Pixel art

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Image:The Gunk.png Pixel art is a form of digital art, created on the computer through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old computer and video games, Game Boy games, graphing calculator games, and many mobile phone games are considered pixel art.

Cross-stitch patterns resemble some aspects of pixel art.

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Constraints

Image:Yus ptoing.png The aspiring pixel artist must remember to keep the color count low; the art is often to be used on systems where the number of available colors is limited, such as older video game consoles or mobile phones. The color constraint is also part of the genre.

Generally, "pure" pixel art must be created by manual pixel-level editing, without the use of any automatic filters. In the pure form, it is generally said that "each pixel was placed carefully". Purists within the pixel art scene say that pixel artists should only use tools that place individual pixels (usually the pencil tool), and no tools that automatically create shapes for you (like circle, square and line tools). Others say that the line tools and the bucket fill are acceptable, as they do nothing more than speed up the work without impacting how the work looks. The use of automatic filters such as anti-aliasing, on the other hand, is generally considered not valid in "true" pixel art, since the filters will add new pixels automatically, eliminating the careful placement.

Also, a common mistake is to think that any drawing or doodle done using the pencil tool is pixel art. This is not true, since pixel art is categorized by the method of drawing (pixel by pixel), not the results (therefore, special renders and automated filters do not apply either). Such drawings are actually called oekakis.

But, it is possible to have a photorealistic pixel art piece, as long as it was done by the pixel by pixel method (frequently called "pixel pushing").

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Techniques of drawing

Drawings usually start with what is called the line art, which is the basic line that defines the character, building or anything else the artist is intending to draw. Linearts are usually traced over scanned drawings and are often shared among other pixel artists. Other techniques, some resembling painting, also exist.

The limited palette often requires the use of dithering in order to achieve different shades and colors, but due to the nature of this form of art this is done completely by hand. Hand-made anti-aliasing is also used.

Here are a few parts of the above image in detail, depicting a few of the techniques involved: Image:The Gunk details.png

1. The basic form of dithering, using two colors in a 2x2 checkerboard pattern. Changing the density of each color will lead to different subtones.
2. Stylized dithering with 2x2 pixel squares randomly scattered can produce interesting textures. Small circles are also frequent.
3. Anti-aliasing can be done, by hand, to smooth curves and transitions. Some artists use this is only internally in order to keep the crisp outlines that can go over any background. The PNG alpha channel can be used to create external anti-aliasing for any background.


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Saving and compression

Image:Gif pixel cube.gif Image:Png pixel cube.png Image:Jpg pixel cube.jpg Pixel art is preferably stored losslessly, that is, in a format that can save each pixel of the image without loss of precision. Because of the often-limited color space, using a color palette can be very efficient. PNG and GIF are two examples of formats that can do this space-efficiently. Run-length encoding is a possible tradeoff when memory or computational power is limited.

Pixel art should not be saved as JPEG files because the lossy compression of the format is not suited to the details involved in pixel art. Even at maximum quality there will be several losses in detail, especially in the matter of colors of individual pixels. Also, JPEG files tend to become larger in size than the GIF or PNG.

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Categories

Image:Pixelart-tv-iso.png Image:Pixelart-tv-niso.png Pixel art is commonly divided in two subcategories: isometric and non-isometric. The isometric kind is drawn in a near-isometric dimetric projection. This is commonly seen in games to provide a three-dimensional view without using any real three-dimensional processing. Technically, an isometric angle would be of 30 degrees from the horizontal, but this does not produce a good result in pixel art since the pixels in these lines do not follow a neat pattern. To fix this, lines of a 1:2 pixel ratio is picked, leading to an angle of, approximately, 26.565 degrees (arctan 0.5).

Non-isometric pixel art is any pixel art that does not fall in the isometric category, such as views from the top, side, front, bottom or perspective views.

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Uses

Image:Metal Slug 3.png

Pixel art was very often used in old computer and video console games. With the increasing use of 3D graphics in games, pixel art lost some of its use. Despite that, this is still a very active professional area, since mobile phones and other portable devices still have low resolution and then require a skillful use of space and memory. Some times pixel art is used for advertising. One company that uses pixel art to advertise is Bell.

Icons for operating systems with limited graphics abilities are also pixel art. The limited number of colors and resolution presents a challenge when attempting to convey complicated concepts and ideas in an efficient way. On the Microsoft Windows desktop icons are raster images of various sizes, the smaller of which are not necessarily direct scalings of the larger ones and could be considered pixel art. On the GNOME and KDE desktops, icons are represented primarily by SVG images, but with hand-optimised, pixel art PNGs for smaller sizes such as 16x16 and 24x24. Another use of pixel art on modern desktop computers is favicons.

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Communities

Several pixel art communities exist on the internet where artists share their art and techniques, as well as giving out hints, tips, tricks etc. There is usually a request to keep the comments and critics as constructive as possible in order to help the community and their members to improve.

Pixel fights or pixel battles occur when a number of artists take turns on editing the same picture, usually divided in "slots" (frequently square or hexagonal). The fight consists on making things as tricky as possible to continue for the next artist. These pixel battles are, of course, made just for the fun and challenge.

Community collaborations also exist. These usually involve a basic "make your own" idea over a theme (a city, a building, a totem, etc.), where a template is given for the users to participate creating their own entries. These will then be put together in a single and usually large pixel art piece.

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See also

  • Dollz, also known as cartoon dolls
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External links

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Communities & Galleries


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Collaborative & Interactive

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Tutorials & Resources

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Forums

fr:Pixel art it:Pixel art he:אמנות פיקסלים nl:Pixel art pl:Pixel art

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