Pixel art
Pixel art is a form of digital art drawn with graphical software where images are built using pixels as the only building block. It is widely associated with the low-resolution graphics from 8-bit and 16-bit era computers, arcade machines and video game consoles, in addition to other limited systems such as LED displays and graphing calculators, which have a limited number of pixels and colors available. The art form is still employed to this day by pixel artists and game studios, even though the technological limitations have since been surpassed.
Most works of pixel art are also restrictive both in file size and the number of colors used in their color palette for reasons such as software limitations, to achieve a certain aesthetic, or to reduce the perceived noise. Older forms of pixel art tend to employ smaller palettes, with some video games being made using just two colors. Because of these self-imposed limitations, pixel art presents strong similarities with many traditional restrictive art forms such as mosaics, cross-stitch, and fuse beads.
There is no precise classification for pixel art, but an artwork is usually considered as such if deliberate thought was put into each individual pixel of the image. Standard digital artworks or low-resolution photographs are also composed of pixels, but they would only be considered pixel art if the individual pixels were placed with artistic intent, even if the pixels are clearly visible or prominent.
The phrases "dot art" and "pixel pushing" are sometimes used as synonyms for pixel art, particularly by Japanese artists. The term spriting sometimes refers to the activity of making pixel art elements for video games specifically. The concept most likely originated from the word sprite, which is used in computer graphics to describe a two-dimensional bitmap that can be used as a building block in the construction of larger scenes.
Definition
Pixel art is commonly differentiated from other digital imagery when the pixels used play an important individual role in the composition of the artwork, usually requiring deliberate control over the placement of each individual pixel. When purposefully editing in this way, changing the position of a few pixels can have a large effect on the image.A common characteristic in pixel art is the low overall color count in the image. Pixel art as a medium mimics a lot of traits found in older video game graphics, rendered by machines capable of only outputting a limited number of colors at once.
As images get higher in resolution, pixels get harder to distinguish from each other, and the importance of their careful placement is diminished. The exact point at which this occurs and the conditions change to where a piece cannot be reasonably called "pixel art" is subjective.
History
Origin
Some traditional art forms, like counted-thread embroidery and some kinds of mosaic and beadwork, are very similar to pixel art and could be considered as non-digital counterparts or predecessors. These art forms construct pictures out of small colored units similar to the pixels of modern digital computing.Some of the earliest examples of pixel art could be found in analog electronic advertising displays, such as the ones from New York City during the early 20th century, with simple monochromatic light bulb matrix displays extant circa 1937. Pixel art as it is known today largely originates from the golden age of arcade video games, with games such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man, and 8-bit consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System and Master System.
The term pixel art was first published in a journal letter by Adele Goldberg and Robert Flegal of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1982. The practice, however, goes back at least 11 years before that, for example in Richard Shoup's SuperPaint system in 1972, also at Xerox PARC.system 22345
1970s
Because of the severe restrictions of early graphics, the first instances of pixel art in video games were relatively abstract. The low resolution of computers and game consoles forced game designers to carefully design game assets by deliberate placement of individual pixels, to form recognizable symbols, characters, or items. Simple function-based avatars such as spaceships, cars, or tanks required a minimum of animation and computing power, while enemies, terrain, and power-ups were often represented by symbols or simple designs. Due to the limited hardware of the 1970s, abstraction, as in the case of Pong's relatively simple design, sometimes led to better game readability and commercial success than attempting more detailed representational art.Although computers had been used to create art since the 1960s and microcomputers were used in the late 1970s and there are examples of digital art utilizing a more pixelated aesthetic, there is no well-known tradition of pixel art from the 1970s that differentiated between the deliberate placement of pixels or the aestheticization of individual pixels in contrast to other forms of digital painting or digital art. For this reason, one could argue that pixel art was not a recognized medium or artform in the 1970s.
