.

[rusty_shackleford]

too lazy to read the entire argument but CRT monitors are not the same as CRT TVs.

which one of these looks closer to what you remember?

 

[tritosine2k]

They also evaluated "workstations" , and screen fuzziness /anti aliasing is deemed utmost importance. Wonder if this newfly fleshed out concept of "pixel art" ever crossed the original creators minds ? Or rather they wanted to convey depth (only to be rediscovered decades later as some cool new flatscreen thing) -likely so.

 

[tritosine2k]

In fact we can just look at promotional materials to have a glimpse what they had in mind IMO:

 

[Rincewind]

They also evaluated "workstations" , and screen fuzziness /anti aliasing is deemed utmost importance. Wonder if this newfly fleshed out concept of "pixel art" ever crossed the original creators minds ? Or rather they wanted to convey depth (only to be rediscovered decades later as some cool new flatscreen thing) -likely so.

Everybody doing pixel gfx did antialiasing by hand (before Brilliance on the Amiga) because it looked better. No antialias = jagged, with antialias = less jagged, simple as that.

 

[Rincewind]

too lazy to read the entire argument but CRT monitors are not the same as CRT TVs.

which one of these looks closer to what you remember?

Amiga = 1st (but without that horrible ghost image)
PC = 2nd

Plus I had my C64 hooked up to a small TV, so that looked a bit like the 1st.

 

[Rincewind]

There's some interesting discussion here about VGA double-scanlines vs everything else in the 80s/90s.

Especially this part:

Another thing to consider is that while we love our thick black spaces between video lines now, back then they were seen as the limitations of raster scan display technology by the general public, being able to see the line structure of images was perceived as a bad thing, reminiscing of interlaced analog television. I believe it is sensible to think that IBM's decision to double-scan on VGA was perceived by them to be an 'improvement' to low resolution imagery. Little did they know we'd be romanticizing low resolution video and its limitations decades later.

Makes you think but I don't 100% agree. Like I said I was a bit disappointed at the more blocky looking pixels of my VGA monitor compared to the Amiga.

 

[Fedora Master]

Spoiler

 

[fork]

Amiga games had the best pixel art, ofc. (Bitmap Brothers games in particular)

How flattering!

 

[bionicman]

Here's an article by a former pixel artist, already an old article now (6 yrs old), but still topical: http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-art/

 

[d1r]

Better than 3D when done right.
Absolutely awful when done wrong.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

 

[Rincewind]

Here's an article by a former pixel artist, already an old article now (6 yrs old), but still topical: http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-art/

Interesting article, but I disagree with his conclusions. It's basically like saying oil paintings are "better" than ink illustrations or pencil drawings because they have more colours or "better gradients"... Doesn't quite work like that (but one *might* prefer oil paintings, of course, but it's just a simple aesthetic preference). I'm actually quite sick of the "use all colours of the rainbow" art style that's so popular in certain games nowadays, I much more prefer when the artist practices restraint.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Here's an article by a former pixel artist, already an old article now (6 yrs old), but still topical: http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-art/

Interesting article, but I disagree with his conclusions. It's basically like saying oil paintings are "better" than ink illustrations or pencil drawings because they have more colours or "better gradients"... Doesn't quite work like that (but one *might* prefer oil paintings, of course, but it's just a simple aesthetic preference). I'm actually quite sick of the "use all colours of the rainbow" art style that's so popular in certain games nowadays, I much more prefer when the artist practices restraint.

I'm not sure his conclusion is what you think it is based off what you're saying.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I don't think pixel art inherently looks better, but it is inherently more laborious to make than any of the alternatives for videogame graphics. Therefore, essentially the only reason anyone uses it is to make a game feel retro.
I see nothing to suggest it's "better than 3D" when done properly, either. The so-called "isometric" cRPGs pretty much sweep the category of best looking videogames for me, them using prerendered 3D assets was merely a technical limitation.

 

[Rincewind]

Here's an article by a former pixel artist, already an old article now (6 yrs old), but still topical: http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-art/

Interesting article, but I disagree with his conclusions. It's basically like saying oil paintings are "better" than ink illustrations or pencil drawings because they have more colours or "better gradients"... Doesn't quite work like that (but one *might* prefer oil paintings, of course, but it's just a simple aesthetic preference). I'm actually quite sick of the "use all colours of the rainbow" art style that's so popular in certain games nowadays, I much more prefer when the artist practices restraint.

