeeze black & white together like monochrome doom. Black & white cacodemons will be much more recognizable than some stencil-like thing above (gez's has open holes it in too oops) and I'm sure there are plugins or whatever to convert an image automatically. You'll want dithering to represent intermediate colors.

13 minutes ago, Combinebobnt said:

(gez's has open holes it in too oops)

"oops"? Oh jeez it must have been a mistake and not something entirely deliberate to make the silhouette more recognizable by making it feature the eye and mouth, and also not something that was mentioned right in the first line of the post where it was shown.

I'm thinking the best way to do it automatically would be with edge detection. Or just give the original to a human artist and ask them to redraw the Cacodemon with a single color pen using the original as a model. Any recommendations where to hire people for that?

3 minutes ago, SP_FACE1 said:

Any recommendations where to hire people for that?

https://www.fiverr.com/categories/graphics-design/vector-tracing

Thanks! Any experiences with Fiverr? Is it an iterative process with the artist where you can give feedback if you are not happy with the result? Or do you just pay and get something back and that's it?

4 hours ago, SP_FACE1 said:

The converted image doesn't need to be the same resolution. Actually in the end it will be converted to vector graphics for printing

Without knowing what you're trying to achieve it's hard to offer good advice, but if it's a secret project then I understand.

Do you want the end result to just be a silhouette of the Cacodemon, or are you aiming to reproduce some of the Cacodemon's "features" (eye, mouth, etc.) as well? If the former then it's probably something you can just do yourself without a lot of effort, just by drawing a shape around the boundary.

If it's the latter then you probably want to find an artist skilled in this kind of thing - there won't be a magic photoshop filter that will do it for you. You might find someone on Fiverr but I'd be skeptical and look very carefully. A lot of people on there are not offering anything more than "you don't know how to use photoshop but I can do it for you". Really this problem ("1-bit" pictures) seems more like stencilling which is a whole art form in itself.

Awesome. Are you using these cacodemon masks for manufacturing stuff which looks like cacos?

57 minutes ago, fraggle said:

Without knowing what you're trying to achieve it's hard to offer good advice, but if it's a secret project then I understand.

5 hours ago, SP_FACE1 said:

Adding a bit of background: I'm going to make a physical print out of it and I can only use one color for the print. So that's why only one bit.

1 hour ago, fraggle said:

You might find someone on Fiverr but I'd be skeptical and look very carefully. A lot of people on there are not offering anything more than "you don't know how to use photoshop but I can do it for you". Really this problem ("1-bit" pictures) seems more like stencilling which is a whole art form in itself.

Thanks, that's what I'm afraid. I don't want to end up paying first and then getting a result which is worse than the one I could have done myself. I think I should try to find someone who does stenciling?

53 minutes ago, printz said:

Awesome. Are you using these cacodemon masks for manufacturing stuff which looks like cacos?

I basically want to print it on a pin. But I'm restricted to just one color. I've actually done this already about three years ago but I was never satisfied with the result because I made it myself and I don't think the result looks enough like a Cacodemon. So now I'm trying to find help from someone who's skilled at converting the piece to 1 bits or stencil it by hand

2 hours ago, SP_FACE1 said:

Thanks, that's what I'm afraid. I don't want to end up paying first and then getting a result which is worse than the one I could have done myself. I think I should try to find someone who does stenciling?

I think so, yes. While making a stencil isn't your real goal, the thing you're trying to make is essentially the same as if you were trying to make a stencil. For example, I'm guessing that all the pieces also need to be joined up, like if you were making a stencil.

How about this?

Hah you beat me to it!

This is what I came up with:

I used paint shop pro7.. 

I did resize it so the pixels would align.

Turned it into gray scale.

Adjusted the brightness and contrast so it would be closer to 1 bit color.

Then finally decreased the color to 1 bit, 2 color/black and white.

I tried to preserve the mouth and eye.. so yeah I did have to manually edit/a little redrawing.

Cacodemon sprite converted into a 1-bit monochrome image using stuki dithering, which is quite a bit more resilient than most editors' floyd-steinberg dithering.

^{I wrote a thing in python for this a while back and i just knew it would come in handy someday.}

There is a 2-pixel border around the image though because I never worked around that limitation :/

if you'd need a different resolution I could do that too

Wow, there we go!

I hope the printer can keep up with this one! ~ I mean if the image is going on a pen that is.

I think that actually may be more scarier looking than the original.

11 hours ago, Gez said:

"oops"? Oh jeez it must have been a mistake and not something entirely deliberate to make the silhouette more recognizable by making it feature the eye and mouth, and also not something that was mentioned right in the first line of the post where it was shown.

Yeah you’re right you made a mistake, the eye and teeth aren’t preserved they’re literally holes. Also he said he didn’t want a silhoutte.

Double oops.

7 minutes ago, jdagenet said:

Yeah you’re right you made a mistake, the eye and teeth aren’t preserved they’re literally holes.

how do you think you preserve features when you've got all of two colors.

Whoa! Impressive conversions!

Spie812's version is probably the best possible result in terms of feature preservation. However, I'm afraid the printer can't handle that much detail :/

Mr. Rocket's Cacodemon has a splendid eye and mouth. And those lower horns and squiggles. Maybe a bit more detail in the rest of the body would make it even better.

Bradharding's conversion has great details in the body and horns, I've no idea how you managed to make it look so detailed with only two colors and that low resolution. Mouth is probably the hardest to distinguish, probably because it's so full of 1-bit blood!

I think it's a matter of finding the right balance between details, simplicity and recognizability. These are really helpful suggestions you have made, thank you all!

I'll attach a picture of the version I made three years ago as an example that I think diverges too much from the original. I'll also attach a picture of the actual pin.

Man, the pin totally needs the pupil in the eye!

Seems how it's actually on the pin there in material form, I say glue a freak'n eye on it! :P

I first thought you were talking about the image being on a writing pen.

I actually did that for a company one time. Their logo on a pen.

On 10/24/2017 at 8:13 PM, Spie812 said:

Cacodemon sprite converted into a 1-bit monochrome image using stuki dithering, which is quite a bit more resilient than most editors' floyd-steinberg dithering.

^{I wrote a thing in python for this a while back and i just knew it would come in handy someday.}

There is a 2-pixel border around the image though because I never worked around that limitation :/

if you'd need a different resolution I could do that too

I'd love to see the source! Very nice.

@kb1 Oh yeah, the source. Here's a link to that.

Requires Pillow and Argparse, which most python distributions should have anyway.