AuthorTopic: More colors = less pixel art? Help me understand.  (Read 5660 times)

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Re: More colors = less pixel art? Help me understand.

Reply #10 on: June 10, 2017, 11:50:23 am

I would like to go into a bit more depth about what I mean, because I think i feel the original hook, so to speak, of what I was trying to get at has been a little lost. I do understand the "why's" with regard ultra low color counts, but this was more of a case of wanting to know if there was pressure on folks coming to it new that there was a sort of obligation to use tiny pallets if not it would be frowned upon by people who rigorously follow the science of pixel art.

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Most newbie posts here seem to be posted without context of what the application of their work is, and "sometimes" i get the feeling that some the new posts I see are simply "experimenting" with pixel art rather then having it intended as something with real application, and in that context feel they are taking the tiny color count a bit too far as if they feel anything else it wouldn't be pixel art.
Speaking of the culture of Pixelation, I do not think we exert such a pressure.
Rather, I think it may be the other way round. A person comes to X artform and thinks "I must learn the techniques, then I will be good at X". (I'm sure you can find a range of current topics in Pixelation that smell of this .. ;)

Of course it is not true: each artwork is made with at least some design constraints, and often the best artworks are made with many design constraints, but those constraints tend to be practical. But newbies, by definition, cannot be expected to have perspective on this. I think you are right, they are just trying things, somewhat missing the forest for the trees.

I would like to promote more of a holistic view - you get good at art by doing art, art of everything, art in every possible way, art examining every dimension of things, and technique is just something you should pick up along the way in service of that. You repeat any given technique a hell of a lot to internalize it, but I agree, your repetition should be done incidentally in pursuit of a more concrete goal (a particular artwork for a particular purpose). But actually figuring out how to send that message to people who often don't yet have much of an overall conception of how art works.. it's pretty hard.


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Also, the term "pixel control" has been mentioned here a few times, but there is also color control, there is just as much discipline in controlling colors no matter how many there are, as there is with controlling individual pixels.
I don't think anyone disputed that. Rather, I think the view is that it's harder to effectively  control N+1 colors than it is to control N colors. Speaking personally, I believe that this holds strictly for any design problem (eg. engineering, architecture, ..); the less elements are involved, the much easier it becomes to optimize those elements to fit the overall goal.

I would say that such optimization happens much better when it is conciously aimed towards. But then, that's true of almost everything.

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Regarding being able to point to specific examples, well as I stressed its a feeling, which is why in particular I wanted to hear from new folks, I realize the people who have responded so far to this are more then not experienced/skilled/ beyond the total entry point phase.
When you ask these general questions about the community, the people who are not newbies will be most able to accurately answer them. That seems unavoidable to me, and I wouldn't really be surprised if some newbies who might otherwise have posted felt intimidated by the level of dialog happening here.
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.