1980s
In what is sometimes referred to as the golden age of video games or golden age of arcade video games, the 1980s saw a period of innovation in video games, both as a new artform and a form of entertainment. During the early 1980s, video game creators were mainly programmers and not graphic designers. Technological innovation led to market pressure for more representational and "realistic" graphics in games. As graphics improved, it became possible to replace hand-drawn game assets with imported pictures or 3D polygons, which contributed to pixel art developing as a separate art form.Gradually, professional artists and graphic designers had a bigger impact in the video game industry. Sierra Entertainment released Mystery House, pixelled by Roberta Williams, and the King's Quest series; and Lucasfilm Games released games such as Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure. Mark J. Ferrari, an artist at Lucasfilm Games, later said:
When I was first hired by Lucasfilm Games in 1987 to do artwork for their computer games, pixel graphics was not thought of by anyone as an 'art form'. The use of pixels was not an aesthetic choice – as it certainly is now. If anything, pixels were an unavoidable and very irksome obstacle to the creation of any 'real art' for use in the exciting but bewildering new realm of computer entertainment. There were no pixel artists then – at all! There were only traditional artists.
Nevertheless, the aesthetic of 1980s video games had a major impact on contemporary and future pixel art, both in video games, the demoscene graphics and among independent artists. As computers became more affordable in the 1980s, software such as DEGAS Elite for the Atari ST, Deluxe Paint and Deluxe Paint 2 for the Commodore Amiga, and Paint Magic for the Commodore 64, inspired many later pixel artists to create digital art by careful placement of pixels. In the case of the Commodore 64 and the Amstrad CPC, some early pixel artists used joysticks and keyboards to pixel.
With the rise of the demoscene movement in Europe in the late 1980s, artists who were proficient with creating pixel art using 8-bit computers like the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum or 16-bit computers like the Atari ST began to publish their pixel art as demos. Demogroups would often include coders, musicians, and graphicians, where graphicians were a common name for graphic designers and/or pixel artists. Although some graphicians worked on adding art to cracked video games, the demoscene contributed to artistic communities creating pixel art for its own sake as art. These were often shared via floppy disks that were handed from person to person or via the postal service. The golden age of the demoscene and its associated pixel art milieu, however, is often regarded as beginning in the early 1990s.
1990s
Before the 1990s, display systems were mostly based on a small 4-bit palette of imposed colors. The coming decade greatly improved the graphics standard with the appearance of increased color depth and indexed color palettes. During the 1990s, 2D games with manually painted graphics saw increasing competition from 3-dimensional games and games using pre-rendered 3D assets. Still, pixel art games like Flashback, The Secret of Monkey Island, The Chaos Engine, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, Super Mario World, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past had a major influence on future artists in the game industry, the contemporary demoscene and the aesthetic of pixel art in later decades.In addition to pixel art influenced by video games, pixel artists in the demoscene continued to make pixel art for demos and cracktros. Some demoscene pixel artists active in the 1990s have cited movies and urban graffiti as important influences for their art, particularly in designing logos. In addition to copying sprites from existing video games, demoscene pixel artists also copied the work of popular artists and illustrators such as Ian Miller and Simon Bisley. Competition gradually became an increasingly important part of demoscene gatherings, including pixel art competitions, and as teenagers and young adults were the major demographic in these gatherings, a lot of demoscene pixel art referenced familiar fantasy, science fiction and cyberpunk tropes. Demoscene competitions had a major effect in shaping the direction of pixel art. Prominent artists would look for ways to innovate, display superior technique, overcome technical restrictions, and in many cases aim for photorealism through anti-aliasing.
As the internet became more available in the 1990s, pixel artists and demosceners gradually began to spread their pixel art via websites, instant messaging, and online file sharing. While the demoscene was arguably most popular among young men, an online movement began in the late 1990s known as pixel dolls or 'dollz', which was popular among young women. The increased popularity of online chatting and personal webpages at a time before digital cameras were common led to an increased demand for personal representation through personalized avatars. These avatars often took the form of pixel dolls, being pixel art characters that could be outfitted with different clothing and accessories. As pixel dolls grew more and more common, many pixel artists gradually began to develop this as an independent artform.