I'm not sure his conclusion is what you think it is based off what you're saying.

I think it’s safe to say that the tricks of the trade employed to make primitive games look good are no longer required. Yet there is a small, but vibrant community of enthusiasts who not only keep these techniques alive (art by Snake on Pixeljoint), but even add to the form with bold expressionist techniques(art by Calv on Pixeljoint).

This community takes pride in doing extremely complex work(art by jamon on Pixeljoint) while keeping the color count very low.

The biggest sticklers and purists consider the use of alpha(semi-transparent pixels), or software-side lighting/shadow/particle effects a form of cheating.

All these aspects of the community culminate into a sort of sport-like atmosphere, similar to the remnants of the Jazz music scene. While these communities are full of dexterous, blistering performers and highly talented craftsmen, they are also very small and very insular.

 

[Rincewind]

I don't think pixel art inherently looks better, but it is inherently more laborious to make than any of the alternatives for videogame graphics. Therefore, essentially the only reason anyone uses it is to make a game feel retro.

Depends on what you're comparing it with. An adventure game can be pixelled by basically a single person, including all backgrounds and sprites easily in a year as a full-time job (e.g. a typical "oldschool" indie adventure game). Compare that to doing the same game in full 3D. Suddenly you need 3D modellers, texture painters, lighting artists, animators, etc. Sure, sometimes it can all be done by a single guy, but doing things in 3D requires a lot more specialised knowledge (just animating characters in 3D is a whole profession in itself).

How it works in real-life studios is that it's basically like an assembly line: there's an army of 3D artists, each focused on one specific subtask and nothing else. It's grunt work, doing the same shit day in day out... I have a few artist friends who work in games and most of them pretty much hate it. It pays the bills though, and that's what they're proficient at, so they keep doing it.

And my point is: it's not *just* for retroness for retroness' sake. I'd argue you can achieve higher quality pixel art within the same budget than doing full 3D or even just pre-rendered backgrounds/sprites. I'm pretty sure all those axonometric games took a lot of artists to create the art, probably a small team in most cases.

 

[Rincewind]

Thanks for that video, Backbone looks amazing, indeed, and it's on my must-play list.

 

[Matador]

SNK's fighting game backgrounds aesthetic prestige is not surpased to this day. Enjoy:

 

[tritosine2k]

^ offtopic

 

[Excommunicator]

I'm just here for the pretty pixel art so post more pls

 

[tritosine2k]

ontopic:

Cavemen were smarter than us?
Paleolithic people living more than 10,000 years ago had a better artistic eye than modern painters and sculptures at least when it came to watching how horses and other four-legged animals move. A new analysis of 1,000 pieces of prehistoric and modern artwork finds that "cavemen," or people living during the upper Paleolithic period between 10,000 and 50,000 years ago, were more accurate in their depictions of four-legged animals walking than artists are today. While modern artists portray these animals walking incorrectly 57.9 percent of the time, prehistoric cave painters only made mistakes 46.2 percent of the time.

uncomfortable truth lol



...

 

[InSight]

Interesting article, but I disagree with his conclusions. It's basically like saying oil paintings are "better" than ink illustrations or pencil drawings because they have more colours or "better gradients"... Doesn't quite work like that (but one *might* prefer oil paintings, of course, but it's just a simple aesthetic preference). I'm actually quite sick of the "use all colours of the rainbow" art style that's so popular in certain games nowadays, I much more prefer when the artist practices restraint.

If the summery of the articles states lines akin to "oil paintings are better then ink illustrations or pencil drawings because they have more colours or better gradients " then its true and thus one should not disagree with it.

To put in context: take a man and an ant. Which is better of the two? When one make a list(for comparison) of their capabilities the answer become evident. A man can crush multiply ants with its foot, yet an ant cannot crush a man let alone men with its leg because a man has more weight/size . A man can see more colors and thus a rainbow, but an ant cant. A man can speak More languages, however an ant cant and so on...
If one was to limit the scope, be specific versus general, there are situation where an ant is better than man such as in population in which the ant will outnumber man because the ant species has less requirements. The same applies to ink illustration, situation in which they are better or more suited than oil painted, but that is the exception(specific) and not the rule(general).
Generally(general can verge from 51% to 99.9% or more, of the time), it is because man (like oil painting) provides/contain/capable of MORE that he is generally better than the ant.

additional note:
One should also factor/consider if he/she gets tired/sick from the visuals of one's eye in their daily life. One would probably get tired/bored/sick from black&white(ink image)/pixel art/ants much quicker compared to colored oil painting/3d graphics/mankind
due to less rather then more.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Interesting article, but I disagree with his conclusions. It's basically like saying oil paintings are "better" than ink illustrations or pencil drawings because they have more colours or "better gradients"... Doesn't quite work like that (but one *might* prefer oil paintings, of course, but it's just a simple aesthetic preference). I'm actually quite sick of the "use all colours of the rainbow" art style that's so popular in certain games nowadays, I much more prefer when the artist practices restraint.

