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I know they digitized actors but how can I get those same results? How to take a photo or video of someone and digitize it for a 2D game? Digitized sprites were used in several video games through the 90s but fell out of favor when textured 3D graphics became more common. What technology is used today for creating MK1 realism?

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There was a video by Jordan Mechner himself explaining how he did that for Prince of Persia. Like this one jordanmechner.com/ebook but also with some commentary. – Lohoris Mar 14 '12 at 14:20
Thanks @Lohoris – hurricaneditka16 Mar 14 '12 at 14:39

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Here's a link to the Making of Mortál Szombat: http://openmortal.sourceforge.net/making.html

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Thanks. Very helpful link. Frustrating I never came across that link after so much googling. Unfortunately last time that was updated was 2006. – hurricaneditka16 Mar 14 '12 at 14:02
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That only means the edition/exporting programs were updated. There's still no "magical software" that will do that for you, everyone would know about it. – Ef Es Mar 14 '12 at 14:05
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It probably is just a lot of time put into it. Some wild idea:

  • Record with a static camera in a green chroma.
  • Convert or output the video frames to images.
  • Take around 15 frames per every second for each "movement" and discard the rest.
  • Photoshop time! Remove the green chroma manually using magic tool, and clean the sprites.
  • Prepare and use them for your animations.

I'm not big in video/image edition but maybe there is a filter or program that can automatize transforming the green background into transparent, bitwise is only transforming the uniform chroma color 0x00FF00FF into 0x00000000, or even just remove the alpha bits.

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"then convert or output the video frames to images" That's the part I need to understand. What software/technique/method/algorithm is used for this? How does real live video of Johnny Cage turn into his 2d sprite graphical representation of him? How was it done then and how is it best done today? Assuming there have been advances since then. Thank you for your quick and helpful response. – hurricaneditka16 Mar 14 '12 at 13:55
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I bet most of the advanced to expert programs allow for an frame-by-frame, image-by-image output. You still have to manually edit them, there's no getting away from that. – Ef Es Mar 14 '12 at 14:06
mencoder should be able to convert a video into a sequence of images. – Lohoris Mar 14 '12 at 14:15
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heck, not even just advanced video editing software. Sure you can do this in Final Cut or Premiere, but you can even export to PNG sequence in Quicktime Player. At that point, you can do most of the work by creating an Action in Photoshop and then running that action on the folder full of images. – jhocking Mar 14 '12 at 14:47
Thanks @jhocking, but I'm confused. The Photoshop action would digitize/cartoonize the images? If so, could you elaborate a bit or share a link? Thanks again. – hurricaneditka16 Mar 15 '12 at 14:48
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