
Pixelmash: Resolution-Independent Pixel Art Software for PC and Mac [video] - caspervonb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meoK9pwnx6s
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veli_joza
It's interesting to consider why pixel art is still around. Obviously it's not
just retro nostalgia. One reason is that self-imposed constraints (both
resolution and palette) are known to boost creativity and result in more
consistent art. Another reason is that some gamers actually want low-
resolution graphics, they can use imagination to fill in the details.

Personally I consider pixel art a very bad return-of-investment from artist
time. This product tries to solve it, but given examples are very hand picked.
I'd like to see how more complex situations are handled, like scaling of eye
and touching/overlapping assets. Also, most of editor features would be better
to have in runtime so that assets can respond to changes in lightning.

~~~
setr
At least part of it, I think, is that its easier to program a 2D game than a
3D game (and most pixel art is 2D), and its easier to have consistent and
tested animations for pixel art than 3D art (far fewer frames, no tweening,
less interactions, etc). It puts more of the burden on the artist, and less on
the game developer.

I'm not quite sure about this, but I believe its also a lot easier to have a
more performant game with 2D art than 3D, for both custom and standard game
engines (outside of say, abusing unreal engine into a 2D pixel-art game), and
I'm pretty damn sure its easier to have "acceptable" artwork out of pixel
artwork than it in blender. ie misunderstandings of human anatomy shows up in
both, but its a lot clearer in 3D than a low-res pixel art.

In other words, its time-consuming, but less skill-intensive, for sufficient
results. If you have an artist who actually knows their shit, and a
programmer/pipeline who can deal with it properly, you're probably better off
with 3D (in terms of production rate), but if you're running solo and only
really know one or the other (or perhaps neither?), pixel art is likely much
easier to actually produce something.

>Also, most of editor features would be better to have in runtime so that
assets can respond to changes in lightning.

I can't really think of any pixel-art game with properly dynamic lighting; at
most a color pallet for light/dark areas, and maybe an opacity filter near
special-cased objects like torches. Most granular really being two-pallet,
with it switching colors at a pixel-scale due to a torch, which is just
radially applied.

But like actual directional light, I can't really think of. Some 3D games with
low-res qualities ie Devil Daggers, but nothing for 2D pixel-art

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veli_joza
There is this popular 'trick' for 2D pixel art to use normal maps for dynamic
lightning. I call it a trick because it uses 3D hi-res technology (shaders) to
enhance 2D lo-res artwork. There are several indie pixelart games that use
this effect and also many tools that help you create normal maps from
pixelart. Here's an example:
[https://www.codeandweb.com/spriteilluminator](https://www.codeandweb.com/spriteilluminator)

This shows there's a need for such feature. Embedding this editor's
capabilities into engine would enable more control over result and more
creative freedom.

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nathandaly
Their software page:
[https://nevercenter.com/pixelmash/](https://nevercenter.com/pixelmash/)

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rlv-dan
Looks cool but, but I can't help thinking there is something about this that
looks like "modern" pixel art. Probably works excellent for kids that like
"pixel games" but for me something is missing compared to oldschool hand
pixelled graphics.

~~~
rcthompson
I think it's because this is just down-scaling high-resolution art to lower
resolutions. Old-school pixel art is not just regular art at a lower
resolution (at least, not for the games that people remember fondly). It was
designed to look a certain way on the CRT monitors of the time, which were
very much not simple arrays of solid colored squares.

There's a really good article here about all the complexities of emulating a
CRT monitor:
[http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KylePittman/20150420/241442/C...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KylePittman/20150420/241442/CRT_Simulation_in_Super_Win_the_Game.php)

~~~
Retra
Was it actually designed that way, or was it a happy accident? It probably
wasn't designed that way for most games in any event. That article gets cited
a lot, but IMO, it doesn't actually represent the main distinguishing
stylistic differences that make these things appealing, which are more to do
with mental inferences from missing information. A smiley is a relatable
presentation of emotion because it doesn't present any subtle features to you.
Lack of detail means greater generality, which becomes 'charm'. CRT noise
probably isn't a major factor.

~~~
rcthompson
The behavior of pixels on a CRT is important because CRT pixels _really_ don't
behave like colored squares. For example, a diagonal line might look smooth
rather than jagged because of the way the pixels blend together, even though
the same pixels viewed on a modern LCD would clearly look like a zig-zag of
squares. The people making the pixel art for games in this time period were
definitely aware of how CRTs displayed their pixels and were designing
accordingly.

