Unfortunately, what seems at first to be the simplest and shortest section is one that has actually taken a lot of debate, experience and consideration for me to bring to you in some written form, and even now I'm sure there are ways it can be further developed in the future. The issue arises that the older definition may have been a little difficult to understand and was perhaps too brief for those starting out to understand to it's full extent. It may be that people just didn't read it or forgot to. Or it could be also that the medium itself is changing and developing with the technology around it. It could even be a combination of those things, but regardless of which, there is a lot of confusion around what Pixel Art really is, what goes there and what doesn't and how to make it and when it's no longer classified as Pixel Art. Therefore to really get an understanding of the definition, you need to go back through the history of the medium, a subject I'm as yet not well versed in, although I can attempt to summarise it here.
Pixel Art originally began as a solution to a design issue in a sense, as early computers and gaming consoles were only capable of holding so much data, there was a need to restrict the number of colours used to create the visual elements for those systems. This is where the very traditional belief about restricted colour counts comes from, and regardless of whether it is "right" or "wrong", it certainly takes a great amount of patience, effort and skill to create beautiful pieces with. It was also a very successful method of inspiring creativity, and some of my fondest memories are of beautifully designed Pixel Art in games.
Therefore, we begin to see the importance of why many Pixel Artist's restrict their palettes, and this also leads to how individual pixel placement is another of the most strongly emphasized elements of the medium. In order to ensure that strict colour counts were adhered to, it was essential (and still is if you want to achieve works with restricted palettes), that artists didn't use tools that produced automatic AA. I will go more in depth on what AA is later in the articles, but to be brief, automatic AA creates a large number of new colours without the direct control of the artist, and therefore makes it impossible to keep the colour counts down to the sizes valued at that time (popular palettes I'm aware of can be anything as low as 4 and as far as about 32).
This then, is why we know of Pixel Art as being something that highlights the use of the Pencil Tool (or similar name depending on which program you use), although it is incorrect to assume that it is the only tool that you can use for making Pixel Art.
The definition for the deviantART category itself is currently in the process of being rewritten, so I will update this area once that is released site-wide. In the mean time, the best way to become acquainted with Pixel Art is by examining the tools and techniques used, as well as examples, which you will find in further sections in the overall index.
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Yep. It's definitely one of the fuzzier mediums since it is so new. There is hardly any absolute authority within pixel art - the best authority you have are opinions of really good artists who use the tools and draws in the aesthetic we associate with pixel art.
I also have my own opinions of pixel art, and I'm probably gonna disagree on your approach to the history of pixel art. This article focuses a lot on color count, but IMO, size is a far more important, defining restriction that makes pixel art what it really is.
Back when we had old consoles like the atari and the NES, sprite sizes were so small you are forced to stylize and symbolize a given subject. Look at Mario. His character design was created out of practicality as there was no room to convey any hair or any complicated designs on the guy.
If you have the freedom we have today with colors but have to work at NES sprite sizes, there is hardly anything you can do. Vice-versa, if you have limited colors but all the room you have, you have a ton of freedom.
Lol, this pixel art I made with just 16 colors:
[link]
At that point, I am starting to get to a point where I can hand-pixel stuff that some people won't even recognize as pixel art as people heavily associate aliased line and in general seeing pixels in pixel art.
This one has less than 16 colors but I worked large enough for its lack of detail:
[link]
People will tell me that I'm starting to lose the 'essense' of having pixels in my pixel art regarding my avatar.
Pixel art can still be used as a solution to technical problems as it is the most economical in regards to size and the workload on a computer to render on to a screen. If I was a computer, I can just look at the bitmap data and transfer that to a screen directly. If I was working with vector or 3D, there's a lot of math involved as I gotta crunch math to figure out how to color my pixels to say... AA my vectors.
