Best Amiga in 2022 for Pixel Art and Creating Parallax Animation in Deluxe Paint

[@roberthazelby4424]

A lovely video you’ve put together. I didn’t realise Deluxe Paint was so powerful. What a fantastic parallax effect. We’ll definitely have to get you back to SWAG if/when you return to our shores.

[@Jarek.]

Same! This was the time when not only discovering Amiga and the software such as DP but also trying to be more familiar with the language

[@afflictionmahocias]

Astonishing! Only now do I realize how powerful this software is. Stencils (layers) are great. I had Deluxe Paint 3 Original with box and manual and I think I threw it away. I regret it. But maybe I can still find it in the basement. But I also love the drawing software Brilliance.

[@vix_in_japan]

Yeah it's impressive what the software can do still. I needs a little thought beforehand when you're used to having layers and say transparency at your disposal, but if you plan a bit ahead you soon get in the rhythm of it. Brilliance is great too, but I just prefer Dpaint's animation features and maybe I'm one of the few but I prefer DPaint's UI but I think that's just because I am used to it. Brilliance is Brilliant though, check out "invent71" on KZbin, Kevin Saunders, he uses Brilliance.

[@alexanderpuschacher6512]

At that time I was not aware of what Deluxe Paint is capable of.

[@Texy88]

Cool video. I still have my Amiga 1200 from back in the day and loved tinkering with _Deluxe Paint IV_ - and later _Deluxe Paint V._

[@vix_in_japan]

Cool! If you haven't had it recapped, it's worth doing it, because they all have the problem and one day that poor 1200 will working because of it, and could even necessitate a more expensive repair. But yeah, using Dpaint is real chill vibes for me. Rad stuff.

[@leejacksondev]

For those with an a500 or a500+ and can’t push to another Amiga purchase, I have an a500+ but have replaced the CPU with the PiStorm accelerator and the floppy with a USB gotek. The PiStorm allows me to create virtual hard drives, share network resources and also gives me access to an extra 128 of ram etc. Means it should cope pretty well with the demands demonstrated in this video. Important to note of course it’s an open source project, pretty bleeding edge new so probably shouldn’t be considered for serious production quite yet where you need reliability. That said I’ve had no issues at all so far and I’ve put it under its paces a lot!

[@vix_in_japan]

This is very interesting thanks Lee. I think it's a great upgrade but as you note presently not for all users. I think I was looking at it from the POV of absolute simplicity for those who want to have an Amiga like they had BITD that can easily be used for creating Protracker/Octamed music, DPaint work and playing games within a reasonable budget. One thing I don't know about the PiStorm is whether it can increase chip RAM as 2MB is very handy for tracker music and animation. I'd imagine that's more of an Amiga chipset limitation with the installed Agnus chip, whereas later Vampires recreate the Amiga chipset and therefore have an enhanced Agnus/Alice I guess. But I'm not entirely up on this so I could be totally wrong. Either way, not all people wanting an Amiga would want to have some of the technical bother, me being one of them, which is why I went for the A600 suggestion as it seemed to be the best balance between all things, budget, suitability, size, ease of use, reliability etc.

[@leejacksondev]

Oh I still wanna buy a 600 now after this video 😂😂😂. I’m addicted

[@bennykanz1a466]

Wow well done. Its always amazing what is possible on this old lovely computers

[@vix_in_japan]

It just needs time and putting the hours in to work on something. Much more important than any bit of hardware you can buy.

[@TheJamieRamone]

This technique was invented by Disney many years ago for their animated movies, implemented thru a device called the multi-plane camera.

[@vix_in_japan]

Thank you, that's a good nugget of info!

[@TheJamieRamone]

@@vix_in_japan n_n

[@zoltardreamusic2552]

Very interesting Vixen! For many of us, it makes us remind how we dealt with the Deluxe Paint advanced options... really amazing to see the well an Amiga can work for graphics and sound tasks. Have a nice day and greetings!😊

[@vix_in_japan]

Thanks Zoltar! I don't see too much Dpaint animation on KZbin, but there again I've not actively been looking for it, as perhaps my direction with it is now more based on it being an extension of my manga rather than the Amiga side of things if that makes sense. But it's a great tool, I have some really nice ideas coming up over the coming months and inevitably years all related to this and Future Saviors.

