
A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art (2015) - kick
http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-art/
======
weinzierl
> Evidently, even some retro game enthusiasts want to get rid of pixels so
> badly that they would rather have a computer smear the art like runny makeup
> than appreciate the pixel art for what it is. A few years back, the Hebrew
> University and Microsoft set out to “depixelize” pixel art through a new
> anti-aliasing(pixel-smoothing) algorithm. I don't care what you have to do,
> just GET RID OF THOSE SQUARES!

> The hand-placement of the squares is precisely what makes this kind of art
> valuable. If anyone besides artists should appreciate that, it’s retro game
> enthusiasts. When even they are splintering on this issue, I think it’s time
> to face the chiptunes.

What the younger generations that didn't experience the heyday of ultra low-
res CRT displays don't understand is that graphics wasn't perceived as blocky
so much. The displays were usually so mushy that everything looked kind of
smooth. It was more like an pointillistic painting observed from a far
distance than what is known as pixel art today. Of course the LCD of the game-
boy is a different story - and probably one source where this misconception
comes from - but arcade and home computer era was not very pixely.

~~~
ferongr
>The displays were usually so mushy that everything looked kind of smooth

Only in countries lacking a standardized high image quality connector like
SCART.

I remember my old SNES with a SCART cable looking extremely sharp and clear on
our 25" Philips CRT TV.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Unless you bought an actual RGB cable for your SNES, it was running composite
video.

~~~
laumars
You've made this point in a few places but composite is still sharp enough to
see the pixels on your average screen for your average 8 and 16bit console
game.

Also home computers have had RGB since the 8 bit era. Whether it's a BBC
Micro, Amstrad CPC 464 (all released early 80s, all used RGB monitors and RGB
cables) through to the IBM PCs with VGA cables. In fact anti-aliasing
techniques for 3D games started out in the CRT era because even back then
computer monitors were sharp enough to show a jagged line along the polygon
edge.

I do agree that LCDs are sharper (and also worse for scaling) then CRTs and
that RGB is sharper than composite; but it's still a fallacy to say the
average 80s and 90s gamer didn't see pixels because they did.

Source: I used to write games on said machines as well as still being an avid
retro gamer and collector (as it happens most of my consoles are still hooked
up via composite to the same TVs that I've owned since the 90s. I'm more than
happy to share photos if you want)

~~~
KozmoNau7
You're arguing against a point that I did not make.

Pixels are absolutely visible when using a composite connection, however they
are distinctly more fuzzy than if you use S-video or RGB or component video.
The horizontal bleed is especially noticeable, which was deliberately used for
transparency effects on consoles like the Sega Megadrive/Genesis, which
couldn't do proper transparency in hardware.

I had several consoles hooked up to my composite/S-video/RGB capable CRT TV
(in 240p, too), including a RetroPi hooked up via a HDMI->composite/S-video
converter (before I got a proper SCART RGB module for my Pi3). The difference
when switching the converter box from composite to S-video was profound, a
very clear difference in sharpness and color quality. The difference from
S-video to RGB was much smaller, but still noticeable.

These days I mostly play games on emulators on my PC, I don't really have room
for a CRT TV anymore. I absolutely abhor all the pixel art scaling algorithms,
I much prefer a gentle CRT-emulating fuzz (similar to a good RGB signal) and
subtle scanlines, which seems to best replicate what the games look like on
the actual CRT.

I was also there for the console boom from the C64 all the way up to the
Xbox360, at which point I mostly lost interest. I have a background partially
in electronics, including CRT TVs, and I used to work at a TV manufacturer
during the CRT to LCD transition. So I'd like to think my credentials are in
order.

~~~
laumars
Very true. Even as late on as a Sega Saturn (which did support alpha blending
but not between the two video chipsets) stipple blending was used (ie the fg
bg fg bg etc effect you described) with the assumption that most TV sets would
bleed the two layers.

------
umvi
Sigh, the unwashed masses ruin everything I suppose (by voting with their
wallets).

One of my favorite games of all time is Fire Emblem for GBA. It had custom,
unique class animations that would play anytime a character got a critical[1].
They were just rare enough that I would get a hit of dopamine as soon as I saw
the normal attack animation deviate to the critical animation.

