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[Brocklesocks]

Something I've been wondering for a while now is: why is pixel art so popular among independent gaming communities? I know I'm probably going to get hailed upon by turds, but I feel like a lot of the artists could do something really creative and awesome. Instead, there is an endless amount of pixel art-styled games. I'm working on my first couple games and trying to create pixel art characters seemed a lot easier than building illustrative character sprites. Maybe the style is just generally unsatisfying for me.

Forgive me if this question has been asked already, but I just had to ask. Why do you make pixel art? Is there a special reason, or do you just prefer it? Am I not seeing something that so many of you are?

Edit: This is not a criticism, but a friendly philosophical engagement. Just trying to absorb some perspective  

[Robotwo]

I for one make pixelart for 2 reasons:

One is because it brings me back to my gaming roots ,
remembering such wonderfull times as the 8-bit and 16-bit era.

And the second is because I don't have either a scanner or a tablet ,
so making nice lines without going into pixel-level is really hard for me with a mouse.
 

[Brocklesocks]

Have you ever tried using the pen tool in Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash or any other vector art program? There's not much of a need for even using a tablet if you are working with line artwork. Sometimes having a hand-drawn sketch is helpful, but you would need to get it into your computer somehow. I don't have a scanner either, so I just use crappy cell phone pictures or something 

[I_smell]

I make Flash games, so all my art's... regular art. I allways thought it was something to do with Game Maker.

[aeiowu]

I'm working on my first couple games and trying to create pixel art characters just seemed too easy...

Maybe it's just me, but I find pixel art (mostly due to the animation) to be an incredibly difficult and rewarding task. Sure you can just have stick figures, but the same stick-figure style is much easier to animate if you used an object-oriented animation (in flash) with vector lines.

But more to your OP, I love pixel art for the same reason I love vector art. In an odd way it can be preserved really easily by simply blowing it up (nearest neighbor). So if I make a 16x16 sprite, I can make it 1024x1024 really easily, the integrity of the image doesn't change and everything stays in its right place.

Of course it's more than just that. I love how orderly and defined it is. I love the insane amount of control I have over _every_ aspect of _every_ pixel. I love making a sprite sheet in Photoshop and seeing it come alive, almost as if it were magic, in the game. I love the imagination something as abstract and simplified pixels can spawn. In some ways, and this is sometimes used to great effect in art games, the simplified sprites lend themselves to archetypes rather than real, finite characters and that's a wonderful thing.

These are just a few of my favorite things.

[Robotwo]

I don't have a scanner either, so I just use crappy cell phone pictures or something 

My cellphone is a Ericsson Ga628 , hard to take pictures with that.
My WebCam is non-existant.
My camera is out of film , but it wouldn't help even if I had some.

Have you ever tried using the pen tool in Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash or any other vector art program?

Photoshop is WAY too expensive for me , MS Paint and GraphicsGale are far superior in price and performance for my needs.
Also , isn't the pen tool pixel-based?
Why would I need a vector program to use a pixel-based tool?
And if I'd like to work with Vector art I'd need a Vectrex 

[Jolli]

i use pixel art because it's easy but i don't really care much for it like everyone else here seems to

[Mr. Yes]

Pixel art is fun stuff. It looks good, and it's simple.

Also, I can't draw. You could consider that a reason.

It's definitely not nostalgia in my case, though.

[Ego_Shiner]

because it looks good if you know what you're doing. honestly i prefer well done pixelart over HD and waaaaaaaaaay over 3d

[I_smell]

because it looks good if you know what you're doing. honestly i prefer well done pixelart over HD and waaaaaaaaaay over 3d

Those are such gigantically broad categories you can't really just prefer one over the others. It's like saying I prefer horizontal art over vertical.

[JaJitsu]

It's fun.

[BlueSweatshirt]

because it looks good if you know what you're doing. honestly i prefer well done pixelart over HD and waaaaaaaaaay over 3d

Those are such gigantically broad categories you can't really just prefer one over the others. It's like saying I prefer horizontal art over vertical.

Personally, I prefer vertical over horizontal.


I like sprites because they just feel classic. The amount of effort put into pixelwork can just awestrike you. You don't get the same feeling from looking at a 3d model.

[i wanna be the guy]

lacking detail and just generally unsatisfying.

i agree

these all look incredibly simple and unsatisfying
pixel art is so stupid

[st33d]

Flash, despite being marketed as a vector platform, is actually much much faster at using bitmaps. Hence pixel art being a sound choice for Flash games.

Not to mention that working in 3D takes a hell of a long time. This is why the "werewolf" sonic game was so heavily criticised. They put in hours of time into content that whipped by at a blur and so had to stall the game play in order to drag the game out for longer.

