I thought it might be fun to have a contest for best eInk art for display on the HyperFlash32 eInk display. Winner will get a free HyperFlash32 cart ($150 value). This contest is open to anyone, even existing buyers. I’ll refund your cart price if you’ve already paid or give you a second free one.
The idea is to generate eInk labels that would be associated with a loaded ROM file. This is flashed to the screen so that you know what game is currently programmed. It’s meant as a changeable game label.
You can see the visible area of the image below in the picture of approximately 226 x 168 pixels set within a 264 x 176 frame. Your image needs to be 264 x 176 in size but only the 226×168 offset image will be visible once on the cart. Image needs to be in 4 gray shades to match the display: black, white, and two intermediate shades. Saved as a 24bit BMP file (this is what I need to convert to an eInk format). I’ve also attached an image showing an example 4 shades of gray available on the display, as well as some images I’ve done already. Be aware that the images I’ve done in the examples are NOT offset properly. To keep everything consistent in the conversion on my end lets use gray levels 0xFFFFFF, 0x000000,0xC0C0C0, and 0x808080.
The images I’ve done were ripped/modified from various existing labels/places. This may not be the best approach as they were not originally designed for a 4 grayscale display. But I won’t restrict people in any way. Feel free to do what you think is best.
For judging, I’ll put the images on an eInk display and pick my favorite 3. I was going to let the community vote via a poll, but someone brought to my attention that cheating would be very easy via a poll. So I’ll be the judge on this one but I’ll pick my top 3 favorites. Then I’ll randomly pick out of a hat from the top three for the final grand prize. I’ll pick the top 3 on May 1st. Then select the top one. I’m likely to have a 2nd and 3rd place prize as well. TBD on what those are.
To enter, just post your image here in this thread when its ready. By posting and entering the contest you’re open to letting others use your image on their own personal HyperFlash carts. The idea is to share labels.
Let me know if you have any questions. I reserve the right to modify the contest slightly just in case some issues arise that I didn’t think of but the general idea will remain untouched.
I am unsure if I got this in 24bit format. Would you let me know if its a good format for you before I try some more?
Thanks!!
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Loukey wrote:
I am unsure if I got this in 24bit format. Would you let me know if its a good format for you before I try some more?Thanks!!
Cool. I’ll try it tonight.
You may want to stretch your contrast out. Lots of grays and black, but no white in your image. It will look better if you use all 4 shades.
And the small text may not show well.
Ok, here’s my first attempt. I was thinking a themed series could be cool
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Thank you for the recommendations. Hopefully this will look better 🙂
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Here is my first attempt at pixel art ever. Going to start another one but might come back to this to add more. We’ll see I guess.
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I’m no artist but I wanted to see what I could do lol I hope I got the palette right
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I know it should have more white but this is the first time I have tried doing this.
*figured it out
*had to move image over to adjust for pixels being hidden
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Alright, woke up and wasn’t quite happy with em before. So I redid it a bit. Here’s my updated stuff.
OK, here are the current entry images on an actual eInk display. Overall, nice job to everyone.
Few comments for feedback.
1. The ones that emphasize white and black seem to show much cleaner.
2. Ianel, I couldn’t convert yours as its png and not bmp.
3. Some of the images display much better after I stretch the contrast, such as the tydyedsyko image. I don’t want to modify peoples images so make sure you have true blacks and whites.
4. The resolution of some of the images is low and causing them to look blurry.
5. VNES, if you update your gray levels your image will improve significantly. See my follow up post below when I had the incorrect gray level thresholds.
I updated the original post. VirtuousRage caught an error that was causing gray levels to note be displayed correctly. It’s been fixed. Thanks!
I should also note that they look slightly better on the actual eInk display than the close up images I’ve attached. That’s primarily because on the real display its not quite so zoomed in.
Nice work!
This is not the new design for the cover and it has a smaller opening, but this gives you a feel for what things look like with a cover on.
I love the red contrast… maybe they should be red PCBs instead of black. Hmmm….
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I made a template for myself and anyone else to use. 🙂
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How can I be sure I am using “true black and whites”? I do not have photoshop or anything =/