With these fond childhood memories I gifted my son Fire Emblem for 3DS which
was highly rated. The critical animations were all procedural garbage (all
classes just have a flash of light + anime face close up + particles + sound
byte)! But it has 3d graphics, so I guess that's something.

It's just like the Street Fighter example given in the article. My kids
probably can't tell the difference, but for me it was like night and day.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn3IxjImGW0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn3IxjImGW0)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls0Nn_-
hv-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls0Nn_-hv-8)

~~~
Multicomp
Hey there! Just because you're the first Fire Emblem GBA player I've met on
HN, may I ask which Fire Emblem game this was?

Fire Emblem: The Blinding Blade FE6

Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword FE7

Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones FE8

~~~
umvi
It was just called "Fire Emblem" in North America, but I believe it was FE6

Edit: it was FE7

~~~
eropple
The American GBA games were FE7 and FE8. FE6 has only been localized by fans.

------
boublepop
Great piece, but it comes off as a misdirected attempt at a defense when you
look at the actual images from their game. The characters look amazing in
isolation, but thrown into that horribly flat homogeneous board with the ugly
interface components in clashing colors with harsh edges and it all just looks
completely off. And if they truly were not aiming at retro what’s up with the
horrible 80ies gradient font that clashes as well? And yes I’d describe it as
pixelated, because it doesn’t look like this is intentional on the interface,
it looks like a bad compression of a thrown in overlay by someone who recently
started playing around with photoshop.

With so much effort spent individually on the characters it’s confusing why
the end product looks that bad. My first instinct is that it feels like a case
of having an amazing artist on the characters and a new inexperienced artist
in the interface and board, with no intercommunication and an inexperienced
manager overseeing both just going “the interface with nothing in it looks ok”
“The characters on a blank background look ok” “let’s ship”.

It’s not enough that individual parts look good when you focus on them. You
need the sum-product to look great and that means the visual styles and
elements need to fit together. That just does not seem to be the case for
Auro. With the great focus on character art and animation by the author In the
article it makes you wonder if the interface was just an afterthought to them.

------
ljm
It's maybe besides the point but I think there's always been a time and a
place for this, in the indie scene.

For example, Kitty Horrorshow[1] and Puppet Combo[2] are are responsible for a
lot of art-house (typically horror) games that emulate the PS1 era of 3D
graphics.

It's an art-form now. My favourite 2D, pixel-based one is The Last Door. It's
basic as all hell. And still you have more games taking retro to the next
level, like Faith[3].

I think we're in an amazing place where new technology can give us old
experiences.

[1] [https://kittyhorrorshow.itch.io](https://kittyhorrorshow.itch.io) [2]
[https://puppetcombo.com](https://puppetcombo.com) [3]
[https://airdorf.itch.io/faith](https://airdorf.itch.io/faith)

~~~
Riverheart
Check out "Deep Sleep" and "Don't Escape" if you like pixel horror.

------
deft
The problem with this pixel art is its targetting 1080p for some bizzarre
reason and just ends up looking like non anti-aliased graphics. Pixel art
should look like this.
[https://twitter.com/zaebucca/status/1057312889160286215/phot...](https://twitter.com/zaebucca/status/1057312889160286215/photo/1)
Even scaled up 4x this looks gorgeous.

~~~
kick
I don't agree with that! Early personal computers _also_ had pixel art, and it
was _mind-blowing_ what was done with it.

Watch this talk from Mark Ferrari, for example:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcJ1Jvtef0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcJ1Jvtef0)

[http://www.effectgames.com/demos/worlds/](http://www.effectgames.com/demos/worlds/)

Check out what he did with color cycling in this demo: it's amazing. I
recommend looking at "May - Jungle Waterfall - Rain" to see how amazing this
is.

That's not a gif, it's a single image, just rotating the colors. That was to
deal with storage constraints. Can you imagine?

The techniques of early PC and applications _are worth saving_ , too.

The art shown in that tweet is amazing, too, but it's not the same thing! It's
an entirely different thing, with entirely different constraints.

~~~
zamadatix
Those are all 640x480 though. In general a lot of the early computer style
starts to blur the line from true "pixel art" into "low bit depth graphics".