[@andreafluffkitten]

Every time I see one of your vids I find out another thing about DP I didn't know. Nice. My "perfect" Amiga for anything I'd want an Amiga to do is my tarted up A1200. :)

[@vix_in_japan]

There's tons of stuff Dpaint can do that has been lost to the mists of time, hopefully over time I can make good use of them through mixed media. I think many people will say their upgraded systems are the perfect Amiga, I think I was thinking from the POV of simplicity for the less technically inclined to have the experience they may have had with an Amiga BITD. I think there's nothing wrong with upgrades as I note, but it can make the initial cost a bit more.

[@antjarvis]

This is lovely, nice one Vix.

[@vix_in_japan]

Thanks Ant!

[@AtaruMor0boshi]

I'm no artist but still found this very interesting!

[@vix_in_japan]

Thank you!

[@geezerdiamond]

That works out so well! I don’t think I was ever aware of those features in DPaint back in the day; I did some basic anims but never anything like that. I’ve got great love for the 600, with it being my first Miggy 👍

[@vix_in_japan]

Yeah it's all been there since DPaint III, the real knack is understanding how to use them in concert, and knowing somewhat in advance in order to pull things off without inordinate work.

[@d_vibe-swe]

Gorgeous! My favourite Amiga is the 1200, because it packs more power and extension capabilities out of its box, while still its formfactor is small. :)

[@vix_in_japan]

Thank you. Yes the 1200 is a good machine, albeit expensive these days.

[@d_vibe-swe]

@@vix_in_japan Yes. It would've been cheaper to be an Atari fan xD

[@heidirichter]

I wasn't expecting the 600 to be suggested, as my first thought was that it would be ruled out, due to the lack of a number-pad, and yes, while the points raised in this video in it's favour are indeed true, CPU and fast RAM expansion is a little more of an issue with the 600 when compared with some other models. Having said that, I love my 600, but I do wish it had a number-pad, some fast RAM and a faster CPU, without it costing as much as options do for those things.

[@vix_in_japan]

Yeah I expect it will raise eyebrows, I've explained it a bit in some of the comments. My reasoning was based on not all prospective purchasers will be as technical as perhaps the retro computing audience sometimes is, but will still want to have an Amiga like they had BITD. The A600 was my choice that struck a balance between ease of use, relative affordability, reliability etc. The lack of num pad never really bothered me too much personally as I didn't play games that need it and a simple Amiga commodity (Commodore even made one) will emulate the num pad for those wanting to use Dpaint perspective tools. It's one annoyance is that even if you want just a little bit of fast RAM, it can be a pain in 2021/22, as the PCMCIA RAM cards are now quite rare and expensive. Internal upgrades solve this but can sometimes need a small motherboard mod to keep them in place I find. But even a 2MB Chip RAM A600 can do the business, a bit like how CTrix showed awesome work in ProTracker and sampling on a 512KB Amiga 500.

[@heidirichter]

@@vix_in_japan Oh absolutely. I don't play any games that need the num-pad, I'll have to look into the commodity you speak of for the DPaint perspective tool, as that's the only time I've found I've really missed those keys. Oh, loved the video and showing how to create the parallax animation, fantastic work, thank you, once my finances are in a better place again I'll be sure to head over to your patreon site. I used to love DPaint back in the day on my 1200 and I'm shocked at how much I've forgot about how to use it in the last nearly 30 years.

[@CRG]

Always impressed with your art skills Vicky, great work as always. The 600 is the one wedge I'm missing from my collection. Its certainly an interesting little system, I remember a friend of mine had one. I actually asked my parents for one the year they got me the 1200. It's got the benefit of being simple to upgrade to 2mb chip (as you said) and can be easily accelerated with the likes of a furia.

[@vix_in_japan]

Thanks! Yeah pleased with the way this stuff if working out. The A600 can indeed be upgraded quite nicely if need be, but hopefully if anyone is inspired by what they see here or other pixel artists doing, they can find the time to enjoy this software.

[@808v1]

sweet, this was appreciated, informative...thx

[@vix_in_japan]

You're very welcome, I tried to keep things simple.

[@eoinlundy]

So cool!

[@vix_in_japan]

Thanks Eoin, really appreciate it.

[@trydowave]

Great video as always Vic. Im always impressed how you combine your artistic skill with your technically knowledge. The latter is always a stumbling block for me personally. Looking forward to see the Art contest. P.s. I use an A1200 030 for my pixel art. Im a original hardware guy through and through, normally using a CRT but when it comes to drawing l like to use an LCD display.

