4 ms·

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 g

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.

shahar2k 8y ago
I think a lot of what you're seeing is the rather basic color palette, snes and a lot of older games were very creative with their use of colors and much more subtle about doing things like adding basica textural detail to items, as well as just a general use of the "outline" which very few older pixel art games used (see anything by the bitmap brothers, or secret of mana for example) which can easily be fixed by removing these options. these kinds of apps, while they get non-artists about 80% of the way... as the saying goes, the last 20% is 90% of the work :)
rcthompson 8y ago
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/CRT_Simulation_in_Super_Win_the_Game.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KylePittman/20150420/241442/C...
- Retra 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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-art/ http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-...
    - rlv-dan 8y ago
      Fun anecdote: One of the first graphics I made was a font, complete with smooth round edges. I had an Amiga connected to a CRT. Proud me took it to my friend to show off. He had a real monitor. My font looked like blocky crap :-)
    - Retra 8y ago
      >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.
jimbo1qaz 8y ago
Maybe autogenerated pixel art has less pixel-level detail than handcrafted art. Much like http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-art/#attachment_2440 http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-... .
- Adverblessly 8y ago
  There was some discussion of that post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12505615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12505615 It is quite amusing to be that you bring up that post, because the 2nd comment thread (admittedly started by me) is about how the blog poster's own art looks like it was poorly downsampled from higher fidelity art, which is sort of the whole point of this post (except for the "poorly" part, obviously).
bluedino 8y ago
The graphics have a EGA-vibe to them. Looks like shareware PC graphics (Commander Keen, etc)

shahar2k 8y ago

I think a lot of what you're seeing is the rather basic color palette, snes and a lot of older games were very creative with their use of colors and much more subtle about doing things like adding basica textural detail to items, as well as just a general use of the "outline" which very few older pixel art games used (see anything by the bitmap brothers, or secret of mana for example) which can easily be fixed by removing these options. these kinds of apps, while they get non-artists about 80% of the way... as the saying goes, the last 20% is 90% of the work :)

rcthompson 8y ago

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/CRT_Simulation_in_Super_Win_the_Game.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KylePittman/20150420/241442/C...

Retra 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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-art/ http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-...
  - rlv-dan 8y ago
    Fun anecdote: One of the first graphics I made was a font, complete with smooth round edges. I had an Amiga connected to a CRT. Proud me took it to my friend to show off. He had a real monitor. My font looked like blocky crap :-)
  - Retra 8y ago
    >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.

jimbo1qaz 8y ago

Maybe autogenerated pixel art has less pixel-level detail than handcrafted art. Much like http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-art/#attachment_2440 http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-... .

Adverblessly 8y ago
There was some discussion of that post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12505615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12505615 It is quite amusing to be that you bring up that post, because the 2nd comment thread (admittedly started by me) is about how the blog poster's own art looks like it was poorly downsampled from higher fidelity art, which is sort of the whole point of this post (except for the "poorly" part, obviously).

bluedino 8y ago

The graphics have a EGA-vibe to them. Looks like shareware PC graphics (Commander Keen, etc)