------
droopyEyelids
Im not an expert, but I don't understand why dinofarm went for such high-res
pixels that their pixel art ended up looking like shoddy non-pixel art.

Seems like a misapplication of the technique, to me. In the article he
explains how classic pixel art conjures an illusion by _implying_ shapes and
textures... Does Auro even attempt that sort of magic? It seems like Auro's
implications are explicitly drawn.

~~~
p1necone
Agreed - it really looks like hand drawn art that's been turned into "pixel
art" in some kind of paint by numbers fashion. Just using the original hand
drawn concept art probably would have looked better, but that doesn't mean
that pixel art in general is a bad idea.

Look at Stardew Valley for an example of a _very_ popular game that's all
pixel art. I don't see any reviews of that saying that it looks "pixelated" or
"not getting" the art style. And it's not like Stardew even has _amazing_
pixel art, it's just decent enough.

~~~
js8
I would certainly play another Simon the Sorcerer. Thimbleweed Park was nice,
but its pixel art is less visually "rich".

------
egypturnash
2018: Dinofarm's third game is in early access on Steam. [screenshot of very
pixelly art] [http://www.dinofarmgames.com/jelly-bomber-in-early-access-
on...](http://www.dinofarmgames.com/jelly-bomber-in-early-access-on-steam/)

2019: Here's a concept painting for our next game. [image of some simple flat-
color work] ([http://www.dinofarmgames.com/alakaram-first-
details/](http://www.dinofarmgames.com/alakaram-first-details/))

There is a resolution threshold where fiddling with every pixel on the screen
by hand becomes a terrible, counter-productive idea and that title screen for
Auro at the top of the "renouncing pixel art" blog post is pretty close to
that threshold.

------
friendlybus
Auro is closer to black and white than Peggle. I don't know why the artist
chose a washed out colour palette. A victory screen is supposed to be
saturated happiness. The creatures are weird and in the not good way, what the
hell is the pink slug noodle creature? I don't get the story world or why
crawling endless grey tiles in the dark is fun.

The guy has all that classical goodness in his skill but what they chose to
make with it is very questionable. I'd suggest Auro was more about a
transition for the artist than it was about making a salable game.

~~~
npinsker
This is a little harsh, but I totally agree -- IMO this is far from good pixel
art.

One of the main benefits of pixel art (as I see it; I'm not an expert) is that
proper use of outlines can call your attention to important elements in the
scene. There's none of this in Auro, partially because the resolution is so
high, but even UI elements like text and buttons lack weight and outline. The
splash image at the top has no focal point and lacks contrast, as do the
character designs (especially the blob and gray thing at the bottom).

Overall it comes across as very dreary, not at all relaxing or fun to look at.
Contrast this with the Pokemon environment from elsewhere in this thread
([https://twitter.com/zaebucca/status/1057312889160286215](https://twitter.com/zaebucca/status/1057312889160286215))
which is gorgeous and fun. It perfectly draws your attention to the key
elements of the scene.

~~~
friendlybus
Yeah outlines are one of many techniques that can make good art. The problem
is in the overarching form, any technique or art style would have been sunk by
the decisions the artist made.

The good news is the guy has the skill which can succeed on it's own, given
it's channeling a positive story. Drawing that well and constructing scenes
that well is a fine art that takes a lot of time and effort.

The high fantasy tree-man fighting with a staff on the ground was not the king
in 2015, it was the outlaw. Had he committed to an outlaw version of Gandalf
or Link from Zelda, he would have had a story that fit the times and likely
how he felt as an artist. This depressed faded king surrounded by water and
off-beat monsters is an unsolvable conflict that benefits no-one.

------
dang
A thread from 2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12505615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12505615)

Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9533678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9533678)

------
tomc1985
In addition to my previous comment, I think this post touches on a conundrum
that I've debated with some of my other artist friends:

Is it the artists responsibility to make art for his audience? Or is it the
audience's responsibility to try and understand the artist and his
motivations?

