» A commercial artist with no prior computing experience, Mark Ferrari was dissatisfied with Zak McKracken’s use of the 16-colour EGA pallet

» [PC] While Mark was responsible for “beauty shots”, Steve says he took on anything “funny or creepy”.

» [PC] Shortly before LOOM, Ron and Gary Winnick found a way to compress dithered graph ics – allowing Mark’s talents to soar.

he Monkey Island universe erupts with its riotous theme soaring over a moody landscape; stars twinkling beautifully over the layered silhouette of Mêlée Island’s rolling cliffs. As Guybrush strolls into the pirate town, a stunning sunset sprawls from the horizon, over the sea, enveloping the scene in a glorious glow. These were cutting-edge graphics like nothing adventure gamers had ever seen before – a shot across the bow from commercial illustrator Mark Ferrari, who, before Lucasfilm, had “never even touched a computer before”.

Mark’s first videogame project was Zak McKracken And The Alien Mindbenders, and though he mastered the DPaint tool quickly, he found the colour restraints of the EGA palette extremely dissatisfying. “You only had 16 colours, and worse yet, those 16 colours were fixed,” he recalls, adding, “it was like this acid chartreuse   green, an acid hot pink and this mustardy brown”. His solution was to develop the dithering technique; drawing pixels of alternating colours in chequerboard patterns, to create a broader palette. Because CRT monitors tended to blur a little, the effect was magnified. Ron and the head of art, Gary Winnick, were so impressed by one of Mark’s EGA scenes, they found a way to compress the dithered graphics. After putting the technique into practice on LOOM, Mark laughs, “Monkey Island was kind of my PhD thesis in dithered EGA artwork.”