Lately, I spend some time watching the experiments of some blokes making pixel art with the very own palette of the original NES. This palette is quite limited, thus it forbid absolutely the nice & soft gradients our eyes are accustomed to …

Therefore, I noticed some nice contrasts of blue / orange, in such experiments, nothing revolutionnary, but it reminded me two things :

• The shades of blue one can see in the work of Impressionists (Monet, Degas, Sisley…)
• The blue shadows in that brilliant Animatrix by Koji Morimoto : “Beyond”

I checked the facts, and indeed, there IS a violent and gorgeous contrast of blue and orange, especially in that Morimoto’s anime. Then I decided to conjugate these visuals with the so-called “NES Palette”.

The result was beyond my expectations, ‘looks like it was made for it :


And Yet, no tweak at all !!!


Then I tried this palette on my 3D. It required some tweaks, but looks nice :



I have to work with this palette. Period.