catsuka

Happy new year + Fluximation upscale

Added 2022-01-30 16:08:56 +0000 UTC

I wish you a happy new year !

This month I started to look at the world of AI / machine learning in terms of upscaling, because I want to try to *restore* some old animations only available in crappy resolutions.

I started with the cutscenes of "Popolocrois" Playstation game (1996), only available in 320x224px on the original game disc.

Today, as an *early access* for my patrons, I share with you another upscaling attempt I made on 2 "Fluximation" videos by Koji Morimoto & Tatsuyuki Tanaka (see video above).

"Fluximation" was a series of 14 very short animations based on Utada Hikaru songs, produced in 2005 by Studio 4°C for mobile phones.

So I tried to upscale my old WMV SD files of these animations that I carefully kept in my backups (and on the Catsuka Player) since 17 years.

The result is not breathtaking, but it gives a better look to these animations, in order to "feel" better their original look.

My aim is not to make astonishing upscales, I just want to clean old animations like these, that are only available in pixelated quality, and which won't probably be never released in their native quality.

The community of AI upscaling is growing, the tools are constantly improving, I'm just starting to learn, using GUI methods and also more specfic models though CLI commands (I even installed Python ;-). In the future I'll perhaps make new upscales of previous ones, but for now, I hope you'll enjoy my first *restorations* ;-]

And thank you again for supporting Catsuka on Patreon.
It means a lot to me, because I run Catsuka alone on my spare time for more than 21 years, and I'm still very excited to keep going sharing my passion for animation on the internet.

Take care

Tsuka