
A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art (2015) - bpierre
http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-art/
======
Keyframe
I draw, I paint (more than draw), I animate. Daily. So, I have a bit of a
different perspective on this. Pixel art is one of the hardest disciplines
I've tried. It's ridiculous. I wouldn't do it again. I only spent with it a
bit to see what it takes, and it takes A LOT. If it's not outstanding, it
won't get noticed as well. So, it's really tough on psyche. Somewhat like
animation.

There's another thing I want to mention. I have a broadcast-quality CRT with
consoles of ye olde hooked up, and pixels you see on sprites, especially on
the edges, aren't there on CRTs. Magical scanline blends them together and
looking at the pixel art on CRT is different than on anything else. Almost
like they are anti-aliased, but they're not (smudged). I think that's a key
component today we are missing from enjoying pixel art. When it was dominant
in game industry, you couldn't see actual pixels. Today, they are fetishised.

~~~
StavrosK
> When it was dominant in game industry, you couldn't see actual pixels.

Exactly! I didn't like the author's dig at rescaling algorithms, but he seems
to be forgetting that pixels _never looked like that_! The pixel art he likes
so much was never like what he does today. This article has good screenshots,
although I think they're emulated:

[http://www.tested.com/tech/gaming/2982-a-link-to-the-past-
ho...](http://www.tested.com/tech/gaming/2982-a-link-to-the-past-how-to-add-
crt-filters-to-16-bit-games-on-pc/)

If you like pixel art, go ahead and make pixel art. Some of the artwork in the
article is stunning, and I like the aesthetic a lot. However, don't
romanticize it and claim that old games looked like that, because they just
didn't.

I think better scalers and shaders that can reproduce the look of CRTs are a
nice effort, since I want to play old games the way I _actually_ remember
them, not with visible pixels that were completely alien the first time I
played Zelda on an emulator.

~~~
Pxtl
To be fair, pc games running at 320*200 most certainly did look like that -
big pixels with hard edges. But very few games ape the EGA palette, all the
NES-looking pixel games look like tech thst never existed. EGA was a pretty
short period between cga and VGA, much of PC gaming was blocky, but high
color... and had a bigger focus on strategy and puzzle games because of the
keyboard/mouse input, which isn't really reflected in the indie world's love
for pixelly platformers.

~~~
ido
Some of the big early 90s PC hits were games like Cmdr Keen and other Apogee
platformers. They were hugely popular at the time.

------
Adverblessly
I like pixel art, for many of the reasons mentioned in the article. In fact,
for 2d games it is my favorite style.

With that said, I think the example art the article provides for their game is
not very good. Specifically I think there's far too much dithering going on,
making it look like it was originally drawn in 32-bit color but then had the
number of colors reduced by the pixel editing software (as opposed to the
beauty of manually placed pixels). This is especially glaring in the UI
elements, and is not the only fault in my opinion.

I realize different people have different preferences, and I realize that
pixel art is experiencing a surge in unpopularity, but I can't help but think
they'd have better luck if their pixel art was better...

~~~
squeaky-clean
I agree, when I first saw the splash image, I assumed that was the one being
replaced! Because it doesn't look like pixel art, it looks like a high quality
image was pixelated. By replicating reality so closely, you really easily see
all the drawbacks of pixel art. Namely low resolution, and limited colors.
Because it's not taking advantage of the medium of pixel art, but instead
shoehorning realism into it.

They complain about the shape of someone's arms in Street Fighter? Who cares
about realism, these characters can shoot fireballs from their hands. Look at
Link in Link’s Awakening! His head must weigh 3x more than his body. If you
find a screenshot with his sword, it's even weirder. The sword is
simultaneously smaller than his head, and yet larger than the entire rest of
his body. And have you ever seen a tree or wall that looks like that? But it
looks freaking fantastic at that resolution.

