I’d like to do a prototype HF32 cart that uses a black/white/red eInk screen like I showed way back at the beginning of the development. The idea behind this is to show what’s the best label that can be produced for these screens and what it may look like on HF32. I also have some other ideas in the background where I’m debating using these tri color eInk screens.
I’m not the best artist so I’m proposing a contest where I’ll give away a free HF32 flash cart ($200 value currently) to the best black/white/red eInk label. I may even throw in a free box set.
The label should be VB themed. It would be great if it was related to a VB game, or possible future game, but that’s not a strict requirement. I’ll pick based on best overall image quality on the eInk screen. Obviously this is based on my personal interpretation. For the b/w/r screen, it is only black, white, or red, no grayscales are allowed. So labels with dithering are likely going to look better. Also, if you review the original HF32 contest, many of the winners had dithering in some shape or form.
The eInk screen is 264 x 176 but I only use a portion of that on the HF32. Basically 236×176 shifted to the far left. There is some vertical clipped as well but its minimal. I’d recommend not putting too much near the top and bottom extreme edges. You can also bleed your background over into the right edge but just be aware it will be masked by the HF32 cover. Please make black –>0, white–>255, and red –>255 in your RGB 24bit bmps. This will keep conversion consistent.
I’ll run this contest 2 weeks and pick a winner on Jan. 24th 2021. I can give you either a normal production HF32 cart, or possibly send a prototype of the b/w/r version. We can discuss when you win. Just be aware that the on-screen interface popular on HF32 now won’t work well for a b/w/r screen. Also like before, I may give away more than 1 prize if there are multiple that really blow my mind. There were too many good ones last time. By entering the contest you also give PlanetVB people permission to use your label on a tri color eInk screen, should one ever become available. If you already paid for a HF32 unit, then I’ll refund your purchase if you’re the winner.
Cannot wait to see what people come up with! Post your 24bit bmps images here for documentation purposes and I’ll download and convert and repost on the screen like before. I’ll attempt to do at least nightly uploads, but may upload more often.
I’m posting some images of my original b/w/r image (although not a very good one) just as an example. As well as some others online that look good despite the screen limitations. Thanks!
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My contributions to this b/w/r project.
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News ones… I don’t despair of being able to do something cool for HF …
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Here are my 2 cents for what it’s worth. Thank you for this opportunity, Mr. Mellott.
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I’m not 100% happy with this, but I wanted to get it posted so I might be able to see it on the display with enough time to tweak it.
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Everyone’s labels look awesome! Here’s my entry. Hope it turned out okay.
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Some more Fwow13 labels. Looking good!
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Great job guys! I haven’t made any new labels (and I’m kind of kicking myself over it a bit with not much time left to go), but what I have done is update and recolour a vast majority of my old labels. And I do mean update. Like any good port I didn’t simply adapt them for the new platform. Instead I’ve gone through a couple times and made a number of changes to make them cleaner, and also fit to the new colour scheme better (including a lot more dithering than what was originally present in the original versions, among other changes). There were probably only about four that didn’t make the cut because they just lost too much detail, but hopefully the ones that did make it will speak for themselves. If you’d like to compare to my original ones you can find those here:
As I alluded to earlier, I’d like to do a few new ones, but this took me longer than I originally planned due to constantly increasing scope, so I might try to do a couple, even if the end of the contest comes before I can finish them (but we’ll see).
Oh, and don’t feel obliged to get them all up on the display Mellott, that time could be better spent working on even more projects 😉. Just pick out however many catch your eye. Hope you all like them and good luck to you all! 🙂
(edit: fixed a few small things with a couple of the labels, and changed the collage a bit to exclude a few variations that in my opinion just made the whole thing a bit messier. Those variation labels are still in the attached folder, as are the other variations that weren’t cut, of course)
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This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by
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This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by . Reason: Post took a long time to appear, so I went through my labels again and found a few errors, fixed them, and changed the collage a little
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This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by .
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Oh yeah, and here are my templates in case anybody wants to use them, even with the remaining time being… not that long.
I had meant to post them earlier but at the same time I’d wanted to do so after I got my revamps done but before I started on new labels, and the revamps ended up taking much longer than I expected, because I wanted them to be good. And I think remastering them might actually rival how much time I spent making them for the original contest (or at least that’s how it felt); and as I said in my previous post, I haven’t quite gotten to making new ones just yet.
Anyway I hope this is helpful in some way to somebody :p
OK, here are some of the Red Menace labels. I picked the ones I thought looked the best.
The Teleroboxer ones look really clean on the b/w/r display.
A tiny bit late, but I finished some new ones :).
A Yan’s set.
For the US label I may have borrowed, and adapted, the background part from Virtuous Rage’s labels from the original contest 😅. Anyway it’s my first label in that style but I’m pretty happy with it. I did all four of these today so I may or may not need to change a couple things; but I think they’re all relatively clean as they are, and I wanted to get them out sooner rather than later.
Anyway, I’m going to sleep 😛
This might be too late to be considered, but I made some tweaks…
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OK, he’s the last of the updates for the contest. Nice job everyone! I think everyone showed that yes you can make some good labels given the limitations of a tri-color eInk screen. I’ll post the winner tomorrow. Thanks!
Hi Everyone,
It was really impressive to see what people came up with given the display limitations. It was tough to decide and I know everyone put in a lot of work into these. One did bubble to the top for me.
Congrats to Mirai604 for the WarioLand labels. I’m declaring him the winner of the b/w/r contest. I’m specifically showing the N3 label below, which I liked the most and had a great blend of the colors, game theme, and a strong 3D perspective. I also really enjoyed the VB loading screen aspect. The badge included was also a clever addition. It really feels like it was made for a production b/w/r HF32 cart.
So congrats to Mirari604!
In other news, the eInk manufacturer may have some exciting news on b/w/r labels…
I should hopefully find out this week. I’ll keep it a secret for now. 🙂
Thanks,
Kevin