[@vix_in_japan]

Thanks! Hopefully, the message is clear that no amount of hardware will make stuff, at the end of the day it comes from sitting down and practicing and using the stuff. I agree on the LCD for drawing, I can't really do pixel art on a TV, or small CRT, the colors smush together too much, great for viewing, not so great for drawing on, but maybe that's my eyesight more than anything.

[@bigd5090]

A great video though I detect some favouritism from you regarding the A600! The A1200 with a 030 50Mhz accelerator is considered the sweet spot for both pixel pushing and WHDLoad gaming and it has a full numeric keyboard. Using the AGA enhanced versions of Deluxe Paint allows more colours and 256 colour animation is even possible on a 060 AGA Amiga with full screen background scrolling (1 layer at least I've tried and I must try parallax but Chip Memory is a limitation 😞). The A600 would be a great choice with the V2 Vampire board from Apollo but I think their supply is limited now that Apollo have moved onto V4 boards.

[@vix_in_japan]

I think choosing anything indicates a bias, otherwise there would be no recommendation. I didn't recommend the A1200 on the basis it's price of entry is more expensive, and I sometimes think a rod is made of upgrading things before getting stuck in and enjoying what you have. Not to say upgrades don't help, but if you're not animating, you can create some wicked 32 color or EHB art on an Amiga 600 with 1MB RAM. There are benefits to the A1200 like a numeric keypad but I've never been much of a user of them, quite possibly because I cut my teeth first on a C64 and then an A600! Dpaint IV AGA and Dpaint V have a Tooltype that allows the A600 to access perspective commands, which mitigates that problem, or a commodity can be installed to emulate the keypad. I think it's going to be a toss up and what you're requirements are, and in some cases yes the A1200 is the best choice, but weighing everything up, I came down on the A600 as they are still cheaper than an A1200, more compact, and have the relative ease of transferring files to and from that requires more hardware on say an A500 for example. I think once we start talking about 060s and Vampires, that's a different price bracket. That said I do recognize I tend to have the patience of a saint so a 68000 A600 has never really fazed me in the way some people would be like I was nostalgic about /this/?!?! :)

[@eijentwun5509]

Vix I commented this on another Video....But Replace Deluxe Paint with Brilliance 2.0 (its sooo much better) and Get SCALA MM 300 or MM400 to place multile sequences at will at the press of a key and add music and sound fx and title LIVE...it will play like a PowerPoint. An AGA Graphics Amiga like the Amiga 1200 or 4000 or CD32 should be used as your base for emulation. Also Personal Paint 6.1 or higher helps. for even SUPER smoother animation ClariSSA app and animation format is the fastest...but not a very standard file format for amiga...but I think it works in SCALA.

[@vix_in_japan]

I think that's all well and good; but for me (see my latest video) doing it all within the Amiga environment isn't something I'm about, and I've experimented with Scala in the past and wasn't happy with the result. Instead combining the old and new is what works for me and brings what I do out of the limitation of trying to do it all on an old system. As for Brilliance yeah it's great, I just prefer working in Deluxe Paint. I like the interface more. As for the base emulation set up, sometimes I do use AGA but honestly if I'm using RGB-8, I'd just use Aseprite.

[@xevious2501]

Um Dpaint 3 and 4 has animation capability. Im an old school Dpaint artists, one the first tools i used as my primary 2d animation tool back in the day. It was the leader in its class. Photoshop which came out 5 years later, copied many of dpaints features and tools. People think photoshop started it all. HA!!! not even close. The amiga has a plethora of artist programs far ahead of anything on the mac. Dpaint, Aegis animator,draw, photon paint, brilliance , disney animation studio, zoetrope, Tvpaint (yes the same TVpaint that still exist today), pro-paint, PPaint, Fantavision (vector based animation long before flash) , DigiPaint, perfect paint, and a ton more, and thats just 2d based!!. Ironically today you can still do pixel based drawing with TVpaint with all its wonderful modern tools, simply drop the resolution and turn off antialiasing. there still remains all the tools and color pallet options as it were back in the day.

[@yannmassard3970]

memories

[@entx8491]

A600 is a bad recommendation, A1200 has superior graphics, speed, expandability and availability.

[@greentroll9326]

1200 would be better

[@vix_in_japan]

Please feel free to share your reasons why you would have an A1200 :)