I don't care if the author's art was entirely hand-made, it _looks_ like a
high quality image was pixelated by a computer. The art in King of Fighters'
may have been done entirely by hand, but if the end results looks
indistinguishable from a 3d render at low resolution with terrible aliasing,
who cares what means was used to get the crappy look? The author restating
things about "embracing the medium", but I don't believe they did.

~~~
Springtime
> The art in King of Fighters' may have been done entirely by hand, but if the
> end results looks indistinguishable from a 3d render at low resolution

The irony is the particular King of Fighters they reference had character
models/animations that were originally produced as 3D renders [1] and then
used as the basis for the artists to draw over/fine tune in order to save time
during production (since the previous games took so long to finish the
animations). So in the context of the article it's an interesting though
overlooked detail that could have been a decent bridge into the point about
transitioning to 3D.

> They complain about the shape of someone's arms in Street Fighter? Who cares
> about realism, these characters can shoot fireballs from their hands

Animations and design are still important even when what's being representing
isn't based in reality. It's the same reason CG was for a long time critiqued,
and continues to be, for instances where there are 'floaty' characters or the
animation/physics seem 'off'. 2D can often take more artistic liberties and
isn't so stringently expected to be 'realistic' compared to CG. And while that
comparison in the article was a bit out of place, considering the real
difference is animator talent and visual style, it showed how mature the 2D
animation scene was at the time, and it has to be said the animations of
Street Fighter III Third Strike are among the best 2D animations in any
commercial game.

[1]
[http://kofaniv.snkplaymore.co.jp/english/info/15th_anniv/2d_...](http://kofaniv.snkplaymore.co.jp/english/info/15th_anniv/2d_dot/creation/)

------
billyjobob
I think his problem is that he is stuck in the uncanny valley of 90s 16 bit
pixel art, half way between the classic 8 bit style and modern photorealistic
style. If you release a game in current_year with 320x200 resolution or lower
and 16 colors I think it's obvious you were aiming for that aesthetic. If you
go 640x480 256 or more colors then people can mistake that for an attempt at
photorealism that just was badly implemented.

~~~
creshal
Indeed. There's nothing wrong with _good_ pixel art, but literally no artist
knows how to do it, even when they claim they're pixel artists.

The Diablo vs. FFTA example in the article demonstrates it well: Despite
Diablo coming out earlier, while 2D art was very much a well-cultivated thing,
the artists just didn't know how to get it right (too low contrasts, too much
dithering, …). FFTA, meanwhile, just looks beautiful.

~~~
jkaunisv1
So there exists good pixel art, but there does not exist any artist who can
create good pixel art? FFTA was immaculately conceived I guess?

~~~
creshal
Well, almost no artist.

------
projektir
I'm having trouble being convinced that this isn't more subjective than the
author implies. I never liked how SFIV looked, either, but not because it
works or doesn't work with the medium, I just think it looks awful.

It may be problematic if one has to do things that are not really compatible
with the medium, such as trying to put high poly models on a low-poly screen,
but a lot of games cannot really achieve the right feel by working with the
medium. One of the issues I have with a lot of retro-style games is that
they're almost automatically limited into certain genres and feels.

Diablo using properly pixelated art just wouldn't be Diablo anymore, and for
all the muddy, I love how it looks to this day. I always liked the 2.5D style,
really. But for me, this is subjective either way.

~~~
emodendroket
> I never liked how SFIV looked, either, but not because it works or doesn't
> work with the medium, I just think it looks awful.

Isn't that what he's saying?

~~~
projektir
Perhaps I'm misinterpreting his point, but the impression I got is that he
things people like how SFIV looks because it's not pixelated, and that people
dislike how other pixelated things look because of the "pixel tax". But, I
think lots of people genuinely like how SFIV looks and have not played neither
KOF III nor SFIII. Even if they see the bad animations they don't have a
problem with it because they think it's part of the style.

Just like, people like me genuinely like how Diablo looks and he things it's a
muddy aliased mess.

~~~
emodendroket
They "genuinely" like it, sure, but not because of the quality of the
animation.

------
parenthephobia
I think the problem here is that there's a distinction between "pixel art" and
"art created observing obsolete technical limitations". Additionally, just
because a piece of art is _technically_ impressive, doesn't mean people should
find it artistically impressive.

When we only had 16 colours, it was harder to make great-looking art, but that
difficulty didn't make the art look better. The essence of pixel art is that
(it seems that) every pixel is placed with care. An image which uses 45
colours but looks like a dithered version of a full-colour image does not look
like every pixel is placed with care. Quite the opposite: it looks like the
image you're looking at isn't even the image the artist wanted you to see.

Hyper Light Drifter has great "pixel art", but couldn't have been achieved on
a 16-bit display (without either noticeable banding or dithering). But, the
way it uses colour is clearly inspired by great 4-bit artistry. Although there
are many more than 16 colors, neighbouring hues are contrasting, blending is
used to indicate glows or shadows, and blurring is used to indicate depth.

------
scandox
> what I intended doesn’t matter at all

I think it is very sad to hear any artist saying this. I think he's being
noble and he certainly has rationalized the situation very convincingly
("embracing the medium").

It's a very delicate balance. On the one hand, yes you do not deserve an
audience. All too often contempt for the audience is merely the sign of a lazy
artist. On the other hand sometimes you must bite the hand that feeds - and
keep biting. The best I know have that mixture: they desire glory and at the
same time they have a tyrannical disregard for what others think.

Ultimately, he's courting the high opinion of people whose opinions he doesn't
respect, because they are influential.

~~~
newman8r
I get that tone as well, but I think the author actually convinces himself by
the end of the essay that his new outlook is actually a more mature one rather
than the artistic compromise he initially describes.