I think these questions explain a lot about the art world that regular folks
simply don't understand, like the kind of abstract, "modern" art that is often
derided for appearing low-effort. Indeed I have been to galleries and
exhibitions filled with what appears to be genuinely low-effort cash-ins and
been chided for disliking it because it appeared to lack quality. It is very
difficult to differentiate between the Pollocks/Warhols and said low-effort
cash-ins, and articulating what separates them from the rest is something I
struggle with. All I can really say to that effect is that the _je ne sais
quoi_ has something to do with the feeling of zen that only comes from a
mature and developed sense of composition -- in that Pollock _chose_ his
"sloppy" aesthetic when he could have chosen to follow the precient style --
that many amateurs and pretenders simply lack.

~~~
egypturnash
As an artist, this is a thing I grapple with constantly. I've been lucky
enough to find a path where I can make art that is mostly designed around what
pleases myself, and accrete a modest audience that wants enough of the same
things and can't find it many other places. I'm almost paying my bills on it
nowadays.

Gallery art is its own thing, greatly divorced from "getting good at drawing"
and "making art that speaks to a lot of people". Making art that you have to
be a _rarified aesthete_ to understand what simply doesn't appeal to all those
_peons_ is a route to making work that stupidly rich assholes can be persuaded
makes them look like Important People Of Taste to own, especially when
everyone knows that your last piece went for a very large number; it's
investment games, status games, and probably no small amount of money-
laundering.

~~~
tomc1985
Indeed. "Who is this for?" Is it for me? For you? What's the goal of creating
the piece?

In the case of commercial or commissioned art the answer is pretty clear. It's
easy to think all the famous paintings and such in art history were created
for the artist by the artist, but this is not always the case -- most of the
famous artists of the past were beholden to the patronage system, and much of
their prized work was created for their patrons. I've always desired to create
art only for me, and so this realization paints a bleak picture of reality
that makes me somewhat uncomfortable.

------
cmroanirgo
> Paradoxically, good artists also embrace limitations. Limitations force
> ingenuity and innovation, as well as push a form forward.

This statement is not limited to pixel graphics. In the mid 90's writing a 3D
game the artist would come to me with a tank using 300 or so vertices. I did
the math. "No" I responded "it needs to be as few as possible, maybe 100, but
preferably less". And then I'd show them their art in the game and they'd
understand, gnash their teeth and optimise. We had interesting conversations
when using Level Of Detail (LOD) and I'd limit him to 6, a cube. (Because it
was maybe 2 pixels in size after rasterisation). I think he ended up giving me
one using 5 vertices: after the texture was applied it looked good.

Everytime, challenge accepted and passed. Graphics guys can be awesome (& and
awesomely challenging)

------
tomc1985
"Technology’s primary function is to make human life as easy and efficient as
possible."

This is an aside, but that is not technology's role. Tech is supposed to
empower us, and act as mind-amplification devices, to make us smarter, faster,
and better. The above statement underscores everything that is wrong with tech
and how we (edit- as consumers) are on track to completely squander its
potential.

~~~
taneq
Tech is built by millions of different people, all of whom have different
goals for it. It’s not ‘meant’ to do any one thing.

------
dleslie
The artist's first problem is their concern for reviewers; the only critique
that matters is that of the purchaser.

These days video game criticism is all about driving page views; and
negativity draws eyes better than the alternative.