If the summery of the articles states lines akin to "oil paintings are better then ink illustrations or pencil drawings because they have more colours or better gradients " then its true and thus one should not disagree with it.

To put in context: take a man and an ant. Which is better of the two? When one make a list(for comparison) of their capabilities the answer become evident. A man can crush multiply ants with its foot, yet an ant cannot crush a man let alone men with its leg because a man has more weight/size . A man can see more colors and thus a rainbow, but an ant cant. A man can speak More languages, however an ant cant and so on...
If one was to limit the scope, be specific versus general, there are situation where an ant is better than man such as in population in which the ant will outnumber man because the ant species has less requirements. The same applies to ink illustration, situation in which they are better or more suited than oil painted, but that is the exception(specific) and not the rule(general).
Generally(general can verge from 51% to 99.9% or more, of the time), it is because man (like oil painting) provides/contain/capable of MORE that he is generally better than the ant.

additional note:
One should also factor/consider if he/she gets tired/sick from the visuals of one's eye in their daily life. One would probably get tired/bored/sick from black&white(ink image)/pixel art/ants much quicker compared to colored oil painting/3d graphics/mankind
due to less rather then more.

Technical superiority is one thing, but the true value of art lies in its meaning, and less so its craft. Pixel art is inferior at showing details, but those aren't the details that matter. And actually, every mobile card game comes with thousands of well-detailed fantasy paintings that are all painfully boring to look at, and the only aesthetically good games were all made a million years ago, so...

Also you don't even have the minimum amount of intellect to immediately notice the difference between man and ant without making a list? Even an ant could do that!

 

[InSight]

but the true value of art lies in its meaning, and less so its craft

art (n.)
early 13c., "skill as a result of learning or practice," from Old French art (10c.), from Latin artem (nominative ars) "work of art; practical skill; a business, craft," from PIE *ar(ə)-ti- (source also of Sanskrit rtih "manner, mode;" Greek artizein "to prepare"), suffixed form of root *ar- "to fit together." Etymologically akin to Latin arma "weapons."

Art=Skills/Craft

Full Definition of meaning
(Entry 1 of 2)

1a : the thing one intends to convey especially by language : purport Do not mistake my meaning.
b : the thing that is conveyed especially by language : import Many words have more than one meaning.
2 : something meant or intended : aim a mischievous meaning was apparent
3 : significant quality especially : implication of a hidden or special significance a glance full of meaning
4a : the logical connotation of a word or phrase
b : the logical denotation or extension of a word or phrase
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meaning

One can derive meaning from all things that can be put into words, the very words them-self form meaning. Not all meaning are true/valid/objective. Not all meanings are of use, of benefit. Plentiful as if they were sand grains, by them-self they are worth-less.

The sentence argues that the value of the words is more important than the craft, yet this does not seem to be supported on many economical cases "words are cheap" thus the true value cannot be placed in its meaning. Without the product of the craft, these is not much meaning which can be derived.

The works of Michelangelo contradict such statements. His degree of sculpting art/skill/craft provided/included detail not seen before, or rarely seen, the detail/depiction of blood-veins on stone(details are important) thus he is regarded among the highest of his craft/art/caliber in these times. There is less room, less variation in meaning, while other works/sculpting/statues have the same/similar meaning, despite that his works are most valued(the true value in craft over meaning).
/////////////////////////////////////////////////

Also you don't even have the minimum amount of intellect to immediately notice the difference between man and ant without making a list? Even an ant could do that!

please notice the

To put in context

and be made aware of its meaning:To put (something) in (some kind of) context, (sentence) "Context" is extra information that helps you to understand something better.

Please provide an example of an ant who does, inability to do so proves such thing does not exist thus false,a lie. Even as figure of speech, it crosses/twists/bends the boundaries of reason/logic/experience(disregarding the persona/mind/character behind the maker of such claims).

edit notes:fixed derive from deprived, thanks to Unreal.