[Nate Kling]

I dont know why people are saying pixel art is easy.  Thats like saying drawing or painting is easy.  Sure its easy to paint or draw a stick figure or a scribble but doing a master piece is hard. Pixel art is not some kind of simplified, easy, and skill-less style.  Take a look around here and the pixelation forums, people spend tons of time and learn tons of different techniques and tricks.  I would say that it is just as hard as painting, drawing, vector, etc. depending on how advanced you are.  
  Now that thats out of the way.  I like pixel art because i love how raw it looks and I love the levels of ambiguity it provides depending on the resolution.  Some times being in this indie world I forget that other people are pretty ignorant about pixel graphics.  I showed a friend some indie games and they said "this game is awesome... too bad the graphics are terrible" (referring to the pixel art).  I told them I thought the artwork was incredible, I would say I enjoy it more than most mainstream titles out.  I think some people dont give pixel art a chance they just blow it off as "retro".  Also, i didnt mean to say that everyone who doesnt like pixel art is ignorant to it, I just meant a large population of gamers are ignorant to it and dont even give it a chance.  The other thing about pixel art and indie games could be that its almost like our countercultural weapon against the mainstream.  Its pretty much the opposite of HD.  Well thats just one way of looking at it. And its just cool.  But I appreciate lots of types of art in games not just pixel. Plus there are lots of varying styles in pixel art its such a broad category.

[ChevyRay]

I make Flash games, so all my art's... regular art. I allways thought it was something to do with Game Maker.

 :D No comment! Too good.

i use pixel art because it's easy but i don't really care much for it like everyone else some people here seems to

There we go.

Something I've been wondering for a while now is: why is pixel art so popular among independent gaming communities? I know I'm probably going to get hailed upon by turds, but I feel like a lot of the artists could do something really creative and awesome.

Earth to brocklesocks, Pixel art CAN be creative and awesome. Those of us who favour it have already figured that out. Why would you even assume that it couldn't? Do you live in a hole or alternate universe, where the merits of an artistic style are clearly defined and written upon stone, and never change and don't reflect anything other than the technical skill involved in creating them from your own standpoint?

And if you thought you were gonna get "hailed upon by turds", why even post this? Why not just search, because there's been hundreds of people that have come before you, even in this community, and asked the same question, and the only thing that could have been accomplished by starting yet ANOTHER topic about this would be merely an attention thing, because you knew that all the pixel-art fans were going to react here, exactly what their reactions would be (come on, isn't it obvious?)

Think of mosaics. They've been around for thousands of years! Pixel art is like a small-scale version of that. I'm not even that talented of an artist and I can see that there's a huge difference between a mosaic and an oil painting, and each has its own merits and style and skill involved in masterful execution, and EVEN I can tell how this relates to pixel art and more modern art styles. Art styles go in and out of fashion like everything else, some arbitrary time in the future, pixel art could be big again, and people could grimace upon vectors, and there'd be "why do hi-def vector art? I just don't get it, it looks so uuuugggglllyy" topics popping up everywhere.

Why not just face the facts, say, "Ah, I don't personally like this art style", and pick your own, instead of just beating around the same old bush OVER AND OVER AGAIN. I don't even like pixel art that much, and this conversation has gotten ooolllldd :D

So yeah, you get a big



for this.

[Xion]

It's fun.

word.

It's also way easier and faster for me to create quality animations with pixels than to get the same amount of quality and detail with more analog means, and I really really suck with vectors.

And yeah lacking in detail is a deal of the artist, not the medium. Of course simplicity can sometimes/often be quite appealing regardless of medium and overrendering can sometimes/often be jarringly unpleasant, again, regardless of medium.

So yeah.

It's not that I think pixel art is superior or anything, I just think it's easier to be made passable by a small team or individual - as indie games are often made by - than 3d or higher res 2d. Not saying it's easy, as others have noted. But easier to be made passable.

[swordofkings128]

if 3d art was as easy as pixel art I'm pretty sure that we'd see more 3d games than pixel art games, or tons of like 2.5d pixel art games.

psssh i know i'd make some awesome 3d fps caveman in the future rpg game if 3d was easy. who would of thought adding just 1 dimension would add such confusion and difficulty! this is why i'm stuck to the 2nd dimension.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

3d models are just as easy/difficult to make as pixel art is, it's just that it's harder to program into a game than 2d is. 3d artists aren't more skilled than 2d artists, but 3d programmers are usually more skilled than 2d programmers.

and i echo chevy's point about seeing this thread: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=2820.0 -- no point in asking the same thing in a new topic when an old topic on the subject already exists. go read that.

[ChevyRay]

And yeah lacking in detail is a deal of the artist, not the medium

Xion speaks the holy truth of the matter.

3d models are just as easy/difficult to make as pixel art is, it's just that it's harder to program into a game than 2d is. 3d artists aren't more skilled than 2d artists, but 3d programmers are usually more skilled than 2d programmers.

Yeah, 3D programming is way tougher than 2D programming. I've been there.