~~~
eloisant
Except purchasers read reviews, and look at the metacritic score...

~~~
mantap
The vast majorly of games I buy are from word of mouth or from seeing it on
YouTube or Twitch. I think game reviews are somewhat of an anachronism when
you can just _watch_ the game to see if you'd like it.

------
jchw
I think I agree with a lot of this but I don’t think pixel art is going to
die. Arbitrarily low fidelity artwork is a thing that started out as a niche
thing mostly popular in indie game titles and gradually spread to a wider
audience. I don’t think this was an accident.

The problem with embracing limitations on modern machines is that there
increasingly aren’t many to embrace. Sure, modern AAA games will gladly grow
to use all available resources, but if you are being relatively efficient you
really have to work to monopolize a modern computer.

I think there is beauty in embracing limitations and there is increasingly not
very many of them on modern computers... but I still love chiptunes and pixel
art, and I think there’s a sizable population of people who do, even if they
maybe do not understand why they do. I suspect that the number of people who
appreciate these arts are growing rather than shrinking and what we’re really
seeing is growing pains of the aesthetic going very mainstream.

------
rs23296008n1
I'm thinking the gist of it is that pixel-art is a art style like abstract
art, Pointillism, impressionism, cubism, and all the other schools portraying
realism but in a very particular and deliberate way. Basically theres a set of
techniques, theres a discipline, theres a way of doing it "primitive" or low
style like the Rambo example and a way of doing it in high style, like the
Mighty Final Fight example. Its not retro as such, its about using a limited
color range of square tiles to convey a image with some kind of meaning.
Pixel-art adds animation as well which is interesting.

The comments about the critics "not getting it" are as old as the "art critic"
profession itself. Different critics are at different levels of understanding,
including none-at-all.

I wonder if that auro game would have the same affect if it had high
resolution graphics instead? Probably not. Different aesthetic, different
audience. Dwarf fortress versus Starcraft.

------
naddynarwhal
I took a look at the Kickstarter page for Auro, and I’m gonna have to agree
with the reviewers here.

His art isn’t “pixel art;” it’s just low res art without aliasing. The
characters’ resolution don’t even seem to match the background’s resolution.

He may be able to tell good animation from bad animation, but I can’t say he’s
a very good artist.

------
DonHopkins
With all the microscopic retinal pixels to spare that we have now, it would be
interesting to explore non-rectangular pixel art, like triangles and hexagons.

~~~
egypturnash
[https://marmoset.co/hexels/](https://marmoset.co/hexels/)

~~~
DonHopkins
Amazing tool! Thanks for pointing that out. Nice how it combines pixels and
geometric shapes together in one tool, and supports mixing and combining all
kinds of grids and pixels, even random Voronoi cells! It's on sale for only 8
EUR on Steam so I'll give it a try, since it looks so fun. The right-click pie
menus was worth the price of admission!

At the opposite end of the abstraction spectrum from "Pixel Art" is Bert
Monroy's amazing hyper-resolution photo-realistic art. He combines Illustrator
together with Photoshop, ping-ponging back and forth between both tools. He's
taught many classes and produced lots of videos showing how he works and
teaching the tools he uses.

Times Square – On display at the Make Software Change the World Exhibit at the
Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA:

This is the largest image I have ever created, pushing the boundaries of the
software and hardware as far as they can go. It was unveiled at the Photo Plus
Expo in New York on October 28, 2010 as a work in progress. A 25 foot light
box was constructed to display the piece that has been printed on a new
material being introduced by Epson.

• The image size is 60 inches by 300 inches.

• The flattened file weighs in at 6.52 Gigabytes.

• It took four years to create.

• The painting is comprised of almost fifteen thousand individual Photoshop
and Illustrator files.

• Taking a cumulative total of all the files, the overall image contains over
700,000 layers.

[http://www.bertmonroy.com/timessquare/timessquare.html](http://www.bertmonroy.com/timessquare/timessquare.html)

Bert Monroy, Photoshop Artist

Photoshop Hall of Famer Bert Monroy talks about creating his largest piece to
date “Times Square.” At 6.52 gigapixels, “Times Square” contains over 750,000
layers and depicts dozens of digital imaging artists and pioneers, as well as
Monroy’s family and friends. This clip is from a full-length interview,
conducted for CHM's upcoming exhibition, “Make Software: Change the World!,”
opening January 28, 2017. Don’t miss your chance to see “Times Square” on
display in “Make Software.”

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JVgBWCPlFQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JVgBWCPlFQ)

Amsterdam Mist (2014):

My Amsterdam Mist is the culmination of twenty-two months of work. Every
element in the image was meticulously created pixel-by-pixel using Adobe®
Photoshop® and Adobe® Illustrator®. It is the first piece to be inspired by
the shot rather than the scene itself.

[http://www.bertmonroy.com/amsterdammist/amsterdammist.html](http://www.bertmonroy.com/amsterdammist/amsterdammist.html)

~~~
egypturnash
I’m not sure I’d call Times Square photorealistic, a lot of those people
really scream “I was edited in and my lighting has nothing to do with the
setting” to my eyes.

