How to make high resolution artwork?

[aro230]

Hi, the type of artwork I like to put on Steam are simple animations/cutscenes from games in form of a short gif and the way I've always made them was to cut the video and make said gif out of it, on a site the likes of Imgur

But they always end up looking low res with pixels standing out, is it just the way it is or are there any definitive, better ways to make artwork on Steam?

[Anxiety]

Gif does not really preserve quality, it's a very old format. Current Steam artwork size limit is up to 5 mb. Combine both of these facts and you'll have your answer.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2953579410

[aro230]

Originally posted by Anxiety:

Gif does not really preserve quality, it's a very old format. Current Steam artwork size limit is up to 5 mb. Combine both of these facts and you'll have your answer.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2953579410

What's a better way to do it then?

[Anxiety]

Originally posted by aro230:

Originally posted by Anxiety:

Gif does not really preserve quality, it's a very old format. Current Steam artwork size limit is up to 5 mb. Combine both of these facts and you'll have your answer.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2953579410

What's a better way to do it then?

...There is none.

Do you have a specific example of good quality animated artwork in mind?

[aro230]

Originally posted by Anxiety:

Originally posted by aro230:

What's a better way to do it then?

...There is none.

Do you have a specific example of good quality animated artwork in mind?

Hm, I don't, but I've definitely seen quite a lot of animated ones that were not particularly low res. Like some of those that are shown in a Steam showcase and match the background of one's profile

[Anxiety]

Originally posted by aro230:

Hm, I don't, but I've definitely seen quite a lot of animated ones that were not particularly low res. Like some of those that are shown in a Steam showcase and match the background of one's profile

It's not really the resolution that matters, but color palette and general size in mb's. Gifs have hardcoded 256 color limit, so animations with their limited color palettes look much better than more realistic videos. Besides, artists who make these animations know some purely artistic tricks to mitigate the effect, and can edit the frames too to make it look smoother. But even they struggle with 5mb limit. As you can imagine, it's much harder to do with videos. They will always look compressed and pixelated with current limitations.

Also, if by resolution you mean solely the dimensions (height and width), this could be just the converters that you're using. Still, if the resulting image is bigger, it's also heavier in mb's and thus must be compressed even more; color limits still apply, and it will look even worse.

[aro230]

Originally posted by Anxiety:

Originally posted by aro230:

Hm, I don't, but I've definitely seen quite a lot of animated ones that were not particularly low res. Like some of those that are shown in a Steam showcase and match the background of one's profile

It's not really the resolution that matters, but color palette and general size in mb's. Gifs have hardcoded 256 color limit, so animations with their limited color palettes look much better than more realistic videos. Besides, artists who make these animations know some purely artistic tricks to mitigate the effect, and can edit the frames too to make it look smoother. But even they struggle with 5mb limit. As you can imagine, it's much harder to do with videos. They will always look compressed and pixelated with current limitations.

Also, if by resolution you mean solely the dimensions (height and width), this could be just the converters that you're using. Still, if the resulting image is bigger, it's also heavier in mb's and thus must be compressed even more; color limits still apply, and it will look even worse.

I'm kinda more bothered about the visible pixels that make the artwork stand out in a bad way. But honestly, I just thought trying it with the video showcase instead will probably we better anyway

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

The only best way to lower gif file size is limiting color palette, cutting 1 frame for every 2, or 3 frames, the resolution, and the compression that it there no magic to making it smaller.