For the various Ghostbusters Cartoon series. Real Ghostbusters, Extreme Ghostbusters and more!
#4931243
This could be one for Fan Art, but I figure it might have more interest here due to the broader scope.

I recently watched the stream / DVD rips of Real Ghostbusters and after 30 years the transfer isn't holding up so great. There's also little chance of an official remaster - certainly not at 4K or widescreen ratio.

With that in mind I took to remaking part of the intro. The original plan was to animate but this poses a challenge due to how the perspective is animated and the muddy quality of the existing streams, so inevitably the task will require making some changes which deviate from a straight remaster and also add a lot of extra time. So for now I settled on attempting to remake a single scene - redrawing the background detail at a higher resolution and overlaying an offset RGB channel blur to replicate CRT glow.

The plan is to keep working on scenes from the intro, potentially with a view to animating (may not be feasible).

Let me know what you think. :blush:

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Last edited by Chicken, He Clucked on August 3rd, 2020, 4:19 am, edited 2 times in total.
Kingpin, mike_waclo, ccv66 and 10 others liked this
#4931734
Kingpin wrote:I'm loving what I'm seeing, and I'm quite envious of your skill at replicating matte background paintings. :)
Cheers, it took a while - I drew it all out in Photoshop and used gradient / paintbrush on the relevant areas - it looks a lot sharper before I add the RGB blur effects.

Thankfully a lot of the shots have simple or obscured matte backgrounds. Next up is the Egon and Ray reaction shot.
Kingpin liked this
#4931999
Bison256 wrote:Could you use something like waifu2x? The Real Ghostbusters was animated by various Japanese studios in an proto anime style. I've been thinking of trying this myself if I get enough time and can free up enough of hd space I'd need.
Specifically waifu2x - not to my knowledge. There are too many limitations and I ran the original through at their maximum size and it came out looking just as rough. But maybe there are settings or tools out there that improve the result.

There is some up-res software emerging for game emulation which might do a better job. Someone recently converted the Curse of Monkey Island intro to HD and it looks incredible but it involved manual work too.

I'd be interested to see your results but with these old cartoons we don't have the original source, and the image quality has bad artefact - I imagine it would need a lot of work in addition to the automated process. Plus you wouldn't get widescreen conversion. Though obv if it worked that'd be great!

One final thing - with the example I posted above - I am aware the top floor of the background building is misaligned compared to the original and that is something I will fix if I ever went to animate - I had considered reaching out to the community to see if we could get more artists and importantly animators involved - but collaborations bring their own challenges and I thought I'd keep it consistent as a personal goal for now. Of course if others wish to have a crack at it, or can use digital wizardry to shortcut the process, then I can retire or move on to stills from the shows themselves.

Would love to fully re-animate "Knock, Knock" in 4K with a few tweaks - but kind of a pipe dream , not to mention a mammoth amount of work. Plus there's the risk of being hit with a C&D if the franchise is popular again.
Last edited by Chicken, He Clucked on August 3rd, 2020, 4:20 am, edited 2 times in total.
#4937743
Chicken, He Clucked wrote: August 2nd, 2020, 1:50 pm I left this on the back burner for a while but another frame done.

Image

And in 4K

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Oh my goodness. That is just...oh my goodness. Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

Since it looks like you did this digitally, you really capture the ink & paint style and aesthetic. Which is no easy feat. Great job.

How long did it take you to complete a single frame? Like the one here?

Sometimes I really hate copyright law because this is something I would totally donate a lot of money too for a handful of episodes to be remade like this on Kickstarter. Sony isn’t doing anything with the cartoon remastering wise, so why not? But damn copyright law. Maybe you could argue for “fair use” somewhere in there. But I doubt it. Plus it would take years to complete if you go solo.

