Maybe add classic gameboy / game boy advance release dates as well?They're up there - '89 and '01
it's defintively not 2005Yeah, I've got PJ listed at 2005 (though it was -technically- working in Dec 2004). Pixelation is currently listed as 20?? because the beginnings of this community remain extremely murky to me.
it's defintively not 2005Yeah, I've got PJ listed at 2005 (though it was -technically- working in Dec 2004). Pixelation is currently listed as 20?? because the beginnings of this community remain extremely murky to me.
I'm still not certain that either site warrants a mention. They're both very important to me and our community but it's difficult to say what their contributions are on a larger, historical scale.
We even managed to influence quite a few old timers, like Henk Nieborg.
In what way? Is there a quote on the matter? Seemed to me Henk Nieborg always had pretty clean technique, even on the Amiga before Pixelation ever existedWasn't talking about technique really, more the fact that I heard he's friends with a lot of Pix/PJ members these days, worked on games with them, etc.
how extensive has your research been on this topic and how thorough are you gonna be with this?A couple of days spent idly googling, supplemented with things I've picked up in the last decade at pj/pixelation or irl (like the music cabinet I found in Detroit). As for how thorough- dunno yet. Just collecting data and getting community feedback to get a feel for what is more and less important in the development of our artform. This could turn into an extensive list categorized by decade, and a short-list for easier consumption.
If you read interviews (http://www.ign.com/articles/2011/04/05/sword-sworcery-ep-was-almost-called-poopsock) with Superbrothers, you'll find a large inspiration for the visual style that they had been developing for over half a decade prior to the release of Sword and Sworcery EP were the same things that Amaya tried to do with Cave Story.Interesting that the interviewer, in 2011, used the term 'bit-art'.
Which reminds me- I should put eBoy on the list.Only if you want to make a History Of Crapxel Art. </harsh personal opinion>
All proceeds go directly to the development of 16 Color's next version coming in 2005.
some of the suggestions are a bit of a stretch to be considered a part of pixel art history in my opinion. Such as the game of life. The only thing that shares with pixel art is the square grid, but it has absolutely no properties of "art".
something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings
If the goal is to be an exhaustive and inclusive list, then so be it, I just personally wouldn't find much use in that format.:y:
I believe there's an important division between pixelart as a necessity vs. pixelart as a choice.I'm not sure if that's true to current definitions of pixel art. Not all art made for NES is pixel art, though a significantly larger percentage was? There's heaps of examples of early digital art that was not pixel art by any standards I think.
As a necessity, pixelart is tied to computer history, but it doesn't really represent artistic choice. It's just how things were back in the day, so to speak. If you were digital artist, you did pixel art.
Maybe the first thing that hypothetical aliens will see of us is pixel art. Thoughts on its relevance to the timeline?
It's insane to say eBoy didn't leave an impression on the popular perception of pixel art. It's like, a thousand times more influential than the cultural footprint of pixelation.
Dither was already on the decline before the LCD, because of the higher colour depth in processing.
I think it's important to note that LCDs got standardized to display square pixels, no matter their resolution, while games of the previous generation used a VGA screen mode, where pixels are 20%taller than they are wide.Seems like this is a more complex issue than I assumed. Maybe it's best to remove the bit about dithering? And add the bit about square pixels? I tried looking into the whole VGA/CGA/EGA etc. shit but quickly found myself in over my head.
Don't you think the first IBM PC and Mac are worth mentioning though?The Apple II probably deserves a mention. Is the IBM 5150 significant enough to warrant a mention? And in mentioning the Apple II, is it worth mentioning the Commodore PET and TRS-80 as the other 2/3rds of the "1977 Trinity" of home computing? Apple II was the first to have a GUI afaik, so maybe it is the only one of this bunch worthy of a spot on the timeline.
Their first popular 3d shooters like Wolfenstein employed pixel art textures, as a precursor to Minecraft. The Pixel moved on as Texel.I honestly hadn't thought about texels outside of Minecraft. Is Wolfenstein the first game to use pixel textures? I'd like to hear what others think about the importance of texels in the history of our medium, but it might be worth a mention. That's how Junkboy is making billions of dollars with Notch, right? I feel voxels and legos are a bit of a stretch, getting this far into the third dimension seems to expand the focus quite a bit.
what's become as important today as hardware in the past, is software development frameworks and game engines.To me it feels the hardward of the past is more important to the timeline because it heavily influenced the form of the pixel art produced on those machines, and established in the public consciousness what "pixel art", "video game art", and "retro graphics" look like. I can certainly see the argument that game engines are the new consoles, but nowadays its just a given that pixel art can be displayed on all sorts of computers without any significant limitations to the style of art produced, with all ports being vitually identical.
Maybe it's best to remove the bit about dithering? And add the bit about square pixels?Agreed. We'll have to think some more about the role of dither and techniques another day.
Lauretta Jones began her career as a freelance digital illustrator, before going on to teach at the School of Visual Art in New York, where she also designed a computer art course. She continued to find new ways to help digital artists as a user interface researcher. She currently teaches botanical art at the New York Botanical Garden.
Lauretta also has a special insight into the world of pixel art during the 1980s, when 8-bit not only meant 8-bit, it also meant state-of-the-art. I was first introduced to Lauretta's work by a 1984 BBC program called "Micro Live," which had been uploaded to YouTube (https://youtu.be/jqTBNhNzmfA?t=41m5s). She was kind enough to answer more than a few of my questions.