------
osi
previously,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9533678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9533678)

~~~
Benjamin_Dobell
Was just about to state this. At the very least it should be prefixed with
(2015).

------
mikejmoffitt
High-res pixel art is tough - to create, and sometimes to enjoy. When the goal
of pixel art is to create something interesting when imposing resolution
constraints, the significance of a single pixel is reduced when working with
such a high resolution.

Further, if the viewer's display is _close_ to the art's native resolution,
but not at least one integer multiple higher, the art is going to be smeared
as no scaling technique will deal with such a small scaling transition well.

With that in mind, Auro looks like it'd have trouble looking good on any of
the devices it was intended for, and indeed looking more like aliasing
("pixellation") to the average user. The author acknowledges this in the
article: "Some devices blur Auro. Some devices stretch it. Some devices
letterbox it. No matter how hard I worked to make the art in Auro as good as I
could, there’s no way a given person should be expected to see past all those
roadblocks."

------
carsongross
"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."

\--Orson Welles

------
int_19h
IMO, a lot of people who say they like pixel art, don't actually want the
pixellation or the low color count. What they want is the overall drawing
style that it produces, with prominent contours and bright but soft colors.
This all is also achievable with ultra-high resolutions and millions of colors
- it just doesn't happen "automatically".

------
teekert
If you like such games, play Radiant [0] I love that game, bought it years
ago, keep returning to it. It's pixelated but it couldn't be more beautiful.

[0]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.hexage.rad...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.hexage.radiant)

~~~
cwyers
I love Radiant. I love pretty much every game Hexage puts out. I don't think
it's actually pixel art, though -- the impression I got is that it's mostly
pixel-style vector graphics, they do a lot of stuff that you couldn't do if
you imposed a pixel grid on the art that's consistent with the art assets.
Look at the blue guy on the left here, for instance:

[https://lh5.ggpht.com/EyOXQmFzhQ8ie9AnQcq7mcYOaY_uiWY6M8Zis2...](https://lh5.ggpht.com/EyOXQmFzhQ8ie9AnQcq7mcYOaY_uiWY6M8Zis2ZlE4IriEX5ixq_TaPnf0NfKVZoexM=h900)

Yeah, he looks like a pixel art figure, but look at how he's canted. Look at
the bloom on everything. Which may reinforce the author's point -- that
there's tradeoffs to doing perfect pixel-by-pixel placement on modern devices,
where everyone uses screens of different size and aspect-ratio, and that
different techniques are needed to give people the best experience, even if
you want to have a retro aesthetic.

~~~
teekert
You're right, it's not real pixel art. It just imitates that old look but the
glows and the background is definitely smooth. Still, the simple graphics make
the game imo.

------
musesum
I used to hand anti-alias pixel fonts. There was a tool called Grasp that our
shop used to create animated ads back in the early 90's. It only supported two
color pixel fonts.

Wrote a tool to take a single font sheet bitmap and parse out each letter.
Each letter had 4 shades of grey. So, would create 4 fonts that would render
in 4 passes.

To make a master bitmap, we'd scan a font sheet into a PCX file hand it over
to an artist with the instructions: "make it smooth". Hours upon hours of:
zoom-in-click-click-click-zoom-out-review-repeat. Poor artist.

I wonder what kind of lament a vector artist will have, decades from now. And
what will take its place.

[edit] vector

~~~
egypturnash
I've been using Illustrator as my main medium[1] since 2000. Mostly I bitch
about it doing terrible things when I open up older files, and the occasional
update that's a crashfest for me even after I remove all plugins. (I'm
currently running the last release because CC 2015.3 is one of those.)

I don't think anything is going to take the place of vector tools, especially
as screen DPI continues to increase. I keep flirting with Affinity
Designer[2], which does some very interesting things with integrating raster
effects to create a very scalable but very painterly look. But I've got a
decade and a half of sunk cost into Illustrator that keeps pulling me back.

1: [http://egypt.urnash.com](http://egypt.urnash.com) 2:
[https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/](https://affinity.serif.com/en-
us/designer/)

------
wccrawford
>It takes a lot effort to explain how this: >has much better art than this:

... Shitty dither. That didn't take long. Even in Bubsy, the things that
weren't dithered weren't nearly as bad as the ones that were.

It has other problems, too, but they would become more apparent if the artist
had refused to dither. Then they'd be a lot easier to talk about, such as the
horrible shapes for everything except bubsy himself.