Of course, you're right that it's not just a question of an old CRT being
effectively a different artistic medium than a modern LCD. The best pixel art
is carefully crafted to convey the impression of an image of much higher
resolution than the actual pixels. There's several good demonstration of this
idea in this article: [http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-
pixel-...](http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-art/)

~~~
Retra
>The best pixel art is carefully crafted to convey the impression of an image
of much higher resolution than the actual pixels.

This is the kind of thing I'm arguing against. The "best" pixel art doesn't
not convey what a higher resolution picture does. It conveys the important
stuff and leaves the mind to interpolate the rest. You can do the same with
high resolution art, as has been done in anime since forever. Leave noses off,
don't draw lines between teeth, etc.

The article you linked, and the article about CRT filters are both over-cited
and missing the big picture. (FFS, if the guy who "quit pixel art" knew what
made it good, he wouldn't have had to quit it and publish a whiney article
about how everyone else doesn't appreciate it.)

Good pixel art isn't good because someone designed it for a specific output or
because it mimics high res art. It's not good because it blurs well on a CRT.
It's good because it conveys something the observer can relate to and
understand, just like any other art. The low resolution means that you have a
medium which expects you to convey what is important from a distance and with
a palette which allows ambiguity. Which is a major boon if that's what you're
trying to do. (For instance, to avoid projecting a characters' emotions onto
the player and instead let the player interpret their own emotions in the
art.)

And the CRT article also manages to assert -- _without any evidence
whatsoever_ \-- that the designer of old games made good art because they
purposefully accounted for rendering on a CRT, rather than the equally likely
possibility that this was an accident and that they were simply designing art
within constraints that required them to choose what they really wanted to
convey at the expense of other features. AKA, that they were just good artists
regardless of medium.

~~~
rcthompson
How could the designers of old games possibly do anything _other_ than design
for CRTs? They were almost certainly looking at their art displayed on CRTs,
and if it didn't look right on a CRT, they would adjust it until they did.

As for saying that pixel art conveys or implies a higher resolution image, I
worded my point so poorly as to be wrong. It has nothing to do with resolution
_per se_. You explained what I was trying to say much better: good pixel art
presents an image with few details but conveys the impression of a much
higher-detail image by encouraging the viewer's mind to interpolate. And you
also make a good point that this feature is not unique to pixel art.

I also agree with your claim that the best pixel artists are simply good
artists who happen to be working in the medium of pixel art.

Anyway, my original point was that you can't really get pixel art that
properly conveys the important details and encourages the viewer to imagine
the rest simply by down-sampling higher-resolution art.

~~~
Retra
They designed _on_ CRTs, not _for_ them. There's a subtle difference.

Imagine I'm trying to optimize a computer program. If I do it on machine A,
then I'm optimizing _on_ A, but only _for_ A if I pay particular attention to
the architecture of A to drive optimization decisions. On the other hand, if
I'm making high-level optimizations -- like using more efficient data
structures -- I'm still optimizing, but my program will still run just as fast
in other environments, because the specific optimizations I'm doing aren't
special features of machine A. So when you go for the low-hanging fruit first,
you are satisfying general optimization principles.

I see no reason to believe that these artists were analyzing their art in the
context of making it look good on a CRT rather than just making it look good,
with the CRT being an incidental tool. I would imagine that most of this art
was probably developed on paper before it was programmed, and most corrections
thereafter were applied only to fix glaring mistakes. It's quite a stretch for
someone to claim that this is processes intentionally took CRTs into account
during the design, or that CRTs naturally make this style of art look
'better.' CRTs might provide some quirky nostalgia, but I don't buy it that
we're somehow missing out on the 'intended' experience by not using them.
That's just moral preening unless we've got an industry artist willing to
detail the actual process they used and support the claim. (Like someone is
trying to tell my burritos aren't 'authentic Mexican' enough to taste good.)

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jcelerier
the app looks beautiful, they put Qt widgets to their best looks. I wonder if
the idea was inspired by the demo pixel art program :
[http://blog.qt.io/blog/2018/03/06/slate-basic-pixel-art-
edit...](http://blog.qt.io/blog/2018/03/06/slate-basic-pixel-art-editor-built-
qt-quick/)

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huangc10
Might give it a try, but I like to draw pixel art by hand with graphing paper
:) Just oldschool me.

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yummybear
Interesting - I'm not sure it will be able to replace products like aseprite,
but it might supplement them.