------
olodus
That IGN review of KoF mentioned in the article is heartbreaking. That
animation is super good. It is good enough that I was quite sure they must
have had a 3D model to work with. That might be what the reviewer thought too
and kinda what the whole article argues, kinda. 2D Pixel artists maybe got too
good. Good enough to not be compared against other art of the same kind but 3D
anti-aliased HD content.

~~~
LoSboccacc
even then you need some good 2D artist to control and tune the 3D pipeline,
the factorio blog is littered with extremely interesting details about their
art pipeline and rendering engine and how everything ties together to produce
the scene layers, from how zoom interacts with mipmaps, the performance issue
with overlapping smoke textures having each their alpha, animation temporal
aliasing, tone mapping lights an baked textures etc.

------
wruza
>”quite good” (IGN)

I have no words that could describe my disgust for this characterization and
stay in hn guidelines. If they dare to call that art “quite good”, they
deserve no art ever.

------
lstodd
Just try OpenXcom plus {Piratez, Area51, XcomFiles, 40K} mods.

What can be done with the original UFO:EU/XCOM:UD palette is just
unbelievable. And that's just 14 colors in 16 shades, and very much fixed at
that.

------
danwills
> A few years back, the Hebrew University and Microsoft set out to
> “depixelize” pixel art through a new anti-aliasing (pixel-smoothing)
> algorithm.

I'm a big fan of the pixel art look and I thought this was an interesting
story, but this quote revealed fundamental misunderstanding about anti-
aliasing.

AA is not just smoothing. Sometimes high quality AA will actually yield a
sharper result.

Even the example image near the quote shows the result of the algorithms is
clearly sharper (contains higher frequency features) than the original.
Magnified-pixel edges really should not be considered a form of sharpness.

------
b0rsuk
I was a bit surprised when I found out a couple of my (board)gaming friends
actually like pixel art. I'm talking guys at least 10 years younger than me. I
guess they simply don't remember the times of VGA graphics and they don't
associate it with low tech or obsolete. The most anti-pixel people I know are
all those who remember the rapidly changing graphics of the Moore's Law era.

------
jere
I was on a podcast with Keith Burgun from Dinofarm recently. We talked about
Auro among many other things. I only mention it because nobody ever talks
about that game but it's one of my favorites:
[https://keithburgun.net/prospects-for-indie-devs-with-
jeremi...](https://keithburgun.net/prospects-for-indie-devs-with-jeremiah-
reid/)

------
Eric_WVGG
previously...

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

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12505615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12505615)

~~~
quasimodem
Yeesh, yes why does this article get so much traction when it's reposted so
frequently? We get it. It ain't art unless it divides people.

------
0kl
> Problems arise when it comes time to convey to a non-artist what constitutes
> quality art.

The first mistake is selling art to non-artists. The general population buys
games for entertainment, and similar to any art (music, movies, paintings) for
entertainment, it is rarely the most artistic that is selected.

> The shoddy SFIV received a higher art score than one of the best looking
> games to date, and I believe it’s all due to a pixel tax.

The second mistake is believing IGN, or the general consumer, is evaluating
the art when they explicitly state “graphics”.

There’s a place for pixel art - even for ascii art (<3 df), but you have to be
ready to not be loved by people that aren’t interested in “art,” but
entertainment.

~~~
lstodd
I must disagree with your assertion that only artists can recognise and
appreciate art.

This is artistism. Please be ashamed of partaking in this vile trend.

~~~
0kl
I definitely not trying to say that. I’m trying to say that when someone like
me (general public) is looking at art _for entertainment_ my wants are
different than when I’m looking at something as art.

If I’m enjoying something as art, that puts me into a different category, but
when purchasing a game for fun, or music as background noise, or a decorative
painting I am in a totally different mindset than when I am engaging with
those same things with a mind towards their artistic qualities.

The intentionality of the viewer matters, and the author, IMO, fails to
recognize that a lot of people, myself included, often come to games with the
intentionality of playing a game, not necessarily judging its artistic
qualities. We sometimes do, but I think it would be bad faith to argue that we
all are always appreciating every “artistic quality” of a work all the time -
I know I’ve enjoyed a bad game, movie, show, or song more than once.