The problem with that background in bubsy wasn't the "pixel art", it was the
art. I'm betting that artist couldn't draw well in any medium.

~~~
veli_joza
For me, it doesn't work because background is too vibrant and clashing with
characters. If you would de-saturate the background (or use only cold colors),
I suspect just that small change would make the art work.

------
runeb
Have not read the article yet, but just wanted to say I'm really excited about
Thimbleweed Park, the new adventure game from Ron Gilbert (maker of Manic
Mansion and Monkey Island, among others). Pixel art and all.

[https://thimbleweedpark.com/](https://thimbleweedpark.com/)

~~~
Paul_S
It's a shame they didn't go all the way. The art will be low resolution but it
will not limit itself and will use unlimited colours, transparency and high
fidelity lighting effects. I hope they will at least avoid the grevious but
surprisingly common sin of mixing sprites at different resolutions.

~~~
shdon
Yes, they will mix sprites at different resolutions. Ron has stated multiple
times that it is possible to enable a "true" low resolution mode, to the point
where he'll get quite grumpy if you bring it up on the comments. He's also
said that he thinks it is tinted (or tainted) by nostalgia and not something
you'd actually want to use for more than a few seconds just to try it out.

They have explicitly said that they're not going for an adventure game in the
truly old style, but for something that feels like it is.

------
galfarragem
'Stop looking for happiness in the same place where you lost it.'

------
reedlaw
The problem with pixel art games is they tend to emphasize style over content.
Game designers should strive to make the best possible game and allow a style
to emerge from that, not the other way around.

------
greggman
lots of people (myself included) like pixel art. Hey, I'm going to this
([http://pixelartpark.com/](http://pixelartpark.com/))

I think one issue is that _most_ people don't appreciate or understand the
limits. This comes up in the demoscene. The demoscene makes realtime demos.
The fact that they are realtime (or 4k or 1k or 256b) makes them interesting
to people who understand the limits. But to most people outside the scene
they're just mediocre effects because they aren't aware of the limits and
instead are used to Star Wars: the Force Awakens effects or Pixar or whatever.

The same is true for pixel art. Many people like pixel art because of
nostalgia. Others like it for the creativity within limits. But, probably most
people, aren't aware of the limits so to them it's just not latest AAA game
level of art.

It kinda sucks but there's lots of things the masses don't like/don't get.
Fortunately there seem to be enough who do like these types of things.

------
sgarman
I think this is simply what happens when you mix art and creating a commodity.
It's Britney Spears vs (your favorite artist). They are both art of course but
one targets a much larger demographic then the other. Seems like our author
realizes he has more passion for creating a popular and understandable game
then he does for art.

~~~
galfarragem
[https://sivers.org/starv](https://sivers.org/starv)

------
fzeroracer
It reads like the artist was looking for an excuse to stop drawing pixel art
rather than any sort of further introspection as to why Auro might be
encountering issues. It's utterly ridiculous that he thinks that the retro-
game market is somehow splintering on the issue of making the pixels go away
as increasingly sprite filters are being viewed in a negative light versus
getting the experience as it actually was at the time.

The whole 'But customers want HD!' era has long since ended, with many of the
most popular hits on PC games being pixel-based. The issue was never fully the
artwork, but the cutthroat nature of the mobile market.

That said, the artwork of Auro reeks of faux-retroism and unlike Shovel Knight
which embraced it, it seems like they were only really willing to go half-way.

------
egypturnash
IIRC this was the second time Reynolds has announced he was pretty much Done
with pixel art. I seem to remember a post like this around the time they
finished 100 Trials. And then they did Auro, with everything obsessively
pixelled.

Looks like it stuck this time;
[http://www.dinofarmgames.com/forum/index.php?threads/battle-...](http://www.dinofarmgames.com/forum/index.php?threads/battle-
blast-lanes-of-death.2244/) is a thread on Dino Farms' forums with some bits
from a game they're working on. Personally I'm not sure the comic booky ink
outline style is working for him yet but hey, he's learning an entire new way
of working, possibly an entirely new art toolchain, and that takes time.

------
zeveb
I really like the look of good, B&W pixel art. I think that games like Dark
Castle and interfaces like HyperCard really benefited from it.

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned though …

------
sly010
I am not a gamer, but when I play I go with indie games. I really enjoyed the
visuals of "The Last Door" and "Fez" and "Superbrothers - Sword & Sworcery"
much more so than any 3d game.

The sad truth is 3D games are now cheaper to produce and work at arbitrary
resolution, so the big studios will just keep popping them out because it's
just so easy.

------
bobsgame
I love this article. Having invested myself into making a large pixel art
game, it really inspires and resonates with me.

------
jbb555
Interesting article but very subjective. I don't really agree with his idea of
what is "better".

------
anc84
(2015)

------
Devid2014
Pixel art is really treble, I just hurt looking at it in some cases.

So some people likes pixels and call it “art” and use such word combinations
like “HD fetishism”.

But I would say “Pixels fetishism” and “HD Art”. Of course badly made HD
content can be bad too.

P.S.: This is my purely subjective and personal taste. Other will disagree
with this because they have other taste.

~~~
mwfunk
Pixel art is really treble but it can't help it- the relative lack of shading
and gradients means it will always have more high-frequency content than
higher-resolution alternatives.