Because aliased tools are much harder to use in a sense of requiring extra attention to not have stray pixels, it requires plenty of attention. The larger size you work, the more attention is needed to every pixel. dA icons may be scoffed at for being puny, but they already give you 2,500 pixels to juggle. If you went as large as I did in one of the pieces I did, I worked at 400x400 which gives me 160,000 pixels to work with. The only reason why it didn't take more than a week was because I wasn't going for something insanely detailed so luckily most of that piece was area of solid color.
One can cheese though the effort to tidy up large-scale pixels and not care too much but at that point not only are we being less economical with memory and CPU workload and such, but being careless creates an unprofessional look which can be easily solved by using automatic tools that regular CG, and/or vectors can provide and function well enough at larger sizes. Pixel art can function at tiny sizes which other mediums fall flat on their faces.
It's the only medium that takes advantage of the very pixel grid used to display images. Again, my avatar here: [link] I have no idea how smooth that looks like to your monitor (my monitor probably sux), but it looks very, very smooth on my monitor. Zoom into that pixel art. Zoom into a vector. You'll find a huge difference. IMO, color count is not what makes me frown automatic AA, but I would frown automatic AA because it pays no attention to the pixel grid as it blurs and blends in order to render the intended shape. Hand-pixelled AA is always sharper than automatic AA.
I feel there's a lot more I can say about what I feel makes pixel art awesome, but I'm spending more time than I probably should.
I also have my own opinions of pixel art, and I'm probably gonna disagree on your approach to the history of pixel art. This article focuses a lot on color count, but IMO, size is a far more important, defining restriction that makes pixel art what it really is.
Back when we had old consoles like the atari and the NES, sprite sizes were so small you are forced to stylize and symbolize a given subject. Look at Mario. His character design was created out of practicality as there was no room to convey any hair or any complicated designs on the guy.
If you have the freedom we have today with colors but have to work at NES sprite sizes, there is hardly anything you can do. Vice-versa, if you have limited colors but all the room you have, you have a ton of freedom.
Lol, this pixel art I made with just 16 colors:
[link]
At that point, I am starting to get to a point where I can hand-pixel stuff that some people won't even recognize as pixel art as people heavily associate aliased line and in general seeing pixels in pixel art.
This one has less than 16 colors but I worked large enough for its lack of detail:
[link]
People will tell me that I'm starting to lose the 'essense' of having pixels in my pixel art regarding my avatar.
Pixel art can still be used as a solution to technical problems as it is the most economical in regards to size and the workload on a computer to render on to a screen. If I was a computer, I can just look at the bitmap data and transfer that to a screen directly. If I was working with vector or 3D, there's a lot of math involved as I gotta crunch math to figure out how to color my pixels to say... AA my vectors.
Because aliased tools are much harder to use in a sense of requiring extra attention to not have stray pixels, it requires plenty of attention. The larger size you work, the more attention is needed to every pixel. dA icons may be scoffed at for being puny, but they already give you 2,500 pixels to juggle. If you went as large as I did in one of the pieces I did, I worked at 400x400 which gives me 160,000 pixels to work with. The only reason why it didn't take more than a week was because I wasn't going for something insanely detailed so luckily most of that piece was area of solid color.
One can cheese though the effort to tidy up large-scale pixels and not care too much but at that point not only are we being less economical with memory and CPU workload and such, but being careless creates an unprofessional look which can be easily solved by using automatic tools that regular CG, and/or vectors can provide and function well enough at larger sizes. Pixel art can function at tiny sizes which other mediums fall flat on their faces.
It's the only medium that takes advantage of the very pixel grid used to display images. Again, my avatar here: [link] I have no idea how smooth that looks like to your monitor (my monitor probably sux), but it looks very, very smooth on my monitor. Zoom into that pixel art. Zoom into a vector. You'll find a huge difference. IMO, color count is not what makes me frown automatic AA, but I would frown automatic AA because it pays no attention to the pixel grid as it blurs and blends in order to render the intended shape. Hand-pixelled AA is always sharper than automatic AA.
I feel there's a lot more I can say about what I feel makes pixel art awesome, but I'm spending more time than I probably should.
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