Great work tho. Would love to see some episode frames redone. Keep em coming!
#4937747
Thanks for the positive feedback - I'll definitely tackle some more.
RichardLess wrote: Oh my goodness. That is just...oh my goodness. Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

Since it looks like you did this digitally, you really capture the ink & paint style and aesthetic. Which is no easy feat. Great job.

How long did it take you to complete a single frame? Like the one here?
Cheers, appreciate it. I wanted it to look high-def but also retain the warmth of the CRT fuzz.

So, in real-time man hours, 2-3 days work, but I did an hour or two here and there inbetween other projects - which ends up taking longer as you get out of rhythm. Plus I had it sat around for months. I could work on a much quicker turnaround.
Sometimes I really hate copyright law because this is something I would totally donate a lot of money too for a handful of episodes to be remade like this on Kickstarter. Sony isn’t doing anything with the cartoon remastering wise, so why not? But damn copyright law. Maybe you could argue for “fair use” somewhere in there. But I doubt it. Plus it would take years to complete if you go solo.

Great work tho. Would love to see some episode frames redone. Keep em coming!
Yeah it's a pain. If I was doing this full time and animating the intro at least, then I think it would be quicker to finish than you'd expect, because some frames are very simple, re-use static backgrounds and the individual frames would take less tweaking because the "post-processing" effect would be applied to all frames at the end.

For full episodes you'd need a team and crowdfunding isn't worth considering with the copyright issue. I figure drip-feeding a few frames into the community will avoid upsetting anyone as it's akin to "fan art".

But if someone at Sony wanted to cover my salary I'd be more than happy to take on the job hah!
Wafflerobot liked this
#4939272
Wafflerobot wrote: September 11th, 2020, 4:00 pm These really are amazing! I wonder how easy it would be to get one of these printed and framed.
I've contemplated putting them on Redbubble but obviously it's such a grey area - people do it and it's hit and miss whether they get taken down. But feel free to use the image above if you want to run off a print for yourself - there are lots of options out there.
Wafflerobot liked this
#4940018
Haha 50th anniversary ... no sweat. So quicker than one still every 6 months?

I went straight into the next one and chose a simpler cel to get it done quickly, but then I had a couple of other projects I needed to divert my attention to so stalled again. Seeing the posts here will definitely get back to it asap!
ccv66, Wafflerobot liked this
#4940391
Nicely done you know they do have Slimer and The Real Ghostbusters on DVD if you're interested in getting it you make me look at the episode you lost so I have no talent for some things like this I'm a complete idiot but I did love slime with a real Ghostbusters Robo Buster Flipside Too Faced Slimer citizens ghost it was so many great animes of the Slimer and The Real Ghostbusters now imagine just made into a video game Slimer and The Real Ghostbusters movie we can always dream dreams are nice but that's all
#4941809
Prints available now.

I don't think I'm allowed to link directly, but I just wanted to let anyone know if they're interested in prints or clothing featuring either of the designs posted here so far, I've created listings on my Redbubble account.

If you search Redbubble for "The Real Ghostbusters Mooglie Street" or "The Real Ghostbusters Egon & Ray", they should hopefully show up. I've tweaked the Mooglie design so it will look better on a shirt.
Wafflerobot liked this
#4943731
Ectojeff88 wrote: September 2nd, 2020, 2:17 pm Could you potentially get just the show intro reanimated with this method similar to the original promo restoration?

I’m sure at least Ghost Corps would give some recognition of your amazing work!
^^^ this
#4943734
Reanimating the whole title sequence is more of an undertaking than some of you might realize.

The title sequence is just over a minute in length, and the animation may've been 12fps. Assuming the title sequence was animated at 12fps, that's roughly 720 individual frames that Chicken, He Clucked would have to draw and colour, and then there's the additional work recreating the backgrounds.

Chicken, He Clucked noted that it takes him roughly 2-3 days to render a single frame, as it's done in his spare time. If he were to animate the whole sequence in his spare time, it could take a number of years to complete.

I'd love to see it happen, but we have to be realistic, guys.
Nighty80 liked this

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